The Sustainable Computing Lab

Volkstheatergespräche mit Corinna Milborn
2019-03-31 11:00 - 14:00 UTC
Digitalität und Demokratie

Die Digitalisierung verändert unser gesellschaftliches Leben auf vielen Ebenen. Digitale Plattformen agieren als Medienportale, organisieren den Zugang zu Wissen und sammeln bei jedem Klick eine Unmenge an Daten. Big Data heißt dieser wertvolle neue Rohstoff, den die User/innen bereitwillig generieren. Fake News und Bots nehmen Einfluss auf unsere Wahrnehmung von Wirklichkeit. Das Internet der Dinge eröffnet neue Möglichkeiten der Überwachung.
Welche Rolle kann die Zivilgesellschaft spielen, damit die Digitalisierung den Interessen der Allgemeinheit dient? Welche Forderungen soll sie stellen, um die technische Entwicklung im Sinne der Wahrung der Grund- und Menschenrechte zu gestalten? Was kann jede/r einzelne User/in tun, um das Internet nicht privaten oder polizeilichen Interessen zu überlassen, sondern eine offene Sphäre des Austauschs und der verantwortungsvollen Communities zu gestalten?
Corinna Milborn, Co-Autorin von Change the Game. Wie wir uns das Netz von Facebook und Google zurückerobern, skizziert mit ihren Gästen Wege zur digitalen Mündigkeit:
Dr. Sarah Spiekermann-Hoff lehrt und forscht an der Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, wo sie dem Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik und Gesellschaft vorsteht. Sie publiziert regelmäßig wissenschaftliche Artikel zu den Themen werteorientierte IT-Entwicklung, Privacy und Kontrolle im digitalen Raum und veröffentlichte u.a. die Sachbücher Ethical IT Innovation und Networks of Control. 2016 ist sie vom Ingenieursverband IEEE damit betraut worden, den ersten Standardisierungsprozess zu leiten, der sich mit ethischer Technikgestaltung beschäftigt. Auf der Website der Tageszeitung Der Standard betreibt sie den Blog Die ethische Maschine. Am 1. April erscheint ihr neues Buch Digitale Ethik. Ein Wertesystem für das 21. Jahrhundert.
Angelika Adensamer, Juristin und Kriminologin, arbeitet als Policy Advisor bei epicenter.works, einer NGO, die für die Verteidigung der Grundrechte im digitalen Zeitalter eintritt. Außerdem ist sie Mitglied des Datenschutzrats und des Netzwerks Kritische Rechtswissenschaften. Sie publiziert zu den Themen Überwachungsbefugnisse, Bürger/innenrechte, Freiheit und Sicherheit.
Stefanie Wuschitz arbeitet als Künstlerin, Forscherin und Hacktivistin zu den Themen Open Source Technologie, Peer Production und Feminismus. Sie studierte Transmediale Kunst an der Universität für Angewandte Kunst, gefolgt von einem Master an der TISCH School of the Arts an der New York University, und promovierte zu „Feminist Hackerspaces. A Research on Feminist Space Collectives in Open Culture“ an der TU. Seither ist sie an verschiedenen österreichischen und internationalen wissenschaftlichen Projekten und Kunstausstellungen beteiligt. 2009 gründete sie den feministischen Hackerspace Miss Baltazar’s Laboratory.
Achtung, an diesem Sonntag ist Umstellung auf Sommerzeit!
http://www.volkstheater.at/stueck/digitalitaet-und-demokratie/

Ursula Pachl: Privacy and data security
2019-03-22 10:00 - 22:30
What is the role for privacy and data security in the European Union? As part of the course on the Marketing and Society Interface by Bernadette Kamleitner and Renato Regis, Ursula Pachl will be giving a talk which is open to a wider audience.

