Can privacy engineering improve privacy resilience in information societies? Come and debate with us!
Surveillance is often framed as a resilience building tool in the security discourse. However, if human rights and democracy are included in the object of resilient behaviour, the relationship between resilience and surveillance becomes ambiguous, as it often ends up undermining the very values it aims at protecting.
Privacy and data protection, both fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, may also be construed as tools enhancing the resilience of democratic social values, such as freedom of expression or freedom from unlawful discrimination.
Read here the full presentation of the conference.
The conference will take place in Paris, at the Institut du Management de l’Information of the Université de Technologie de Compiègne.
Address: IMI – UTC, 2nd floor, 62 bv Sebastopol, 75003 Paris.
NextLeap participants and speakers: Harry Halpin, Francesca Musiani and Carmela Troncoso.
Currently, there is a generalized crisis in governance as traditional governance is subsumed by the Internet. On the Internet, there has been revelations of US mass surveillance and massive abuse of personal data. The traditional governance bodies of the Internet from the ITU to W3C seem hard-pressed by Silicon Valley companies, which has lead to widespread disillusionment. At the same time, the European Union’s General Data Protection Directive is attempting to enforce European rights, but purely through legal rather than technical means. Yet there have been new technologies based on encryption, such as blockchain technologies, that claim to be able to revolutionize governance. Yet, at the same time, there are numerous perils, such as the rise of opaque AI decision-making systems and consolidation of power in the hands of a few technologists, rather than a rapid democratization of technology.
Given these technical and political developments, new and improved models that take into account citizen involvement and improve meaningful participation need to be developed, along with fundamental Internet rights that can both be adopted by national governments, supra-national bodies, corporations, and cities. These principles will likely have to do with the guarantee of privacy, data protection, and other fundamental rights that are especially impacted by the Internet. This workshop will discuss the issues of decentralization, self-sovereignty, and net rights. In particular, this workshop will explore the understanding of the current national and international governance processes (both strengths and weaknesses, with a particular focus on the case of Russia) and new decentralized participatory practices based on crowdsourcing and direct democracy.
25 September 2018: Deadline for submission 2nd October 2018: Acceptance notification and registration instructions sent 9th October 2018: Program Announced 26 October 2018: Workshop 10th November 2018: Camera-ready version due
We accept both short position papers and long research papers. Short position papers may not exceed 8 pages total and full papers may not exceed 16 pages, including references and appendices. All submissions should follow in the Springer LNCS format and must be in Portable Document Format (.pdf). Papers should be unpublished and in English.
Papers must be submitted using Easychair:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=insci2018
Publications will be published in the post-proceedings of the Internet Science 2018 conference and we will investigate publishing full versions in a relevant journal.
Invited Keynote: Matt Blaze (Univesity of Pennsylvania) (tbc)
Chairs Harry Halpin (Inria) Ksenia Ermoshina (CNRS) Committee Renata Avila (Web Foundation) Moritz Bartl (Center for the Cultivation of Technology) Marios Issakides (University College London) Andrew Feenberg (Simon Fraser University) Seda Guerses (KU Leuven) Z. Isadora Hellegren (Internet Foundation in Sweden) Bogdan Kulynych (EPFL) Primavera Di Fillippi (CNRS) Francesca Musiani (CNRS) Santiago Siri (DemocracyEarth) Sarah Myers West (USC Annenberg)
This conference aims to analyse and to address the theme “Centres and Peripheries: Communication, Research, Translation” in communication from a multiplicity of perspectives.
First, the conference examines the issues of “core” and “margins”, inviting scholars to stretch the boundaries of media and communication research as an academic discipline. We welcome presentation of research that seeks to take communication and media studies to new territories and new fields of application.
Second, the key conference theme of centres and peripheries means reconsidering geographical, cultural and linguistic borders or boundaries. This topic addresses historical and spatial instability, understanding and explaining how certain physical or immaterial entities become centres – or peripheries – for certain issues in critical times (e.g., the Silicon Valley for technological innovation related to the Internet, online communication and network societies).
