PrivOn 2015 - 3rd International Workshop on Society, Privacy and the Semantic Web - Policy and Technology

Bruce Schneier’s article “The Internet is a surveillance state” summarised the state of Internet privacy as “Welcome to an Internet without privacy, and we've ended up here with hardly a fight”. Later, Snowden shocked the world by revealing that the US National Security Agency (NSA) were tracking online communication in a large scale surveillance programme known as PRISM. This was quickly followed by revelations that other countries were running similar covert operations. Last year, on the 25th anniversary of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee called on the world to take a stand against surveillance on the Web. He suggested to create a global digital bill of rights similar to the Magna Carta that can be used to safeguard privacy, limit censorship and protect against fragmentation of the Web. With this workshop we aim at raising awareness that the technologies the community are working on have global societal consequences. Vice versa, our research can be guided by a Magna Carta for the Web. This year’s workshop aims to build on previous workshops, by capturing the intersection between society, policy and technology, by contributing to the foundations of a global digital bill of rights and investigating how we can technologically support these foundations.