Ursula Pachl, Deputy Director General, BEUC – The European Consumers’ Organisation, Brussels. Ms. Pachl leads BEUC’s work on the Digital Single Market and on consumer rights and enforcement. She is also responsible for horizontal and strategic policy issues, represents BEUC in the European Commission’s REFIT platform and co-ordinates BEUC’s law enforcement project ‘COJEF’. Prior to working for BEUC, Ms. Pachl worked at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health and Consumer Protection in Vienna and at the Austrian Consumer Information Association as a member of the Consumer Advisory Board. BEUC represents 42 independent national consumer associations from 31 European countries. The primary task of BEUC is to act as a strong consumer voice in Brussels and to try to ensure that consumer interests are given their proper weight in the development of all Community policies.

Niels ten Oever: a Net of Rights? - the Inscription and Subversion of Values in Transnational Internet Infrastructure Governance
2019-03-20 15:00 - 16:30
In this talk I will show how fundamental characteristics of the Internet architecture, such as equality and innovation, have been subverted since the 1990s. While Internet platforms and applications are critically assessed in the public debate, the Internet architecture is widely perceived as engine for innovation and as enabler of rights and freedoms. This view reflects an imaginary that guides the co-production of policy and technology that can be traced back to the early phases of the development of the Internet, and which is still prominent in one the main governance bodies of the Internet: the Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF). In the IETF, the co-production of the Internet architecture is guided by the architectural principles of permissionless innovation, openness, and the end-to-end principle. After the privatization of the Internet architecture, the interplay between permissionless innovation, openness, and the end-to-end principle reconfigured and subverted the Internet architecture’s affordance structure. To show this I draw on media studies, science and technology studies and international political economy, and by using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods based on document analysis, interviews, and participant observation. Through this data I show how the Internet architecture fundamentally changed from the early 1990s up to now, how the Internet protocol community has refused to take impacts on rights and freedoms structurally into account, and how this negatively affected the equality of users and undermined their ability to redesign the Internet in their favor.

Accountability and Emerging Technologies Workshop
2019-02-26 11:00 - 13:00
Workshop on Accountability and Emerging Technologies, organised by the Compliant and Accountable Systems group at the Computer Lab at Cambridge University and the the Privacy & Sustainable Computing Lab at WU Vienna.

We’re envisaging 2 minute lightning talks from each participant as part of a 2 hour workshop on the aspects of your existing work that could contribute to improving accountability in emerging technologies. The reason we’re doing this is to bring together a range of people from different backgrounds to explore collaborative ways forward on this topic.

The workshop will be taking place at the Alan Turing Institute, British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB. Prior registration is required in order to participate.

David Reichel: The impact of AI and big data on fundamental rights
2019-01-23 14:00 - 15:00
The presentation will provide an overview of the work of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in the area of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data. The Agency is working on a project that looks into the positive and negative impact that new technologies, including AI and big data, have on the enjoyment of fundamental rights in the EU. Apart from a general overview on the topic, the presentation will focus on the area of non-discrimination and further on issues related to data quality in machine learning.

First MyData Austria Meetup
2019-01-22 18:30 - 20:30

CSH Workshop: “Developing Accountable Systems”
2019-01-22 10:00 - 13:00
This workshop aims to bring together researchers around the topics of bias and accountability in algorithmically aided systems. Specifically we will discuss examples of systems where algorithms can be harmful, how users’ perception and interactions with these services affects outcomes, and finally research ideas and opportunities for designing accountable systems.
The event is jointly organized by the Privacy and Sustainable Computing Lab of WU and the Complexity Science Hub, and will take place in the Hub. The event features short presentations about ongoing research projects while leaving space for open discussions and brain-storming. Discussion will be structured around relevant practical examples, such as algorithmic decision making in job search, route planning services, and the role of algorithms in food delivery services.

