FTC announces final agenda and panelist roster for Big Data workshop

The Federal Trade Commission has announced its panelist roster and final agenda for its upcoming workshop, “Big Data: A Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion?.” The workshop is going to be an important and thoughtful discussion about big data and privacy issues, and will be taking place on Sept. 15 in Washington, D.C.

The World Privacy Forum will be speaking on Panel 2, What’s on the horizon with big data?

The agenda and panelists are as follows: (from the FTC news release)

9:00	Opening Remarks Edith Ramirez, Chairwoman, Federal Trade Commission
9:15	Presentation: Framing the Conversation Solon Barocas, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy
9:30	Panel 1: Assessing the Current Environment This panel will examine the current uses of big data in a variety of contexts and how these uses impact consumers. Kristin Amerling, Chief Investigative Counsel and Director of Oversight, U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation danah boyd, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research and Research Assistant Professor, New York University Mallory Duncan, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, National Retail Federation Gene Gsell, Senior Vice President, U.S. Retail & CPG, SAS David Robinson, Principal, Robinson + Yu Joseph Turow, Professor, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
11:00	Panel 2: What’s on the Horizon with Big Data? This panel will explore potential uses of big data as well as the potential benefits and harms for particular populations of consumers.Alessandro Acquisti, Associate Professor of Information Systems and Public Policy, Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University and Co-director of the CMU Center for Behavioral Decision Research Pam Dixon, Founder and Executive Director, World Privacy Forum Cynthia Dwork, Distinguished Scientist, Microsoft Research Mark MacCarthy, Vice President for Public Policy, Software Information Industry Association Nicol Turner-Lee, Vice President and Chief Research & Policy Officer, Minority Media and Telecommunications Council
1:20	Remarks Julie Brill, Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission
1:30	Presentation: Digging into the Data Latanya Sweeney, Chief Technologist, Federal Trade Commission Jinyan Zang, Research Fellow in Technology and Data Governance, Federal Trade Commission
1:45	Panel 3: Surveying the Legal Landscape This panel will review antidiscrimination and consumer protection laws and discuss how they may apply to the use of big data, and whether there may be gaps in the law.Leonard Chanin, Partner, Morrison Forrester Carol Miaskoff, Assistant Legal Counsel, Office of Legal Counsel, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Montserrat Miller, Partner, Arnall Golden Gregory LLP C. Lee Peeler, President and CEO of the Advertising Self-Regulatory Council and Executive Vice President, National Advertising Self-Regulation, Council of Better Business Bureau Peter Swire, Professor of Law and Ethics, Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology
3:15	Panel 4: Considerations on the Path Forward This panel will explore best practices for the use of big data to protect consumers.Christopher Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union Daniel Castro, Senior Analyst, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Jeanette Fitzgerald, General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer, Epsilon Jeremy Gillula, Staff Technologist, Electronic Frontier Foundation Michael Spadea, Director, Promontory Financial Group Christopher Wolf, Senior Partner, Hogan Lovells; Founder and Chair, Future of Privacy Forum; Chair, National Civil Rights Committee, Anti-Defamation League
4:30	Jessica Rich, Director, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission

Posted September 3, 2014 in Big Data, Event Announcement, Events and Conferences, Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

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

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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.