(PrivOn 2013) @ ISWC 2013 - Call for late-breaking papers

In light of the recent revelations about US and European spying activities, coupled with increasing investment in big data analytics by both government and industry, privacy is currently at the forefront of peoples minds. For this reason we strongly believe that it is important that we raise awareness of privacy challenges and opportunities within the Semantic Web community.

As a result, we have decided to push the paper submission deadline out to the 31st of July and to also accept short late-breaking papers and position papers via easychair.

Stefan Decker, Jim Hendler and Sabrina Kirrane

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1st International Workshop on Society, Privacy and the Semantic Web - Policy and Technology (PrivOn 2013)
at the 12th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC)
October 21st-25th, 2013, Sydney, Australia

http://privon.semanticweb.org/
Twitter: @privonws #privon2013

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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 e­mail, 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.

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

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Topics Of Interest

The topics of this workshop are different from previous workshops and events, which were usually focused on technology. This workshop aims to capture the intersection between society, policy and technology. Therefore we structure the topics in three main areas as follows.

Society and privacy
* Case studies: what are the societal privacy implications of semantic technologies?
* What is the impact of semantic technologies on privacy in specific domain?
* What are appropriate societal conventions to protect privacy?
* What are desirable privacy situations?
* When do we want to control information flow?
* Privacy awareness in social communities

Legal and policy perspective of privacy
* Managing personal information disclosure
* What laws support privacy management and enforcement?
* What new legislation might be necessary?
* Privacy legislation compliance
* How to influence policy making?
* How to synchronise policies of different legal domains?
* Personal data and the role of the data controller/processor

Technology perspective
* How can societal conventions be supported by technologies?
* Anonymity and identity discovery
* Techniques for anonymity, pseudonymity and unlinkability
* Privacy implications of data integration and data linking
* Protecting against pattern/behaviour discovery and community mining
* Protecting against data falsification
* Non-repudiation and digital signatures
* Usage control and accountability
* Data provenance and trustworthiness of knowledge sources

You can also join our discussion page to make suggestions, and coordinate the discussion pre-workshop.

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Format and Submission Procedure

Contributions to the workshop can be made in terms of papers and reports as well as position papers addressing different issues of the stated topics of interest.

Papers and reports (including short late-breaking papers and position papers) should not be not longer than 12 pages using the LNCS Style. Papers and report contributions should be prepared in PDF format and should be submitted (no later than July 31st, 2013) through the workshop submission site at: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=privon2013

Position contributions will also be accepted as position posts or position videos in the associated PrivOn Google Community. Position contributions should not exceed 1000 words and should be handled according to the guidelines for technical papers as much as possible. Position videos should not exceed 5 minutes.

Papers and reports will be reviewed and a limited number of those will be selected for presentation.

Position contributions that generate interesting discussions in the Google Community will be selected for short presentations. Position statements may be used to select participants based on available capacity to ensure an heterogeneous audience during the Workshop.

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Important Dates

July 31, 2013 : Extended Paper Submission Deadline
August 9, 2013 : Notification of Accepted Technical Papers (and Position Papers)
September 9, 2013 : Final Version Due
October 21st or 22nd, 2013 : PrivOn 2013 Workshop

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Organising Committee

Stefan Decker, DERI, NUI Galway, Ireland
Email:first.last@deri.org
Web: http://www.stefandecker.org

Jim Hendler, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
Email: last@cs.rpi.edu
Web: http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hendler/

Sabrina Kirrane, DERI, NUI Galway, Ireland
Email:first.last@deri.org
Web: http://www.sabrinakirrane.com/

For questions regarding the workshop, please contact Sabrina.Kirrane@deri.org or use the discussion facilities at the PrivOn Google Community.

Received on Monday, 22 July 2013 21:40:09 UTC