Hannah Krasnova: Social Media: The Dark and The Ugly
2019-01-16 13:00 - 15:00
Abstract: Social Media platforms, such as Facebook, transform the society we live in today: They change the way we present ourselves, communicate with each other and spend our free time. As these platforms are increasingly permeating our daily routines, conversations, and leisure, many stakeholders keep asking about the meaning and long-term consequences of these changes. On the one hand, proponents express strong optimism in their positive value, viewing Social Media as a source of significant benefits at both individual and social levels. At the same time, opponents link Social Media use to the loss of privacy, feelings of inadequacy, and even depression. Our research suggests that the proliferation of envy feelings among SNS members may work as a mechanism behind the negative impact of Social Media on individual well-being. This finding is of tremendous social importance, as it may help to explain an array of negative emotional outcomes linked to Social Media use. Furthermore, spurred by social media, a widespread obsession with mobile devices has recently become obvious. We observe individuals forgo face-to-face communication, parental responsibilities and academic performance in favor of smartphone-enabled communication. Especially, parental addiction emerges as a troublesome development, with many parents neglecting their children and thereby threatening their cognitive and physical development, and above all their safety. Furthermore, students appear to suffer from lower visual and auditory attention when using smartphones during academic lectures. Finally, the loss of privacy has been frequently mentioned as a negative side-effect of Social Media participation. Specifically, a recent outcry surrounding the Cambridge Analytica scandal has triggered a discussion on whether users experience different levels of concern when it comes to the use of their information for political as opposed to product marketing purposes. While media attention around these events suggests elevated levels of concern when it comes to the use of personal user data for political campaigning, our empirical findings are drawing a different picture. Most recent results in this area will be presented during the talk.
About: Hanna Krasnova is a professor of Business Informatics, esp. Social Media and Data Science at the University of Potsdam. Hanna is a principal investigator at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society: The German Internet Institute, leading the research projects on “Digital Technologies and Well-Being” and “Digital Integration” (www.vernetzung-und-gesellschaft.de). In her research, she addresses the issues of social, individual and enterprise value of social media applications. She is the author of numerous research articles published, among others, in the Information Systems Research, Journal of Information Technology, and Journal of Strategic Information Systems. Her research about Facebook envy has been awarded the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik and has been covered by all major news outlets worldwide. Hanna has also been awarded a prize from the Dalle Molle Foundation.

Linnet Taylor: What's ethical about data ethics?
2019-01-09 14:00 - 15:30
‘Data ethics can be defined as the branch of ethics that studies and evaluates moral problems related to data, algorithms and corresponding practices, in order to formulate and support morally good solutions’ (Floridi and Taddeo, 2016). Despite the growing calls for ethical behaviour on the part of those gathering, handling and trading digital data, many of the issues that we see emerging are actually problems of power and politics. These have a clear ethical dimension, but asking ethics (or ethicists) to solve them does not provide the kind of leverage necessary. This presentation will ask when and how we should separate out problems of ethics from problems of power, politics and governance, how we might think about the relationships between these perspectives, and how the technical field is currently addressing them.

Lab Annual Meeting 2018
2018-12-19 15:00 - 18:00
Lab Annual Meeting 2018
**19 December 2018 from 15:00 to 18:00 in room 2.1.103**
(There will also be small nibbles and water/coffee/tea)

Richard Novák: Big Data and Ethics
2018-12-12 13:30 - 15:00
This thesis will explore the costs and benefits of using Big Data in a context of applied ethics. At the heart of my thesis is the following quote from (Sokol, 2014) and (Boyd & Crawford, 2012).
“Just because it is possible does not make it ethical.“
Insight into complex problems and people’s attitudes towards life is currently driven by advanced technologies such as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, among others. It means, “Change the instrument, and you will change the entire social theory that goes with them.“ (Latour, 2009). Thus, it is very relevant to discuss Big Data as a socio-technological phenomenon rather than only technological. My focus is on the dualities rising from the conflicts between technological Big Data challenges and relevant ethical principals related to basic human values defined in the Charter of Fundamental rights of the European Union (EU, 2007) and Schwartz Theory (Schwartz, 2012).
A good example of Big Data duality is, e.g., the conflict between insight into complex problems (liberty) and privacy or equality and new digital divide. The thesis has the following structure. Firstly, I will start my research with information about the research of other authors and definitions that are generally accepted. Secondly, I am going to continue with the description of use cases from the telecommunication industry that I will generalize and name the Big Data dualities, positives versus negatives, forming the ethical conflicts. I will verify the relevance of these conflicts by launching an international survey of Big Data and ethics awareness. The Survey research will be focused on two European countries (CZ, SK) and different stakeholders such as university students and IT professionals. Finally, I am going to propose an etiquette that should improve the current ethical environment in the area of Big Data.
Key words
Big Data, conflicts, digital divide, dualities, equality, ethics, etiquette, challenges, law, philosophy, privacy, survey, use cases

