ID Ecosystem

Apr 06 2021

Gender Matters in Identity Systems: How an ID4Africa Livecast Broke Important New Ground in Gender and Privacy

Recently, ID4Africa held an extremely compelling and meticulously researched livecast on the issue of gender and identity systems, with good discussions that also touched on privacy in this context. The livecast boasted an excellent roster of experts, all of whom are active work in the field. Each presented well-substantiated, groundtruthed research and insight about the myriad ways that how identity systems mediate gender matter a great deal. The cumulative effect was eye-opening.

Sep 15 2020

WPF to discuss COVID-19 lessons learned and challenges ahead at OECD – Global Privacy Assembly Workshop

WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon will be presenting at an OECD and Global Privacy Assembly workshop on the risks, challenges, and potential solutions regarding the intersection of COVID-19 and the uses of identity in a global public health crisis. Event details: COVID-19 and privacy virtual Workshop on “The road to recovery: Lessons learned and challenges ahead”, hosted

Dec 19 2019

NIST report documents undeniable demographic effects in face recognition systems

WPF Press Release: NIST has issued extensive scientific documentation of demographic effects in face recognition systems in its new report, Face Recognition Vendor Test Part 3: Demographic Effects. The detailed findings in the NIST report are troubling. World Privacy Forum calls on the face recognition industry to accept, acknowledge, and address the new NIST findings, and calls for new multistakeholder work as well as significant safety guardrails.

Dec 05 2019

World Privacy Forum named as a top ten digital identity influencing organization globally

WPF has been recognized as one of the leading organizations globally influencing privacy, security, inclusion, and fairness in digital identity systems. Goode Intelligence, which produces an annual report on digital identity around the world, has named WPF as a top ten globally influencing organization, as well as ID4Africa, Women in Identity, and others. WPF has

Oct 18 2019

WPF and Brookings co-hosting Biometric Roundtable at International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners

The World Privacy Forum and the Brookings Institution will co-host a Biometric Roundtable Wednesday, October 23 at the International Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners’ Conference in Tirana, Albania. Cam Kerry of Brookings and Pam Dixon of WPF will co-moderate the discussion. The purpose of the Biometrics Roundtable is to promote a dialogue between the data

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.