Techno-Activism Third Mondays in SF: March 2016

Sadia Afroz visits Techno-Activism Third Mondays this month to share her findings, "Do You See What I See? Differential Treatment of Anonymous Users."

The second-class treatment of anonymous users ranges from outright rejection to limiting their access to a subset of the service’s functionality or imposing hurdles such as CAPTCHA-solving. To date, the observation of such practices has relied upon anecdotal reports catalogued by frustrated anonymity users.

Sadia will present the first study to methodically characterize the treatment of anonymous users as second-class Web citizens in the context of Tor. She is a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), where she focuses on censorship, machine learning and privacy. Sadia's work was selected as a runner-up for the 2014 ACM SIGSAC dissertation award, the 2013 Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET) award and the best student paper award at the Privacy Enhancing Technology Symposium (PETS) 2012.

We’ll also hear from EFF activist and investigative reporter Dave Maass about an upcoming “surveillance sweep” in early April. The event will offer anyone an opportunity to help locate and collect the privacy policies of agencies in California using Automated License Plate Readers and/or Stingrays and other IMSI-catchers. Under a law adopted in Sacramento last year, every agency using such devices must publicly post a privacy policy. The surveillance sweep will crowdsource the identification of which departments may have yet to comply with the new law.

Finally, EFF's Shahid Buttar will share a brief update on the Electronic Frontier Alliance, a new network of grassroots groups building the movement for digital rights on campuses and in local communities around the country. Organized around five uniting principles, the Alliance will bring together groups pursuing a range of strategies and tactics, from hacker spaces crowdsourcing the open source development of software tools, to student groups hosting teach-ins and documentary screenings. We're eager to invite any grassroots groups in which you're involved to participate.

More info:
[1]: Sadia's paper: https://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/blogs-media/do-you-see-what-i-see-differential-treatment-anonymous-users.pdf
[2]: Background on the privacy risks presented by ALPR data: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/license-plate-readers-exposed-how-public-safety-agencies-responded-massive
[3]: Principles uniting the EFA: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HCzajkYFBffnkWvtzrewJLa4EEUlCG3au0azcvsOXhA

Date: Monday, March 21
Time: 6:00-8:00pm
Location: EFF, 815 Eddy Street, SF

What is this again? Techno-Activism Third Mondays (TA3M) is an informal meetup to connect activists and technologists who are interested in the challenges of surveillance and censorship, and anyone interested in free and open technology.

Find out more: https://ta3m.org/pages/about-ta3m

Want to receive these TA3M-SF updates regularly? Join our mailing list at: https://lists.eff.org/mailman/listinfo/ta3m-sf