Followup: Shermin Voshmgir, Christian Rammel, Martin Wildenberg, Evgeniia Filippova, Valentin Kalinov and Tatjana Novakovic: CryptoMonday – Blockchain and Sustainability
2018-12-05 15:00 - 16:00
Introduction and State of Project (Shermin Voshmgir & Tatjana Novakovic)

Frontiers in Blockchain Article Series (Evgeniia Filippova)

Presentation of Impact Assessment Tool – This tool will be designed for the purpose of evaluating what projects can be meaningfully implemented, taking both blockchain and sustainability perspective into account (Martin Wildenberg, Christian Rammel and Valentin Kalinov)

Sarah Spiekermann: TED talk preperation: The role of the idea of man in technology design
2018-12-05 13:30 - 15:00

Shermin Voshmgir, Christian Rammel, Martin Wildenberg, Evgeniia Filippova, Valentin Kalinov and Tatjana Novakovic: CryptoMonday - Blockchain and Sustainability
2018-11-27 18:00 - 20:00

Matthias C. Kettemann: The Normative Order of the Internet: How Rules Are Made and Legitimated in Online Settings
2018-11-21 13:30 - 15:00
The presentation explores which rules regulate online behaviour and how they are made, enforced, legitimized and contested by states, companies and individuals. Understanding ‘rules’ holistically, the presentation will show that national public law, international law and transnational regulatory arrangements together form the ‘normative order of the Internet’: a complex of norms through which the Internet’s structures and the distribution of goods online are legitimated. The normative order of the Internet is thus an order of justification. New norms can be tested against the principles of the order and predictions can be made as to their normative success. Standards and codes are thus reintegrated into the ‘legal order’.
Importantly, the presentation argues that a ‘normative turn’ has taken place, through which the normative dynamics present on the Internet have self-constitutionalized to the degree that new norms can develop within the normative order of the Internet. Thus it is not technicity that forms the norm, but rather the norm that forms technicity. This is not without consequences for our understanding of how we can shape the use and development of the Internet.
Bio: Dr. Matthias C. Kettemann, LL.M. (Harvard), is posdoctoral fellow at the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders” at the University of Frankfurt am Main and lecturer at the Institute of International Law and International Relations at the University of Graz.

Julia Zauner: Technology-Facilitated Sexual Violence: Understanding Experiences of Victimisation, Support Needs and Legal Responses to Technology Inflicted Harm
2018-11-07 13:30 - 15:00
The proposed feminist phenomenological study is concerned with exploring experiences of technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV) with regard to victimisation, survivor support services, and responses of the criminal justice (CJ) system. The term includes but is not limited to: the distribution of sexual content without consent, online sexual harassment, and virtual rape facilitated by technology. TFSV has neither embodied physicality nor geographical boundaries but nevertheless contains symbolic and emotional implications of violence rooted into society and with international relevance. Using qualitative methods, this research aims to understand the nature and impact of TFSV on survivors, locating these within current academic, policy and practice debates.

TFSV and its challenges are rapidly evolving. However, neither research nor governmental institutions have given much attention to TFSV. Therefore, this study is timely and contemporary. Under consideration of the continued reproduction of male supremacy and asymmetrical power relations, there is strong support to suggest the phenomenon is gendered; this therefore indicates a further need to investigate TSFV as a new means of violence against women.

