WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon will be giving a rare, live one hour Q and A session with the Washington Office of Privacy and Data Protection (OPDP) , which was created by the state legislature in 2016. This will take place in celebration of International Privacy Week, 30 January 2025. ...
The World Privacy Forum filed detailed comments regarding draft guidance on privacy and medical research to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The proposed guidance, Facilitating Understanding in Informed Consent, is related to consent for human subject research (medical research) and is particularly important. Currently, models of consent are in the process of going digital, which has created a number of challenging problems to solve. In the comments, WPF had several recommendations to improve consent and privacy.
Today the Biden-Harris Administration published a Memorandum that sets forth how U.S. Federal Agencies and Executive Departments will govern their use of Artificial Intelligence. The OMB memorandum provides an extensive and in some ways surprising articulation of emergent guardrails around modern AI. There are many points of interest to discuss, but the most striking includes the thread of biometrics systems guidance throughout the memorandum and continuing on in the White House Fact Sheet and associated materials. Additionally, the articulation of minimum practices for safety -impacting and rights- impacting AI will likely become important touch points in regulatory discussions in the U.S. and elsewhere. The guidance represents a significant policy shift for the U.S. Federal government, particularly around biometrics.
Today Inside Higher Ed wrote an excellent article about the relationship of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the recent doxing of Harvard students. In short, it was easy to dox the students based on information the college published — legally — about them. FERPA was supposed ...
8 September 2023 The World Privacy Forum is pleased to announce the appointment of Senior Ethics and AI Fellow, Emmi Bane. Emmi has a deep foundation in the construction of consent ecosystems, and is proficient in both their technical implementation and the accompanying policy analysis and considerations. At WPF, her ...
13 December, 2022 Gran Canarias, Spain The World Privacy Forum and the Argentina-based Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC) today launched the first report in a project on the Twin Transition, green and digital. WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon will present the report, which is global in scope, to at ...
WPF's Executive Director Pam Dixon will be presenting at a High-Level Plenary Session at the UN World Data Forum Tuesday, 5 October on a panel focused on Trust in Data: balancing quality, privacy and transparency . The matter of trust is at the heart of any information system and it ...
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 ...
Today we are publishing the first of a series of discussion papers regarding face recognition and biometrics. The ideas in this paper will be discussed in the ID4Africa live cast, Spotlight on Face Recognition. Too often, discussions about what to do about the risks of face recognition have lacked the ...
WPF is urging the National Institutes of Health to do more to properly advise the research community and to protect data subjects in its draft guidance on data management and sharing. WPF is asking for changes to the NIH guidance because in the US, much health research data in the hands of researchers is not subject to the privacy or security rules in HIPAA.
Pam Dixon, ED of the World Privacy Forum, will present a detailed analysis of privacy and biometrics in the US to a multistakeholder group convened by the Biometric Institute. The talk will outline key biometric misunderstandings, key risks, priorities for solutions, and key solutions that already exist. WPF has done ...
Giovanni Buttarelli, the European Data Protection Supervisor, has passed away. EDPS Buttarelli was an important privacy thinker and strategist, and stands among the giants in privacy. He had a long and distinguished career prior to becoming the EDPS, including spending time as a judge in the Italian judiciary. But it ...
AI will alter the world of work, both in workplaces and in workplace information ecosystems. Labor experts have a term for negotiating the near and long-term effects of AI: “A fair and just transition.” These and other experts have already begun documenting the emerging changes in the workplace resulting from AI deployments. Some consequences are positive, some are deleterious. No one has a crystal ball with a perfect view of what the future may hold. That's why a key focus now for those interested in AI and the world of work is to research and benchmark what is happening.
Today WPF was quoted in an AP article about cameras that detect age, gender, and emotion being installed in retail stores, Coming to You: Cameras that guess your age and sex. For us, this was deja vu. In 2010, we published a report about cameras in retail settings called The ...
Identity is a data-rich key that acts to unlock all levels of the emerging digital ecosystem. All forms of ID carry some risk, but digital forms of ID, or “dematerialized ID,” cuts across all sectors and generates particularly copious data about people, their behaviors, financial status, associates, and potentially even political and religious views. Over time, distinct patterns emerge from the data and have in the past created new kinds of risks for individuals and groups.....
The World Privacy Forum has submitted a set of key comments to the US Federal Trade Commission regarding privacy frameworks and governance. The comments introduce the idea of knowledge governance and propose frameworks that will work to solve the serious privacy challenges we face in complex data ecosystems.
WPF is issuing this statement in response to the New York Times article dated 18 December, 2018 regarding Facebook's data practices. The article provides meaningful new information about the data management and privacy practices of Facebook.
Speaking to an audience of global Data Protection Authorities in the capstone session of the 40th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon discussed the central importance that data should be used for a public good, and must above all, should not create harm. ...
The National Academies of Science have released Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy . The consensus report richly documents how, during the 2016 presidential election, actors sponsored by the Russian government attacked the US voting and election infrastructure. The report assesses the web of technology infrastructures related to voting, and ...
WPF will be speaking and/or participating in the following events this summer and fall. Please join us, or let us know if you will be attending. Global Forum on Artificial Intelligence , Swiss Re Center for Global Dialogue, 9-10 July 2018 . Zurich, Switzerland. Pam Dixon, WPF Executive Director, delegate. ...
A data ethics conversation has been growing on a global scale for some time now, but particularly since 2015, when the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) issued an Opinion on the matter and formed a Data Ethics Advisory Group to further consider the issue. Along the way, other countries, such ...
WPF is presenting a keynote speech to the Consumer Action National Conference. The speech, entitled Modern Privacy and the Digital Ecosystem , will cover a wide range of topics, including top-line topics in privacy, key areas to work on going forward, and privacy myths and realities. The Consumer Action event ...
The World Privacy Forum will be speaking several times during the International Conference of Data Protection & Privacy Commissioners in Hong Kong; here's the schedule, below; we look forward to meeting or catching up with those of you attending, please come by and say hello. Monday 25 September : European ...
WPF has conducted original research on India's Aadhaar, a national biometric ID system, including field research in India during 2010-2014. WPF has published the original research in a peer-reviewed journal, Nature-Springer, and in Harvard-based Journal of Technology Science. The research found that systemic challenges to data protection and privacy exist in the Aadhaar system, challenges which do have potential remedies. Key lessons can be learned for both the US and the EU as biometric systems grow in popularity.
We are honored to be speaking on two panels at this year’s RightsCon, an event that takes place 29-31 March in Brussels, Belgium. Both of our panels will be on the 31 of March. Here is some additional reading and information for each of the panels: Panel 1: Managing Concerns Around Digital Identity, Fri, 9:00-10:15, Innovation, 1st Floor....
