Happy new year

I wish you a happy new year.

And remember if you want to have more information or help all the people affected in South Asia Tsunami you can read this blog

And you can find futher information:


Oxfam
Red Cross
Unicef

Cyberspace privacy

Jerry Kang is a Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law and Visiting Professor of Georgetown Law Center.

There is available the video RFID Privacy Workshop at MIT Media Lab

Lessig

Lawrence Lessig could be called a cultural environmentalist. One of America’s most original and influential public intellectuals, his focus is the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies.

His last book is Free Culture and is available for free under a Creative Commons license:

English
French
Spanish

All electronic formats are free, and there is a paper version available at: Penguin

Platform for Privacy Preferences

The Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) is a specification and vocabulary that enables Web sites to communicate their data management practices to Web site visitors in a machine-readable format. P3P enables Web sites to translate their privacy practices into a standardized, machine-readable format (Extensible Markup Language - XML) that can be retrieved automatically and easily interpreted by a user's browser

P3P was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an organization created in October 1994 to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability.
The W3C has more than 500 member organizations from around the world and has earned international recognition for its contributions to the growth of the Web.

If you want to implement P3P you can follow this implementation guide and this is a guide to help organizations incorporate the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) into their Web site(s)

EPAL

The IBM Privacy Research Institute is an organization within IBM Research to promote and advance research in privacy and data protection technology. Our goal is to develop technologies for enterprises to conduct e-business in privacy-enabling ways. The institute's research focuses on technologies for commercial applications, particularly for e-business. The institute is managed out of the Zurich Research.

They are working on (EPAL) Enterprise privacy authorization language and is the first enterprise privacy language that provides fine-grained and portable control over IT systems use of personal information according to privacy policies.

For futher information you can download EPAL's powerpoint presentation by Günter Karjoth

Merry Xmas Joyeux Nöel Feliz Navidad

So today is the day, I wish you Merry Xmas.

Drin tsul zhit sho ahlay & Drin Cho zhit sho ahlay

Nollaig Shona Dhuit

Umunsi Mwiza

Utzul mank'inal

Seng Dan Fai Lok, Sang Nian Fai Lok

And merry xmas in over 350 languages

RFID & Privacy

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a method of remotely storing and retrieving data using devices called RFID tags. An RFID tag is a small object, such as an adhesive sticker, that can be attached to or incorporated into a product. RFID tags contain antennae to enable them to receive and respond to radio-frequency queries from an RFID transceiver.

There are a lot of webs that talk about RFID, as RFIDJournal

But for privacy issues and RFID theres is an interesting workshop at: www.rfidprivacy.org

And you can find there a paper about Privacy without cryptography.

itrust

iTrust is an Information Society Technologies (IST) Working Group, which started on 1st of August, 2002. The Working Group is being funded as a Concerted Action / Thematic Network by the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) unit of the IST programme.
The aim of iTrust is to provide a forum for cross-disciplinary investigation of the application of trust as a means of establishing security and confidence in the global computing infrastructure, recognizing trust as a crucial enabler for meaningful and mutually beneficial interactions.

They are working in the third International Conference on Trust Management that will be held at Rocquencourt in France at May 23 - 26, 2005.

Let me introduce you The Institute for Information Law (IViR) is part of the Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam.
Many publications by IViR staff members are available online

We can find publications about E-commerce, Privacy, Telecom law or food law.

For example The Dutch Personal Data Protection Act (Wet bescherming persoonsgegevens), entered into force on 1 September 2001. The Act implements the European Directive 95/46/EC of 24 October 1995.

3rd Digital Rights Management Conference

After 2000 and 2002 the third DRM conference will take place on 13th and 14th January 2005 in Berlin. Aim of the three conferences is to show the present state of the discussions about DRM systems in science and praxis from an interdisciplinary and neutral perspective.

You can download digital brochure here.

Representatives of the media and IT industries, governments, user associations, libraries, collecting societies, as well as artists, attorneys, scientists, privacy and consumer protection advocates from Germany, other European countries and the U.S. such as Pamela Samuelson will discuss controversial issues and proposed solutions in the areas of Digital Rights Management, Trusted Computing and alternative compensation systems.

Privacy Symposium: Securing Privacy in the Internet Age

Last march was The Privacy Symposium at Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society.

We can hear it at Conference Audio

And blogs of the Center for Internet and Society.

As you know Lawrence Lessig is the Founder and Director of the Center for Internet and Society

European Constitution and Protection of Personal Data

These days everybody talks about the European Constitution and referendum. You can read the Constitution in 21 european languages at Europa's web. Every country has developped a web about it, UK, France, Belgium or Spain.

And two articles about Data Protection:
ART I-51 The Constitution’s fundamental provisions
and ART II-68 Charter of Fundamental Rights

ARTICLE I-51
Protection of personal data
1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.
2. European laws or framework laws shall lay down the rules relating to the protection of
individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by Union institutions, bodies, offices and
agencies, and by the Member States when carrying out activities which fall within the scope of
Union law, and the rules relating to the free movement of such data. Compliance with these rules
shall be subject to the control of independent authorities

ARTICLE II-68
Protection of personal data
1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.
2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of
the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of
access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.
3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority.

MIT's OpenCourseWare

I love this web MIT's OpenCourseWare I'm sure that they are going to change the world with this project.

This week I found this course 15.970 Digital Anthropology, Spring 2003 and I think you have to take a look:

Digital Anthropology is a Spring 2003 applied social science and media arts seminar surveying the blossoming arena of digital-artifact enabled experimental sociology/anthropology. We will emphasize both (a) Technology Testbeds – systematically deploying research lab prototypes and corporate pre-production products in a sample human organizational population and carefully observing the social consequences, and (b) Sociometrics – using digital artifacts to better observe and measure the complex social reality of interesting human systems.


It's hard to explain but it's a incredible project. Thank you.

SPOTME

Spotme device is a small battery-powered handheld computer running embedded Linux by Shockfish a swiss company base in Lausanne, who helps you to meet people in meetings. Spotme has a radar, database people that let you know instantly the names, titles of the people around you. So you can browse the delegate list and find Mr. Smith. And you can, also, change business cards in a simple point-and-shoot action.
That works with a base station that broadcasts database updates to all Spotme devices and a server. For futher information you can browse Soptme’s Presskit.

Le spam en Belgique

La Commission de la Protección de la Vie Privée de la Belgique a publie un raport su la situation du Spam en la Belgique.

La Commission a analysé les 50 000 courriers qui lui sont parvenus en deux mois et demi, et les a classés selon leur origine et leur sujet.

Avec 86% de courriers en langue anglaise sur le total des courriers reçus, les Etats-Unis (et dans une moindre mesure le Canada) constituent la première zone géographique d’origine des spams.

Les courriers identifiés comme expédiés depuis la Belgique constituent seulement 2,8% du total.