PEP marked the end of the academic year with the seventh annual Public Policy Symposium on the Law & Economics of Privacy and Data Security. Speakers included:
- Current and former staff at the Federal Trade Commission who continue the efforts to understand informational injuries and how best to evaluate the social benefits and costs of various data practices
- Experts in empirical economics who are working on open questions about where the value in AI is greatest, how consumers behave when facing uncertainty about their data, and indirect costs and benefits of cybersecurity
- Lawyers and legal academics who discussed difficult trade-offs between privacy goals and countervailing interests in medical technology, policing, and environmental innovations
- US Census Bureau staff and social scientists who discussed the Census’s recent decision to implement Differential Privacy and the possible effects it could have on social science going forward
- Yochai Benkler’s keynote address on the origins and sources of online propaganda
Two other noteworthy events will take place in DC in the next few months:
On June 27th, the FTC will host its Fourth Annual PrivacyCon, and the agenda looks superb. From the FTC website:
The workshop, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 9:15 a.m. ET and will take place at the Constitution Center, located at 400 Seventh St., SW, Washington, D.C. 20024. The event will also be webcast on the FTC website and live tweeted using the hashtag #PrivacyCon19. Registration is not required to attend this event.
On September 20-21, the TPRC Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy will take place at American University Washington College of Law. The list of accepted papers looks very exciting, as always.