Blog Post

Apr 12 2013

WPF on panel of MSI

WPF on privacy and consumer trust — Pam Dixon is speaking on a panel on privacy and trust at Marketing Science Institute in Boston. The panel, led by John Deighton of the Harvard Business School, includes experts from EPIC, the DAA, and CBS.

Apr 01 2013

Visiting Scholar Lecture Pacific Northwest College of Art

Visiting Scholar: Privacy in a Modern Era — Pam Dixon is a visiting scholar at Portland’s PNCA. She is scheduled to speak with students in a round of interdisciplinary classes, and she will also be giving a public keynote at 7 pm in Swigert Commons. Her public lecture is on Modern Privacy.

Mar 27 2013

Senior ID Theft: Issues, Causes, and Cures

Senior ID Theft and privacy — Pam Dixon speaks to Los Angeles County social workers and financial abuse support teams today to share WPF’s wealth of information about medical identity theft and how this crime impacts seniors. WISE and Healthy Aging is hosting this important meeting.

Mar 05 2013

WPF to Speak on a Global Perspective on Consumer Privacy at FTC- IAPP Privacy Conference Workshop

Privacy in India and Developing Economies — World Privacy Forum Executive Director Pam Dixon will present WPF’s research and India privacy videos at the FTC – IAPP Global Privacy Conference workshop Wednesday, March 7. The session, Global Perspectives on Consumer Privacy, is the first session of its kind at IAPP or the FTC focused on privacy in developing economies. WPF has researched privacy extensively in India, and has documented a number of key privacy issues in a video series. So far, 5 videos in the series have been released. All of the videos were shot on location in India and feature Pam Dixon, with videographer Blake Hamilton. These videos offer a rare and early glimpse into privacy interactions and issues in India. WPF will be releasing one more video on biometric ID cards in India.

Mar 05 2013

ID Ecosystem meetings ongoing

ID Ecosystem — WPF is participating in the ID Ecosystem meetings as a consumer privacy representative. Senior Projects Manager Marianne Fitzpatrick is taking the lead on this project, and is working on general privacy and financial privacy areas. The next meeting of the ID Ecosystem is Tuesday March 5. The ID Ecosystem meetings are open to the public. The meetings are important, as this process will set the stage regarding how online identities are managed.

New Report: Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new WPF report, “Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools.” This report sets out a definition of AI governance tools, documents why and how these tools are critically important for trustworthy AI, and where these tools are around the world. The report also documents problems in some AI governance tools themselves, and suggests pathways to improve AI governance tools and create an evaluative environment to measure their effectiveness. AI systems should not be deployed without simultaneously evaluating the potential adverse impacts of such systems and mitigating their risks, and most of the world agrees about the need to take precautions against the threats posed. The specific tools and techniques that exist to evaluate and measure AI systems for their inclusiveness, fairness, explainability, privacy, safety and other trustworthiness issues — called in the report collectively AI governance tools – can improve such issues. While some AI governance tools provide reassurance to the public and to regulators, the tools too often lack meaningful oversight and quality assessments. Incomplete or ineffective AI governance tools can create a false sense of confidence, cause unintended problems, and generally undermine the promise of AI systems. The report contains rich background details, use cases, potential solutions to the problems discussed in the report, and a global index of AI Governance Tools.
National IDs Around the World — Interactive map

About this Data Visualization: This interactive map displays the presence...
Report: From the Filing Cabinet to the Cloud: Updating the Privacy Act of 1974

This comprehensive report and proposed bill text is focused on the Privacy Act of 1974, an important and early Federal privacy law that applies to the government sector and some contractors. The Privacy Act was written for the 1970s information era -- an era that was characterized by the use of mainframe computers and filing cabinets. Today's digital information era looks much different than the '70s: smart phones are smarter than the old mainframes, and documents are now routinely digitized and stored and perhaps even analyzed in the cloud, among many other changes. The report focuses on why the Privacy Act needs an update that will bring it into this century, and how that could look and work. This work was written by Robert Gellman, and informed by a two-year multi-stakeholder process.