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Upcoming Events: The Evolution of the Internet Governance Ecosystem (10/2); The Great Firewall Inverts (10/7)

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Upcoming Events / Digital Media
October 1, 2014
conference

[Webcast] The Evolution of the Internet Governance Ecosystem

Thursday, October 2, Network of Centers Event in Turin, Italy. This event will be webcast live.

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On October 2, 2014 the Global Network of Interdisciplinary Internet & Society Research Centers will host an academic symposium on “The Evolution of the Internet Governance Ecosystem” as part of an ongoing Network of Centers (NoC) events series on the future of Internet governance. The event will mark an important milestone in the NoC’s globally coordinated research effort aimed at examining existing and potential models of decentralized and collaborative governance with the goal of informing the evolution of - and current debate around - the Internet governance ecosystem in light of the NETmundial Roadmap and the work of various forums, panels, and committees.

The public conference is being held to discuss both research in progress and, more broadly, the role of academia in the debate about the next generation Internet governance ecosystem. We will present findings from case studies, discuss the overarching themes, and identify directions for future research.

Please register here: https://noc2014.eventbrite.com Registration (for in-person attendance) Required. more information on our website>

berkman luncheon series

The Great Firewall Inverts

Tuesday, October 7, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor. This event will be webcast live.

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In the last few years, usage of the mobile messaging app WeChat (?? Weixin), has skyrocketed not only inside China, but outside, as well. For mainland China, Wechat is one of the only options available, due to frequent blockage of apps like Viber, Line, Twitter and Facebook. However, outside of China, fueled by a massive marketing campaign and the promise of "free calls and texts", overseas Chinese students and family, Tibetan exiles, and Bollywood celebrities also use the app as their primary mobile communications service. It is this phenomenon that might be called an inversion of the Great Firewall. Instead of Chinese users scaling the wall to get out, people around the world are walking up to the front gate, and asking to be let in.

Combined with the rise of attractive, low-cost mobile handsets from Huawei and Xiaomi that include China-based cloud services, being sold in India and elsewhere, the world is witnessing a massive expansion of Chinese telecommunications reach and influence, powered entirely by users choosing to participate in it. Due to these systems being built upon proprietary protocols and software, their inner workings are largely opaque and mostly insecure. Like most social media apps, the WeChat app has full permission to activate microphones and cameras, track GPS, access user contacts and photos, and copy all of this data at any time to their servers. Recently, it was discovered that Xiaomi MIUI phones sent all text messages through the companies cloud servers in China, without asking the user (Though, once this gained broad coverage in the news, the feature was turned off by default).

The fundamental question is do the Chinese companies behind these services have any market incentive or legal obligation to protect the privacy of their non-Chinese global userbase? Do they willingly or automatically turn over all data to the Ministry of Public Security or State Internet Information Office? Will we soon see foreign users targeted or prosecuted due to "private" data shared on WeChat? Finally, from the Glass Houses Department, is there any fundamental diffence in the impact on privacy freedom for an American citizen using WeChat versus a Chinese citizen using WhatsApp or Google?

Nathan Freitas leads the Guardian Project, an open-source mobile security software project, and directs technology strategy and training at the Tibet Action Institute. His work at the Berkman Center focuses on tracking the legality and prosecution risks for mobile security apps users worldwide. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

book launch

The Inspection House: An Impertinent Field Guide to Modern Surveillance

Tuesday, October 21, 12:30pm ET, Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Room 3018. This event will be webcast live.

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In 1787, British philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham conceived of the panopticon, a ring of cells observed by a central watchtower, as a labor-saving device for those in authority. While Bentham's design was ostensibly for a prison, he believed that any number of places that require supervision—factories, poorhouses, hospitals, and schools—would benefit from such a design. The French philosopher Michel Foucault took Bentham at his word. In his groundbreaking 1975 study, Discipline and Punish, the panopticon became a metaphor to describe the creeping effects of personalized surveillance as a means for ever-finer mechanisms of control. Forty years later, the available tools of scrutiny, supervision, and discipline are far more capable and insidious than Foucault dreamed, and yet less effective than Bentham hoped. Shopping malls, container ports, terrorist holding cells, and social networks all bristle with cameras, sensors, and trackers. But, crucially, they are also rife with resistance and prime opportunities for revolution. The Inspection House is a tour through several of these sites—from Guantánamo Bay to the Occupy Oakland camp and the authors' own mobile devices—providing a stark, vivid portrait of our contemporary surveillance state and its opponents.

Emily Horne lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. She is the photographer and designer for the webcomic A Softer World, and freelance edits books for kicks. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Coast and Tor.com. She is @birdlord on Twitter.

Tim Maly writes about design, architecture, networks and infrastructure. He is a Fellow at Harvard’s metaLAB and is big into cyborgs. His work has appeared in Wired, Medium, The Atlantic and Urban Omnibus. He is @doingitwrong on Twitter. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

book launch

The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data Smart Governance

Tuesday, October 28, 12:00pm ET, Harvard Law School Library. Co-sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

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Harvard Law School Visiting Professor and co-director of the Berkman Center Susan Crawford joins Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone, Mayor of Somerville, MA, Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Chief Information Officer for the City of Boston and Harvard Business School Professor and Chief of Staff to Mayor Menino, Mitchell Weiss, for a lively discussion around her new book, The Responsive City. The talk will be moderated by Harvard Law School Professor and co-founder and Director of the Berkman Center Jonathan Zittrain.

The Responsive City is a compelling guide to civic engagement and governance in the digital age that will help municipal leaders link important breakthroughs in technology and data analytics with age-old lessons of small-group community input to create more agile, competitive and economically resilient cities. The book is co-authored by Professor Stephen Goldsmith, director of Data-Smart City Solutions at Harvard Kennedy School, and Professor Susan Crawford, co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. more information on our website>

book launch

The Coming Swarm

Wednesday, October 29, 6:00pm ET, Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Room 2012.

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In her new book, The Coming Swarm: DDoS, Hacktivism, and Civil Disobedience on the Internet, Molly Sauter examines the history, development, theory, and practice of distributed denial of service actions as a tactic of political activism. Together in conversation with journalist and activist Laurie Penny, Molly will discuss the use of disruptive tactics like DDoS, online civil disobedience, and the role of the internet as a zone of political activism and speech. There will be a book signing following the discussion.

Molly Sauter is a research affiliate at the Berkman Center, and a doctoral student at McGill University in Montreal. She holds a masters degree in Comparative Media Studies from MIT, where she is an affiliate researcher at the Center for Civic Media at the Media Lab. Laurie Penny was born in London in 1986 and is not dead yet. She is, in no particular order, a writer, a journalist, a public speaker, an activist, a feminist, a reprobate and a geek. more information on our website>

video/audio

Rebecca Weintraub on Digital Badges for Global Health Delivery Skills

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Healthcare professionals worldwide often have extensive non-clinical skills in management, public health, policy, or other fields which are not officially recognized through a degree. In this talk, Rebecca Weintraub, MD -- Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Faculty Director of the Global Health Delivery Project at Harvard University -- introduces the concept of digital badges for healthcare professionals, a means for demonstrating skills and experience to potential new employers, grant-giving organizations, and others. Like other well-known badge and certification systems -- such as Fair Trade and organic standards for food, or LEED certification for buildings -- digital badges can improve the quality of health services, and help others to recognize the skills of healthcare professionals. But how should such a system be implemented? video/audio on our website>

Other Events of Note

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