The data collection proposes qualitative interviews with at least 25 survivors, 10 support practitioners, and 5 CJ representatives. The proposed analysis method is interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore the meanings associated with TFSV. The research is of highest relevance for criminological and sociological research as well as the governmental body and support practitioners as it contributes to the understanding of victimisation experiences and legal responses to a phenomenon which is yet to be explored.

About the Author: Julia is a researcher in criminology with a specialisation on gender-based violence in the digital age. For her Master’s dissertation she was concerned with the victim-blaming tendencies of the British educational system surrounding campaigns on the sharing and creating of intimate images. Julia is a board member of the Empower Project Scotland – an intersectional feminist charity working with communities to educate on tech abuse. She currently undertakes a traineeship at the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency before starting a PhD in autumn 2019.

Max Schrems: Post-GDPR hangover in Austria and beyond?
2018-10-31 14:00 - 15:00

Axel Polleres: The surprising responses you get to GDPR data requests - an initial assessment
2018-10-17 13:30 - 15:00
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) promises to enable us to request data back from data controllers, enable data portability, and – eventually – integration of our personal information stored in different siloes. However, it’s not that easy. In this short talk I will report back from a small experiment, I started on 25th of May to issue such data requests [1]. The partially surprising responses highlight various issues and challenges that smalle and medium-sized enterprises are confronted with, when answering such requests. After the talk, we would like to invite the audience to brainstorm on how this situation could be improved, discuss about how such requests could be handled more efficiently and what would be the benefits and incentives for doing so. Disclaimer: This is work in progress; I would be happy to invite interested collaborators to summarise and publish these experiences, as I think they could be of interest to a wider audience!

1. https://doingthingswithdata.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/gdpr-day-time-to-request-your-data-automate-it/

Algorithmic Management: Designing systems which promote human autonomy
2018-09-20 - 2018-09-21 | Footer Email Signup
This workshop is part of a wider research project on Algorithmic Management which studies the structural role of algorithms as forms of management in work environments, where automated digital platforms, such as Amazon, Uber or Clickworker manage the interaction of workers through algorithms. The process of assigning or changing a sequence of individual to be completed tasks is often a fully automated process. This means that algorithms may partly act like a manager, who exercises control over a large number of decentralized workers. The goal of our research project is to investigate the interplay of control and autonomy in a managerial regime, with a specific focus on the food-delivery sector.
If you want to attend this event, please first register with Hannah Waltl <mis-sek@wu.ac.at>.
Further details about the event are available here: https://www.privacylab.at/workshop-algorithmic-management-designing-systems-which-promote-human-autonomy/
This research was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie “Privacy&Us” project (GA No. 675730).

Esther Görnemann: Ownership of personal data
2018-06-27 16:00 - 17:00
Personal data are not legally defined as property. Yet, the markets for consumer profiles with detailed data points are flourishing and personal data is often referred to as the currency that pays for digital products and services. The amassed information about consumers has become a valuable asset for many businesses.
This session will focus on similarities and differences of legal property and data possession and shed light on arguments supporting and rejecting legal ownership of personal data. We will have a look at the legal status quo according to the GDPR and try to draw the line between intellectual property and data protection and discuss some major ethical concerns.

Walter Peissl: Privacy @ ITA (Institut für Technikfolgen-Abschätzung)
2018-06-13 16:00 - 17:00
In our world of digitization, questions arise like: Are we witnessing the end of privacy? What’s the point of being private?
In a series of projects, the ITA investigates the short and long-term effects of being object of analysis, the erosion of privacy, and derives options for action. The analyses focus on the interrelationship between technological development, fundamental rights and the social and political consequences.
The presentation will shed light on some of the projects carried out and present some results.
Projects: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/ita/de/ueber-uns/das-ita-team/peissl/projekte/?tx_indexedsearch%5B_sections%5D=0&tx_indexedsearch%5Bpointer%5D=0&tx_indexedsearch%5Bext%5D=0&tx_indexedsearch%5Btype%5D=20&tx_indexedsearch%5Bresults%5D=99999&tx_indexedsearch%5Blang%5D=0
Publications: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/ita/de/ueber-uns/das-ita-team/peissl/publikationen/

