Opening of 2025 ID4Africa, Addis Ababa Ethiopia Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - World Privacy Forum is pleased to announce that it is chairing a full day privacy workshop at ID4Africa's 2025 AGM. The extended workshop is in two parts, and is focused on hearing the voices of African data protection authorities ...
The first Digital Trust Convention was held in Paris at OECD Headquarters on 15 November, 2024. This event addressed the problems of how to establish trust in people and information in digital spaces, including the challenges created by synthetic content generated or impacted by AI. WPF co-sponsored the event, and Executive Director Pam Dixon was in Paris to participate in person. Her remarks focused on: solutions must do no harm, cautions around inappropriate uses of digital ID, and respect for socio-technical contexts.
Video and blog post by WPF Founder and Executive Director Pam Dixon commemorating International ID Day 2024, discussing the importance of ensuring legal identity for all people, and the equal importance of ensuring that identity systems and ecosystems Do no Harm and are built so they cannot do harm now, nor in the future.
ID4Africa celebrates its 10th Annual General Meeting this year in Cape Town, South Africa with a program that pushes against multiple boundaries and achieves a new breadth and greater inclusion of diverse stakeholders. ID4Africa’s AGM is easily the most significant identity conference in the world at this point. There are multiple reasons for this; an important one is that the knowledge content at ID4Africa is not replicated anywhere else. In the past, this knowledge base has been focused primarily around government stakeholders. This year, this roster will now carefully expand to civil society organizations that have been deeply involved with African ID systems to gather additional perspectives and foster cooperative dialogue.
WPF's Pam Dixon will be in Kigali, Rwanda to be the lead instructor on a course on digital identity ecosystems as a lecturer for Carnegie Mellon University, as part of their CEE-TP Courses for IT and policy in the developing world . This course, Identity Ecosystems and Digital Transformation: the ...
The Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) will be holding a High Level Forum on Digital Transformation in connection with OECD. The event will be held 16 May 2022 in hybrid format. WPF will be speaking about what risks exists for consumers arising from illicit use of their personal ...
WPF launched a mini-documentary about problems in identity systems on 17 November, 2021 in collaboration with ID4Africa. Digital identity systems are generally accepted as positive tools for social good. Nevertheless, they can pose several dangers and cause significant concerns. This mini-documentary takes viewers on a tour around the world to ...
About this Data Visualization : This interactive map displays the presence of National IDs and electronic IDs, including biometric IDs, in countries globally. The raw dataset used to create the map data originates from the World Bank (See data sourcing below). This dataset covers high, middle and lower income countries. ...
As vaccination campaigns gear up around the world, talk has turned to the logistics and ethics of providing people with vaccination certificates or, for purposes of travel, vaccination "passports." This podcast, hosted by the Center for Global Development's Anit Mukherjee, with Pam Dixon and Camilla Ravnbøl, focuses in on the key aspects of vaccine certificate systems and their implications.
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.
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 ...
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.
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 ...
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 ...
The first Roundtable of African Data Protection Authorities was a wide-ranging and vibrant roundtable conversation on the status and response to privacy risks in identity systems on the continent of Africa. The dialogue focused on data protection and privacy experiences, challenges, risks, and solutions in identity ecosystems, including biometrics. It was an extraordinary, first-of-its-kind event, and the DPAs had notable experiences and thoughts to share. These thoughts are captured in the Rapporteur’s report, which was written by WPF’s Pam Dixon.
WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon was named as a Top 100 Influencer in Identity by One World Identity. OWI describes the list as including the "Top 100 people to know in 2019: pioneers who are leading the charge to improve identity....
The World Privacy Forum sent a detailed letter (PDF, 18 pages) September 18, 2018 to the Secretary of Homeland security outlining our substantive concerns regarding the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) biometric [1]entry and exit program. The World Privacy ...
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.
India's Supreme Court has ruled in a unanimous decision that privacy is a fundamental right under Article 21 of India's constitution. This is a landmark decision for India, and it was decided by a full bench of nine judges. The decision comes at a time when India's national biometric ID ...
About this Data Visualization : This interactive chart displays the chronological implementation of National IDs in countries globally, from 1850 to 2017. The raw dataset used to create the chart originates from the World Bank (See data sourcing below). This dataset covers high, middle and lower income countries. How to ...
ID Ecosystem -- WPF Senior Projects Manager Marianne Fitzpatrick will be participating at the ID Ecosystem's Plenary meeting this week. Of top concern at the plenary will be a new ID theft use case that requires substantive discussion regarding privacy checks and balances.
ID Ecosystem -- WPF is participating in the ID Ecosystem meetings as a consumer privacy representative. Senior Projects Manager Marianne Fitzpatrick is taking the lead on this project, and is working on general privacy and financial privacy areas. The next meeting of the ID Ecosystem is Tuesday March 5. The ID Ecosystem meetings are open to the public. The meetings are important, as this process will set the stage regarding how online identities are managed.
REAL ID | National ID -- The World Privacy Forum and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed joint comments with the Department of Homeland Security about the proposed national ID system, REAL ID. The comments discuss the substantial flaws in the proposed REAL ID system including concerns about the overall structure of the program, the cards, the databases attached to the cards, the lack of controls on "function creep," the possibilities for discrimination, the potential for increased risk of identity theft, issues related to potential gaps in coverage for recipients on Federal programs, among other issues.
REAL ID -- REAL ID is a national ID card program. Currently, the Department of Homeland Security is accepting public comments on the REAL ID plan. Comments will be accepted until Tuesday, May 8. The World Privacy Forum has joined with a large coalition of groups to solicit public comments on REAL ID; to file comments, please visit the Speak Out Against REAL ID coalition page for more information. http://www.privacycoalition.org/stoprealid/
