PrivOn 2013 - Workshop on Society, Privacy and the Semantic Web - Policy and Technology

Bruce Schneier’s recent article “The Internet is a surveillance state” summarises the state of Internet privacy in its concluding paragraphs:
"So, we're done. Welcome to a world where Google knows exactly what sort of porn you all like, and more about your interests than your spouse does. Welcome to a world where your cell phone company knows exactly where you are all the time. Welcome to the end of private conversations, because increasingly your conversations are conducted by e?mail, text, or social networking sites. And welcome to a world where all of this, and everything else that you do or is done on a computer, is saved, correlated, studied, passed around from company to company without your knowledge or consent; and where the government accesses it at will without a warrant. Welcome to an Internet without privacy, and we've ended up here with hardly a fight."
While Schneier’s article indicates his opinion, we see supporting evidence all around us. It is time to accept reality and think about implications and necessary actions. It is time to open our eyes, to review the situation we are in, to identify the societal and economic forces at work ? on a national and international level ? and define a way forward as a society.
We (the Semantic Web community) are responsible for the conception of technologies that enable large scale integration and mining of personal and public information in all domains of society. This brings unprecedented advantages, assists humans, organisations and systems with problem solving, enables innovation and increases productivity. It makes everything more transparent. However this transparency comes at a price: the loss of our privacy. There has been growing awareness within the community of the need to address privacy and security concerns. To date the focus has been on researching specific privacy and security models and frameworks, for example for access control, obfuscation, anonymization, aggregation, licensing, etc. However we are “putting the cart before the horse”, we need to identify clear privacy and security requirements before proposing technical solutions.
Like it or not, Schneier’s frankness is a fair representation of where we are now in terms of privacy ? there is none. So taking this as fact can we get our privacy back? Do we even want to get it back? What level of (non?)privacy is acceptable in today's or future society? It’s clear from Schneier’s observations that technology alone is only part of the puzzle ? social behaviours and governmental policy also have a role to play. So far the Semantic Web community focused on using technology for web scale data integration and exposure. We have to face up to the fact that our technology is inherently a technology that changes society on a global scale. This has strong implications on how we need to look at security and privacy and what instruments we need to use or influence. These instruments are not only technological, but also societal and legal.
Given implications of our technology, what does the society evolve to? What do we want it to evolve to? What is “acceptable behavior” for data aggregation and use? What are the societal norms that we have to develop or emerge? What are the “robots.txt” equivalents that need to be developed to keep data aggregators and governments in check?
What policies and laws are already in existence and what else do we need? How do we engage meaningfully in a discussion? What do we need to do in research or policy influencing in order to make a difference? How are these policies and laws developed and supported in an inherently international environment? How do we engage with other communities, e.g., in law and policy making?
How do we technologically support the described efforts? How do we support the compliance of privacy laws? How is our increased responsibility being reflected in our scientific events and conferences?
With this workshop we aim at the following goals:
First, raise awareness that the technologies the community are working on have global societal consequences. Vice versa, our research can be guided by determining a road map for desirable privacy goals. We aim to determine first steps towards identifying desirable goals.
Second, raise awareness of interconnections between the different communities that are involved in Web privacy and security ? e.g., policy makers, users, social sciences and computer scientists and provide a platform for interconnection and communication.
Third, determine the next steps that need to be conducted in order to broaden the level of engagement between the relevant parties