Sarah Spiekermann: The Nature of the Digital and the Nature of Human Beings
2018-06-05 13:00 - 14:30
In this talk I will talk about some key characteristics determining the nature of the digital. Specifically, I will talk about the naturally devided,unsaturated and incomplete nature of the digital that triggers an auto-completion mechanism in human beings. I will progress by outlining that digital technologies as we know them since broadband introduction are inherently connected to light and change-rates; both mechanisms that enforce human attention. These mechanisms of change are combined these days with addictive design and the introduction of social network echoes. The latter again bind human to the Net are Narcissus was bound to his mirror image.

Based on these observations I will outline a number of requirements we would need to consider for Ethical Machines in the light of the nature of today’s digital technologies.

Joint Research Seminar with Erich Schweighofer
2018-05-30 15:00 - 17:00
Following the previous joint seminars between the Lab and the team of Erich Schweighofer we decided to organise a new joint seminar on 30 May 2017. Here is a provisional agenda for the seminar:
15:00 – 15:10: Brief round of introductions from participants
15:10 – 15:45: Eliska Pirkova – Freedom expression in technology
15:45 – 16:20: Jakob Zanol – Protection of Publicly Available Data under the GDPR
16:20 – 16:55: Erwin Filtz – Building a legal knowledge graph.
16:55 – 17:00: Conclusion and next steps

Konrad Lachmayer: Artificial Intelligence and the Concept of Law - Some insights from autonomous and self-learning driving
2018-05-23 16:30 - 17:30
Regulating artificial intelligence by legal means challenges the foundations of law. Law addresses human beings, groups and societies. While criminal law is based on a concept of guilt, civil law creates legal attribution via liability. Regulatory approaches try to deal with artificial intelligence in the same way as they deal with human beings. Addressing intelligent systems, robots and machines by legal means shakes up the foundations of law.
The presentation will evaluate the concept of law. The following questions will be discussed: How can law address artificial intelligence? What is the (still existing) potential of law and what are its limits? How should law and code interrelate? Is it necessary to re-conceptualise law or to regulate artificial intelligence beyond law by other means?

About the speaker:
Konrad Lachmayer is professor of public law, European law and foundations of law at the Sigmund Freud University in Vienna and visiting fellow at Durham Law School (UK). He studied law at the University of Vienna and was visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge, the Max-Planck Institute of International Law in Heidelberg and the Central European University in Budapest. In his research he focuses on comparative constitutional law, digitalization of law as well as Austrian public law.

Laura Bauer & Ben Wagner: Interdisciplinary perspectives on sustainable computing
2018-05-17 16:00 - 17:00
While there are increasing international debates about sustainable and value-based computing, it is notable that many of these debates tend to re-invent the wheel. We believe that by looking more closely at existing debates in sustainability sciences and engineering, it is possible to gain a better understanding of what sustainable computing could be.
This is particularly the case, as debates about sustainability typically focus on ecological or ‘green’ aspects while ignoring digital technologies. This is because these debates see digital technologies are typically seen as neutral tools that cannot and should not embody values. As a result we see an urgent need for a greater debate between these two fields.

María Fernández Escudero: Code is law or law is code? Governance and Artificial Intelligence
2018-05-09 16:00 - 17:00
What we called science fiction a few years ago, nowadays is called Artificial Intelligence (AI). Despite its laboratory origin, AI is currently on the streets, but scientists and lawyers sometimes are in pursuit of different matters. However, finding ‘the’ meeting point is urgent and mandatory. This talk reinterprets AI from the eyes of a social scientist, trying to create a common framework in which computational scientists can focus on the ‘How’, and sociologists, politicians, or legal experts must address the 4 Ws of AI to orderly incorporate it in our society : Why, What, Where, and When. The expected proposals should help us to answer the title question: should AI drive regulatory changes or, on the contrary, should law guide AI evolution?

