Technology and Democracy Cambridge University

Panel 3: Privacy

Chair: Dr Daniel Wilson (CRASSH, Cambridge)

Dr Nóra Ní Loideain (Director, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London)
Dr Anil Madhavapeddy (Computer Lab, Cambridge)

In 2016 Philip Howard, now Professor of Internet Studies at Oxford and a leading scholar on the impact of the Internet on politics, published Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up in which he tried to assess what the long-term implications of this hyper-connected network might be. Among these possible implications, he noted, are:

* The IoT is likely to bring a special kind of stability to global politics (analogous to the uneasy stand-off of the Cold War)

* The new world order would be characterised by a pact between big tech firms and governments

* Governments may have a decreasing capacity to govern the IoT while corporate (and also bad) actors will become more powerful in the hyper-connected world that the technology will create

* The IoT will generate remarkable opportunities for society but the security and privacy risks that it could create will also pose formidable problems for society

* The IoT looks like an unstoppable juggernaut, so we should learn from our experience with earlier incarnations of the Internet to try and ensure that history does not repeat itself

Pax Technica is an ambitious and far-reaching book, and like all such volumes, it raises almost as many questions — about international and national politics, governance, security and privacy — as it answers. The Technology and Democracy project at CRASSH seeks to use the book as a jumping-off point for exploring some of these questions. We will do this in a major one-day public event in Cambridge on 24 November 2017, featuring Professor Howard and invited experts from a number of relevant disciplines.

The event will open with a keynote address, after which three panels of invited experts will discuss specific implications of a hyper-connected world.

This talk is part of the Technology and Democracy Events series.

Panel 2: Security

Chair: Professor John Naughton (CRASSH, Cambridge)

Dr Chris Doran (Director of Research Collaborations, ARM)
Professor Jon Crowcroft (Computer Lab, Cambridge)

In 2016 Philip Howard, now Professor of Internet Studies at Oxford and a leading scholar on the impact of the Internet on politics, published Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up in which he tried to assess what the long-term implications of this hyper-connected network might be. Among these possible implications, he noted, are:

* The IoT is likely to bring a special kind of stability to global politics (analogous to the uneasy stand-off of the Cold War)

* The new world order would be characterised by a pact between big tech firms and governments

* Governments may have a decreasing capacity to govern the IoT while corporate (and also bad) actors will become more powerful in the hyper-connected world that the technology will create

* The IoT will generate remarkable opportunities for society but the security and privacy risks that it could create will also pose formidable problems for society

* The IoT looks like an unstoppable juggernaut, so we should learn from our experience with earlier incarnations of the Internet to try and ensure that history does not repeat itself

Pax Technica is an ambitious and far-reaching book, and like all such volumes, it raises almost as many questions — about international and national politics, governance, security and privacy — as it answers. The Technology and Democracy project at CRASSH seeks to use the book as a jumping-off point for exploring some of these questions. We will do this in a major one-day public event in Cambridge on 24 November 2017, featuring Professor Howard and invited experts from a number of relevant disciplines.

The event will open with a keynote address, after which three panels of invited experts will discuss specific implications of a hyper-connected world.

This talk is part of the Technology and Democracy Events series.

Panel 1: Geo(politics)

Chair: Professor David Runciman (POLIS, Cambridge)

Professor Ross Anderson (Computer Lab, Cambridge)
Dr Bill Janeway (Pembroke College and Warburg Pincus)
Professor John Naughton (CRASSH, Cambridge)

In 2016 Philip Howard, now Professor of Internet Studies at Oxford and a leading scholar on the impact of the Internet on politics, published Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up in which he tried to assess what the long-term implications of this hyper-connected network might be. Among these possible implications, he noted, are:

* The IoT is likely to bring a special kind of stability to global politics (analogous to the uneasy stand-off of the Cold War)

* The new world order would be characterised by a pact between big tech firms and governments

* Governments may have a decreasing capacity to govern the IoT while corporate (and also bad) actors will become more powerful in the hyper-connected world that the technology will create

* The IoT will generate remarkable opportunities for society but the security and privacy risks that it could create will also pose formidable problems for society

* The IoT looks like an unstoppable juggernaut, so we should learn from our experience with earlier incarnations of the Internet to try and ensure that history does not repeat itself

Pax Technica is an ambitious and far-reaching book, and like all such volumes, it raises almost as many questions — about international and national politics, governance, security and privacy — as it answers. The Technology and Democracy project at CRASSH seeks to use the book as a jumping-off point for exploring some of these questions. We will do this in a major one-day public event in Cambridge on 24 November 2017, featuring Professor Howard and invited experts from a number of relevant disciplines.

