SECURITY AND FREEDOM

SATURDAY 25TH AUGUST
TIME: 10:00-13:00

VENUE: APPLETON TOWER, THEATRE 4
TICKET: £15

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The web may be the single greatest invention for human flourishing yet the technology also allows for a greater degree of spying and personal data gathering. Humanity faces new challenges to maintain a free and democratic society as governments struggle to invent laws to cope with these changes. Corporate interests also seek to profit from our social graph. How can data be truly secure? What should the limits of government and corporate intervention be? How can you protect your digital legacy after your death? How, if at all should the web be governed?

The Security and Freedom event will offer the opportunity to hear from the leading experts in this field; including security expert and author Ross Anderson, lawyer and blogger David Allen Green (Jack of Kent, Twitter joke trial and Simon Singh libel case), Nicholas Merrill the first person to challenge the US Patriot Act, Dr. Wendy Moncur and Jim Killock.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

David Allen Green

David Allen Green is a lawyer and journalist, blogging as Jack of Kent. He is known for exposing Johann Hari as “David Rose”, uncovering the email hacking by The Times of the “NightJack” blogger, publishing the WikiLeaks Non-Disclosure Agreement, publicising the “TwitterJokeTrial”, and coverage of the on-going phone hacking scandal. David is legal correspondent for the New Statesman, media correspondent to The Lawyer and a founder of Westminster Skeptics. He as appeared as a witness before both the Leveson Inquiry and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Privacy Injunctions.

Nicholas Merrill

Nicholas Merrill founded Calyx Internet Access Corporation in 1995. Calyx Internet Access was one of the first commercial Internet service providers operating in New York City. Within a few years, Calyx opened a sister company in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Calyx pursued relationships with and worked with many non-profit organizations on a pro bono basis and also had a number of blue chip for-profit businesses in its client roster. In 2004, after receiving a demand for information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Nick became the first party to ever challenge the National Security Letters provision of the USA PATRIOT Act. Merrill and Calyx filed suit against the US Department of Justice and became involved with using the legal system and the media to resist illegal government requests for information on Internet users. For six and a half years, Merrill and the ACLU tirelessly challenged the orders contained in the letter as well as the associated non-disclosure (“gag”) order. The litigation resulted in the judicial invalidation or narrowing of several controversial surveillance provisions, and it led to significant legislative changes as well. It also led to a Department of Justice internal investigation that uncovered thousands of instances of abuse.

In 2010, after winning a partial release from the gag order, Nick founded The Calyx Institute – a non-profit organization whose goal is to reform the Telecommunications industry with regard to privacy and freedom of expression. When he learned about Nick’s plans, Sascha Meinrath of the New America Foundation immediately asked to join the Calyx advisory board, writing, “I do think this is the sort of transformative and disruptive project that could reverberate nationally and beyond. […] It's the sort of project that would yield huge rewards if successful, but because it's also high risk, is most likely to appeal to Silicon Valley types.” Nick is a recipient of the ACLU’s Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee’s Patriot Award.

Dr Wendy Moncur

Dr Wendy Moncur is a Lecturer and EPSRC Post-Doctoral Cross-Disciplinary Research Fellow in the School of Computing at the University of Dundee, and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society (University of Bath). Her research focuses on the design of technology for the milestones in people’s lives, such as birth, death, and serious illness. Dr. Moncur is currently investigating how computer users want to bequeath, inherit and reuse personal data, and the obstacles that they currently face in achieving their wishes. In her research, she looks for answers to the kind of questions that will become increasingly common as the digital natives of the Internet Generation grow older: What will happen to my Flickr photo albums when I die? How about my eBay trading account, email communications, blog? Can I bequeath all of this personal data? Do my loved ones even want to inherit it? What would they do with it all? Dr. Moncur collaborates with international experts from a range of disciplines across academia and industry, including psychologists, sociologists and even a forensic anthropologist. Her research has been reported on in the media (e.g. CNN.com), and she has published in journals, conference papers and books. More information about Wendy’s research is available here: http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/staff/wmoncur/.

Jim Killock

Jim Killock is the Executive Director of the Open Rights Group. Since joining Open Rights Group in January 2009, Jim has led campaigns against three strikes and the Digital Economy Act, the company Phorm and its plans to snoop on UK users, and against pervasive government Internet surveillance. He is working on data protection and privacy issues, as well as helping ORG to grow in size and breadth. Since 2009, ORG has doubled its supporter base, budget and workload, and held its first two activist Conferences, ORGCon. Before joining ORG, Jim worked as External Communications Coordinator of the Green Party. At the Green Party, he promoted campaigns on open source, intellectual property, digital rights and campaigned against the arms and espionage technologist Lockheed Martin's bid for the UK Census. Lockheed Martin have since been prevented from handling UK Census data as part of their contract. He was also a leading figure in the campaign to elect their first party leader, Caroline Lucas MP.

Please note that catering is not included in the above ticket price.