This is a previous event. Details of a second symposium will be posted here

International Symposium on Confidentiality, Privacy and Disclosure in the 21st Century

Mandec Centre, University of Manchester, UK
3rd May 2005

Context:

The issues of Confidentiality and Privacy took numerous twists and turns during the second half of the 20th Century, as the media globalisation, computing, the Internet, surveillance technology all emerged and then became more sophisticated, faster, and more efficient. As we have entered the 21st century we have seen the emergence of the Grid with its promise of fast distributed analyses over multiple, very large sets of data. Through this, the potential for linking data of different types, and from different sources has become incresingly feasible.

In the light of these changes the notion of confidentiality has itself had to evolve to take into account the new technology, but also using that technology through sophisticated systems of disclosure control and more recently through the ideas such as intruder detection and data sentries.

This symposium will bring together international experts in confidentiality and privacy research from the fields of law, data protection, statistics, social science and computer science to debate the implications of recent technological advances.

Key questions to be addressed are:

How is new technology going to affect the way we view privacy, confidentiality and disclosure?
How can technology be used to enable confidentiality rather than threatening it?
How is disclosure risk assessed? How is that likely to change over time?

Papers will be given by experts in confidentiality and privacy - describing their research, discussing the relationship between research and policy, together with future gazing - outlining the possibilities, potential threats and opportunities. The day will be structured around eight speakers with plenty of discussion time.

Contributors:

The key note address will be give by Professor George Duncan from Carnegie Mellon University, USA. Other invited speakers include: Professor John Forster (University of Southampton); Professor JJ Salazar (University of Tenerife); Dr. Michael Carlson (University of Stockholm); Dr Gerald Gates (US Census Bureau); Professor Charles Raab (University of Edinburgh) and Dr. Francis Aldhouse (UK, Information Commission).