re:publica 18 - Science & Technology re:publica

Silja Vöneky, Philipp Kellmeyer, Christiane Miethge

The session will start with a video showing parts of the web documentary "Homo Digitalis". The panelists will then discuss, together with the audience, the ethical, legal and social implications of the convergence of consumer neurotechnology with big data and advanced machine learning.
After all, the brain is not any old organ: it is the seat of our feelings, desires, personality, attitude, creativity and thoughts. Gaining access to this rich trove of highly personal biometric data via advanced neurotechnology may be an enticing prospect for companies that want to harness this data for potentially unprecedented levels of personalization of their services, e.g. targeted advertising. Yet, thus far, there is no wide ranging public disocurse or deliberation of the potential threats of this development for the privileged privacy and the freedom of our thoughts, feelings and other mental states. Do existing regimens for protecting biomedical data suffice to manage this potential flood of Big Brain Data? Can technology, such as blockchain, federated learning or differential privacy, protect users' brain data from unwarranted access and commercial exploitation? Who will decide over the priorities for research and applications as experts in data science and machine learning systematically move from public research institutions to the private sector?
In the first part of the session, we will present the benefits and risks of this scenario from a medical, scientific, legal and neuroethical perspective. In the second part, we will engage the audience in discussing and deliberating about possible solutions for these ethical, legal and social challenges.

Shermin Voshmgir, Ricardo Ferrer Rivero

Bitcoin wird nicht das neue Zahlungsmittel – dafür ist das Programm zu träge und verbraucht zu viel Energie. Aber die Technologie dahinter, die Blockchain, hat große Hoffnungen geweckt. Neue Anwendungsideen und Lösungen überschwemmen den Markt. Vier Trends fallen dabei auf:
1. Viele treibt die Gier. Im Netz versprechen selbsternannte Krypto-Experten und Trading-Gruppen das schnelle Geld. Mittlerweile kann man sogar auf den Kurs von Bitcoin wetten. Das treibt den Preis. Statt eines Tauschmittels sind Bitcoin und Co zur vermeintlichen Geldanlage geworden. 
2. Das Ziel scheint keine allgemeingültige, digitale Währung mehr zu sein, sondern die Neuordnung einzelner Branchen. Krypto-Unternehmen wollen den Musikmarkt umkrempeln, die Stromvergütung neu ordnen oder den Kauf von Cannabis vereinfachen. Dafür schaffen sie immer neue, digitale Tauschmittel – "Tokens". 
3. Blender haben leichtes Spiel. Offenbar reicht es, den Begriff Blockchain an eine Idee zu binden, schon stecken Menschen Millionen in Unternehmen. Immer wieder laufen Nutzer betrügerischen Drittanbietern auf.
4. Staaten wissen nicht, wie sie mit all dem umgehen sollen: Die einen verbieten Kryptowährungen, die anderen wollen sie stärker regulieren oder ihre eigenen entwickeln.
Darauf aufbauend möchten wir in einem Gespräch herausfinden, was aus der eigentlichen Idee hinter Bitcoin geworden ist. Wer verfolgt sie noch? Kann sie nach heutigem Stand überleben oder hat sie unser System schon verschluckt? Welche Zukunft hat die "Token-Ökonomie"? Und was muss passieren, damit „Kryptopia“ doch noch Wirklichkeit wird?
 
supported by T-Labs

Christoph Boecken

Das IoT wird sich über kurz oder lang durchsetzen, trotzdem geht damit ein Sicherheitsrisiko einher, da wir uns einerseits abhängig vom Hersteller machen, die wiederum mit den Daten missbräuchlich umgehen oder sich erst gar nicht um die Sicherheit ihrer Hardware kümmern. Nutzte man früher für Botnetze noch anfällige Rechner, so sind es heute eben Drucker, Getränkeautomaten oder Leuchtmittel. Und gerade bei Dingen wie z.B. Autos oder Ampeln kann es hier auch mitunter lebensgefährlich werden. Der Vortrag ist kurzweilig und stellt in einer Präsentation ein paar der absurdesten Beispiele vor. Er soll ganz klar unterhalten, ohne dabei die ernsthafte Message zu vergessen.

Joseph Cox, Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

This talk covers two areas: the inner workings of the consumer spyware industry, and how that industry has been repeatedly linked to cases of domestic and sexual violence, rape, and murder.
The first is based on a slew of internal spreadsheets, financial documents, customer records, and even live intercepts captured by malware which activist hackers stole and provided to us as journalists. This data shows the popularity of consumer spyware, how some companies explicitly market their products to jealous or paranoid lovers to spy on their spouses, and even some connections to the same companies that provide malware for authoritarian regimes. But our talk also offers the behind-the-scenes of an investigation that relied heavily on information provided by criminal hackers: how do journalists verify that data, and how do they handle intensely private information? And we explain why we purchased the malware ourselves to give readers a deeper understanding of how exactly it worked.
The second part brings together interviews with sexual violence victims, domestic violence researchers, and concrete evidence of malware being used to facilitate abuse. This malware may require physical access to install, but to ignore this issue would be to miss the point: in an abusive relationship, the attacker often stays in the same building, room, or even bed as the target. This scenario presents a complicated melding of physical and digital security that the infosec community may want to pay more attention to.

Manuella Cunha Brito

Society is at a crossroads, facing two “singularities”. This means we will see events where the depth of changes around us become exponential and thus our current way of thinking does not apply anymore — like the effects of gravity in a black hole.
First, is the intensifying system crisis : climate change, food and water insecurity, extreme economic, social and gender inequality. The UN made a framework to help us fight those big challenges, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals we need to tackle before 2030.
Second, is the technological acceleration driven by exponential technologies: synthetic biology, machine learning, robotics or blockchains. The WEF states that we are living the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. This brings many promises, but also grand challenges: what is the future of work when automation is everywhere? How do we ensure that the benefits reaped are fairly distributed across society? Will our consumption of natural resources be exponential too, or will circular economy principles prevail? How do we guarantee the safety of these technologies?
The question is: can we harness this second singularity, to prevent the first one, and regenerate society and the planet? What are the signs of hope, and the challenges that lie ahead?
Answering these questions is the work of the Good Tech Lab, which will be presented by Manuella Cunha Brito in this session.

Matthew Stender, Adam Harvey

Biometric sensors are used by governments, corporations and even NGOs to perceive unique identifiers for individual humans. This session will parse the distinction between two types of biometric traits (hard and soft) - those that we possess and those that we perform - and discuss how both are increasingly being used as unique identifiers to catalogue our whereabouts, categorize our actions and customize our experiences.
These automated biometric systems, created by humans are increasing religating humanity ‘out of the loop’. Simultaneously, humans are unable to hide or escape from the view of machines. Without oversight or accountability, humans changes the way they operate in the physical space, eroding their agency. The ethnographic and anthropological implications  of the biometric shape more than individual behavior and can even lead to a “flattening of culture.” From data modeling leads to replication of discrimination to biometric product design doesn’t account for non-able bodied persons, technology will increasingly leave its fingerprint on human society. Finally, forced participation in these systems brings up philosophical questions as to what constitutes human rights in the 21st century.
Beyond traditional access control mechanisms (like an undergoing an eye scan to enter into a secure facility), collective biometrics now give those in power the capacity for predictive analysis through future modeling. Micromovements can now be disambiguated to tell stories about our human bodies that we ourselves may be unaware of.