Announcement: Privacy and Anonymity Conference in Ottawa - March 2005

This just in....

The Concealed I: Anonymity, Identity and the Prospect of
Privacy www.anonequity.org/concealedI

March
4-5, 2005

University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law

Ottawa, Canada

* Do we have a right to speak anonymously?

* Why do people claim to value privacy but act otherwise?

* What are the constitutional implications of the compelled disclosure of
identity?

*What is the effect of imposing anonymity on women who enter the legal system
as a result of sexual assault or other crimes of gendered violence?

* Do we have the right to resist excessive surveillance?

These
are some of the questions being investigated by a multidisciplinary team of
researchers on a project entitled On the Identity Trail (www.anonequity.org).
The team, along with faculty members from the Law and Technology Program at the
University of Ottawa (www.commonlaw.uottawa.ca/tech),
invites you to a two-day conference dedicated to investigating these and other
privacy issues in our increasingly networked society.

Panel discussion
topics include:



* THE
NATURE AND VALUE OF PRIVACY AND ANONYMITY

* PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF PRIVACY

* POLICY ISSUES FOR PRIVACY COMMISSIONERS

* DEBATE ON THE COMPELLED DISCLOSURE OF IDENTITY

* INVASIVE SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGIES

* COMPARATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES

* PUBLIC SAFETY IN FREE AND DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

* PRIVACY ACTIVISM

The
conference will begin on Day I with an introductory session investigating the
nature and value of privacy and anonymity in an era of ubiquitous
identification technologies. This will be followed by an investigation from a
social science perspective on public perceptions of privacy and data flows.
These two panels lay the ground for a very special policy lunch, hosted by Canada's federal and provincial privacy
commissioners. In an unprecedented collaboration, the various participating
privacy commissioners will present

a cross-Canada "policy-scan", setting out the most pressing issues
encountered by their offices and offering a range of viewpoints in response.
The remainder of the afternoon on Day I will include a debate on compelling the
disclosure of identity and a session on invasive identification and
surveillance technologies.

Day
II of the conference will begin with law and policy issues and will end with an
investigation of some broader social dimensions of anonymity and identity. The
day starts with a session investigating some of the crucial comparative
constitutional questions, and is followed by a session that focuses more
specifically on issues of race and gender. These sessions will be followed by
another policy lunch featuring representatives of the law enforcement and security
community debating the need for identification from the perspective of
"public safety" in a free and democratic society. The remainder of
the afternoon of Day II will focus on the broader public, including a session
on social activism and the appropriateness of certain public responses to
oppressive surveillance. We end the conference with a walking tour of the
surveillance cameras in the Ottawa area and an artistic performance.

Invited Speakers:

Ken
Anderson

Assistant
Commissioner (Privacy)

Ofiice of the Information Privacy Commissioner of Ontario

Jacquelyn Burkell

Professor, Faculty of
Information and Media Studies,

University
of Western Ontario

Colin
Bennett

Professor,
Political Science

University of Victoria

Bill
Brown

New York Surveillance Camera Players

Paul De
Hert

Professor, Faculty of
Law,

Leiden University & Free University Brussels

Jane
Doe

Teacher, Lecturer and
Arts and Culture Worker, Toronto

A.
Michael Froomkin

Professor, Faculty of
Law, University
of Miami

Oscar
Gandy

Professor, Annenberg School For Communication,

University
of Pennsylvania

Daphne
Gilbert

Professor, Faculty of
Law, University
of Ottawa

Declan McCullagh

CNET

Ian
Kerr

Canada
Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology,

University of Ottawa

David
Lyon

Professor, Department
of Sociology,

Queen's University

Rafael Macedo

Attorney
General, Mexico

Steve
Mann

Professor, Department
of Electrical and Computer

Engineering, University of Toronto

Helen
Nissenbaum

Professor of Culture
& Communication, Computer

Science and Sr. Fellow in Law, NYU

G.T
Marx

Professor
Emeritus, Department of Sociology,

M.I.T

Stephanie
Perrin

Research Coordinator, On
the Identity Trail

Privacy Consultant and Advocate, Montreal, Canada

Jennifer
Stoddart

Privacy Commissioner
of Canada

Marc
Rotenberg

Executive Director,
Electronic Privacy Information

Center; Adjunct Professor Georgetown Law

Alan
Westin

Professor Emeritus, Columbia University

President, Privacy and American Business

Stay
tuned for further announcements. For more information, visit: www.anonequity.org/concealedI

or email: anonplan@uottawa.ca