The event will open with a keynote address, after which three panels of invited experts will discuss specific implications of a hyper-connected world.

This talk is part of the Technology and Democracy Events series.

‘Pax Technica’ Keynote Address: Professor Philip Howard (Oxford)

In 2016 Philip Howard, now Professor of Internet Studies at Oxford and a leading scholar on the impact of the Internet on politics, published Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up in which he tried to assess what the long-term implications of this hyper-connected network might be. Among these possible implications, he noted, are:

* The IoT is likely to bring a special kind of stability to global politics (analogous to the uneasy stand-off of the Cold War)

* The new world order would be characterised by a pact between big tech firms and governments

* Governments may have a decreasing capacity to govern the IoT while corporate (and also bad) actors will become more powerful in the hyper-connected world that the technology will create

* The IoT will generate remarkable opportunities for society but the security and privacy risks that it could create will also pose formidable problems for society

* The IoT looks like an unstoppable juggernaut, so we should learn from our experience with earlier incarnations of the Internet to try and ensure that history does not repeat itself

Pax Technica is an ambitious and far-reaching book, and like all such volumes, it raises almost as many questions — about international and national politics, governance, security and privacy — as it answers. The Technology and Democracy project at CRASSH seeks to use the book as a jumping-off point for exploring some of these questions. We will do this in a major one-day public event in Cambridge on 24 November 2017, featuring Professor Howard and invited experts from a number of relevant disciplines.

The event will open with a keynote address, after which three panels of invited experts will discuss specific implications of a hyper-connected world.

This talk is part of the Technology and Democracy Events series.

A workshop at CRASSH on the uses of number, in and against the public interest: past, present and future.

Session Two - Liz McFall, Jonathan Gray and Frank Pasquale

This event is organised by the ‘Technology and Democracy’ project and will bring historical and contemporary perspectives to bear on the question of how the public interest is to be determined in a world increasingly under the rule of number, data and quantification.

Speakers:

Will Davies (Goldsmiths)

Glen O'Hara (Oxford Brookes)

Liz McFall (OU)

Jonathan Gray (Bath)

Frank Pasquale (Maryland)

Collecting information about the public has often caused controversy, but it has usually been understood as a form of exchange. As this information takes increasingly numerical form, the nature of this quid pro quo – who gets what from the exchange – has become more and more opaque. Who has the right to collect and organise public information, to control access to it now and into the future?

As a greater number of private entities accumulate statistical information, this workshop aims to investigate the shifting boundary of the public and the private spheres. We will ask how the processes of counting and enumerating people have helped to produce specific political forms of government and economic forms of business. And specifically, we will examine the ways in which claims of a public interest have been used to justify the collection of such information, from censuses to digital data trails.

Panellists, speakers and respondents will approach the question using case studies from the history of insurance and medical surveillance, neoliberalism and official statistics, as well as electoral political strategies.

A workshop at CRASSH on the uses of number, in and against the public interest: past, present and future.

Session One - Will Davies and Glen O'Hara

This event is organised by the ‘Technology and Democracy’ project and will bring historical and contemporary perspectives to bear on the question of how the public interest is to be determined in a world increasingly under the rule of number, data and quantification.

Speakers:

Will Davies (Goldsmiths)

Glen O'Hara (Oxford Brookes)

Liz McFall (OU)

Jonathan Gray (Bath)

Frank Pasquale (Maryland)

Collecting information about the public has often caused controversy, but it has usually been understood as a form of exchange. As this information takes increasingly numerical form, the nature of this quid pro quo – who gets what from the exchange – has become more and more opaque. Who has the right to collect and organise public information, to control access to it now and into the future?

As a greater number of private entities accumulate statistical information, this workshop aims to investigate the shifting boundary of the public and the private spheres. We will ask how the processes of counting and enumerating people have helped to produce specific political forms of government and economic forms of business. And specifically, we will examine the ways in which claims of a public interest have been used to justify the collection of such information, from censuses to digital data trails.

Panellists, speakers and respondents will approach the question using case studies from the history of insurance and medical surveillance, neoliberalism and official statistics, as well as electoral political strategies.