Data Privacy Controls and Vocabularies A W3C Workshop on Privacy and Linked Data
2018-04-17 08:00 - 2018-04-18 17:00
The level of privacy and trust concerns has raised to a point where people start to refuse services. Services on the Web are often very complex orchestrations of cooperations between multiple actors. This will increase if the upcoming Internet of Things is taken into account. If the trust in such services is eroded, the growth of the Web and the growth of the digital economy is endangered. This workshop wants to address the privacy issue from the angle of data governance and transparency. And if transparency and data self determination are at stake, the challenge may also be how to convey the transparency to the user to allow for an informed self determination. This includes especially methods to generate and administer user consent, even in an IoT environment.
While the Workshop is open to a wide range of ideas, it is mainly inspired by the idea that today, we lack the tools for those wanting to be good citizens of the Web. It is related, but not limited to the work on Permissions and on Tracking protection. Because those permissions and tracking signals carry policy data, the systems have to react upon those signals. To react in a complex distributed system, the signals have to be understood by more than one implementer. The challenge is to identify the areas where such signals are needed for privacy or compliance and to make those signals interoperable. This can take the form taxonomies, vocabularies or ontologies. The most important challenge is to make policy and privacy signals interoperable and transportable within various systems, beyond the mere relation in a browsing context. In the era of upcoming privacy regulation with high fines, we need to make the data lake usable again while respecting the human user.
Because of the paradigm of data self determination, the challenge is bidirectional. Once the semantics of privacy or compliance are clear, this information also has to be presented to the user. On the Web, this is a challenge for the terminal equipment, including but not limited to browsers. E.g., the set of preferences offered to the user may vary with the capability of a service to accommodate those preferences. This needs signaling of the possible preferences (semantics) and a way to communicate the selection back. Such exchange can be protocol- or data driven. Where it is data driven, the policy semantics are transported over whatever channel is available, e.g. using linked data.

Javier D. Fernández: Green Big Data
2018-03-28 16:00 - 17:00
As more and more systems and personal devices become pervasive and interoperable, an increasing amount of sensitive and interconnected data is prone to vulnerability, which leads to the question how Big Data potential for business, science and society can be balanced with societal expectations in terms of data protection and privacy legislation. In this talk, we will introduce some of the open technical challenges around the implementation of the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and how our project “SPECIAL”, a H2020 research and innovation action, provides tools for enterprises to run their Big Data-driven businesses in a privacy-aware manner.

Sabine Beck, Netpeace: Talking about peace in the internet and on social media, means talking about how to get rid of hate and harassment - especially concerning female victims
2018-03-21 16:00 - 17:00
Women make up half of the earth’s population. Women have been and still are a strong driving force and engine to bring about social change. The women’s movements of the past 150 years have been instrumental in transforming society, such as enforcing women’s suffrage.
Restrictive movements and right-wing populists are attacking women, not only because it is obvious that progressive ideas and demands are usually initiated by feminists. Women’s rights are human rights – therefore both are high on the agenda to fight against of the new right.
Online violence against women is not only easy to accomplish and relatively safe to perform, but also effective: someone who attacks women, intimidates not only the affected individual, but also the many who are online witnessing the attack.
The result is simple and easy to foresee: women fall silent and withdraw from public discussions. Aggressive men take over and determine the discourse, followed by a shift in public perception and political sentiment. A recent study by Amnesty International shows that women who experience online hate or abuse, also feel threatened physically, fear for their live and families and are less likely to speak out on other occasions.
So we must discuss actions and strategies how to defend women´s rights in online spaces to defend democracy.
Sabine Beck, speaker of the Netpeace initiative at Greenpeace will provide a brief overview followed by a discussion.

CANCELLED: Javier D. Fernández: Green Big Data
2018-01-31 14:00 - 16:00
