The IEEE International Symposium on Digital Privacy and Social Media

Applying Engineering Solutions to a Complex Set of Issues

Silicon Valley CA

The Consumer Technology Society

Technical Co-Sponsored by: IEEE Digital Initiative

You Are Invited:  Please join us in the Silicon Valley heart of this  field of endeavor on Friday July 29, 2022 at The Computer Museum for a one day interactive symposium exploring the intersection of  complex and conflicting issues.  Our work-in-process event is seeking a mix of presenters and participants to explore government and social implications of this evolving area and to explore how technologies might enable policies and processes that give comfort to consumers and government while not encumbering business models that depend upon harvesting information from end users.

Why an Engineering Topic:  Engineering might be characterized as applying facts and science in view of plus and minus tradeoffs while seeking a balance between competing alternatives.  Perhaps nowhere is the need to make engineering decisions is in finding the competing demands of business, government, and society with respect to Digital Privacy and Society Media.

Those of us in our role as both citizens and as technologists have a vested interest in the growth and acceptance of emerging products and services in cyberspace.  The danger of failing to explore issues, anticipate problems, and waiting to react is that consumers will reject our new offerings and perhaps an over-reaction by government to prematurely over burden initiatives with regulations.

The Timeliness of the Topic:

  • Social Media: In 2021, there are 4.48 billion people actively using social media in the world, and this is an increase of 13.13% year-on-year from 3.69 billion in 2020.
  • Since its inception in 1996, social media has managed to infiltrate half of the 7.7 billion people in the world. Social network platforms almost tripled their total user base in the last decade, from 970 million in 2010 to the number passing 4.48 billion users in July 2021.
  • Regulations: While still in a state of flux, many frameworks have already emerged worldwide, for example: The EU has established a legal framework called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information from individuals

In the USA the Federal Trade Commission enforces the 1970 Fair Credit Reporting and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Acts which deal mainly with financial transactions overlap with today’s cyberservices

ISO standard frameworks ISO/IEC 27701, Security techniques — Extension to ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 27002 have been published

A variety of regulations related to health care, advertising, and digital marketing are in place and being in a constant state of flux

Issues to Tradeoffs: A concise statement of the conflict is that businesses want to profit from the personal information of their end users.  When consumer’s are fully aware of the consequences of sharing the personal information in exchange for the benefits of using cyberspace services.  In essence the consumer’s are paying for the services using their personal information as the currency.  Issues of concern to stakeholders emerge when the consequences of information sharing are not fully understood or worse the promises of privacy are violated.

The Event Design: What we are planning is a one day highly focused and highly interactive mix of keynote speakers to surface the issues, discussion panels of a diverse group of stakeholders from government and industry, and individual presentations by providers of emerging technologies in encryption, artificial intelligence, big data mining, and statistical analysis.  To fulfill the interactive goals of this event, we will go beyond the audience participation panel sessions by building in additional opportunities for informal networking during breaks and an evening social event cocktail party.

What we want to explore in this symposium is how to blend policies, procedures, and regulations with technologies that can moderate unintended consequences by detecting, moderating, and enforce the policies.

The event should have the following components:

  • Legislative component
  • Practical component
  • Standards component
  • Conflict: Enterprise vs gov. regulations

Action:  Please contact the organizing committee with proposals for keynote speakers, panel sessions, individual papers, or any suggestion for this event.  Sponsorship opportunities and exhibit space will be made available upon request.

Mail to: charlotte.kobert@ieee.org

Steering Committee:

Raed Abdullah

Distribution Engineer

Hydro Ottawa Limited

Ottawa, ON, Canada

 

Wahab Almuhtadi

R&D Coordinator

Algonquin College School of Advanced Technology

Ottawa, ON, Canada

 

Stuart Lipoff

President

IP Action Partners Inc

Las Vegas, NV USA

 

Stefan Mozar

Director

CCM Consulting

Greater Sydney Area, Australia

 

Bill Orner

VP of Systems & Operations Engineering

Esperanto Technologies, IncSilicon Valley, CA, USA