Third, the key concepts of centres and peripheries in communication are associated with economic and political power. Communication flows often go from rich (central) countries to poor (peripheral) ones. Within single countries distribution of resources are often unequal in terms of information and connectedness between privileged and unprivileged areas (e.g., urban peripheries and rural areas). People in disadvantaged areas are often excluded by flows, forms and practices of communication that are taken-for-granted in richer regions. In this regard, we also welcome contributions addressing European “divides”, exclusions or fights for inclusion from a communication perspective.
ISIRC is the world’s leading interdisciplinary social innovation research conference. The conference brings together scholars from across the globe to discuss social innovation in a variety of perspectives. ISIRC 2018 is hosted by the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, Center for Social Investment and Innovation in cooperation with the Westphalian University Gelsenkirchen, Institute for Work and Technology.
DSI4EU will be co-chairing a stream with Cédric Gossart and Müge Özman on Digital Social Innovation at the International Social Innovation Research Conference in Heidelberg, Germany, 3-5 September 2018.
Le Forum sur la Gouvernance de l’Internet a été créé lors du Sommet mondial sur la société de l’information, avec l’objectif d’engager les multiples parties prenantes dans un dialogue sur la gouvernance de l’Internet. Le FGI FRANCE a été organisé à l’initiative de plusieurs associations en 2014 et 2015 au CESE puis à Paris Descartes réunissant à chaque édition un millier de participants.
Francesca Musiani (CNRS, ISCC) participe à la Comité d’Organisation, outre qu’animer la Table ronde “L’Evaluation du Préjudice subi en matière de violation de données personnelles” du mecredi 25 avril. Les prochains rendez-vous avec le Forum sur la Gouvernance de l’Internet auront lieu à Paris le :
6 Juin – 100ECS, 100 rue de Charenton, Paris 12
5 Juillet – Université Paris Descartes, 45 Rue des Saints-Pères, Paris 6
10 Octobre – ARCEP, 7 Square Max Hymans, Paris 15
For more info visit this link
Following successful SUMSICs in Tilburg and Bologna, this edition will focus on the existing relation between social and public sector innovation at local and regional level, with a strong focus on the role and potential of digital technologies.
During the three-day summer school we will delve in different perspectives, tools, digital platforms, and methodologies that, through several local and regional experiences, networks, case studies, and workshops, help us co-design and co-create new public policies that answer to the key societal challenges in contemporary societies.
Here you can find the PDF programme. For more info visit this link.
Giacomo Gilmozzi will participate at the WORKSHOP 2: DSI IN CITIES - BUILDING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR RESPONSIBLE DATA-DRIVEN INNOVATION.
This workshop will explore how we can approach social innovation using data in a responsible way. It will bring together three CAPS projects – DECODE, DSI4EU and NEXTLEAP – to discuss how we can use new decentralised, privacy-aware technologies to enable responsible digital social innovation in cities. It will also consider the implications and linkages of the Next Generation Internet, which promises a decentralised and citizen-centric approach to connected internet technologies.
The aim of this discussion is to bridge the gap between the enormous potential of data-driven social innovation and the need to give citizens technological and data sovereignty. The discussion will consider how a combination of distributed, open tech infrastructures with state-of-the-art cryptography technology can provide the foundation for responsible digital social innovation. An interactive workshop exercise will help delegates to consider the opportunities of this alternative approach, and the policy and practical actions available to help them overcome potential challenges.
More info about the fair at this link.
Carmela Troncoso (EPFL) participates at the Barcelona City Hall internal workshop speaking about Privacy Technologies to Barcelona City Hall employees with relation to privacy (IT managers, developers, chief security officer, …).
Wouter Lueks gives a talk about hacking and cryptography at the CS Vincent van Gogh highschool (Assen, The Netherlands) in mathematics preparatory program for university.
Live: Zuckerberg faces questions at the European Parlament. Here is the Guardian’s streaming of the event.
Les occasions où le « monde parallèle » des infrastructures qui supportent et font fonctionner l’Internet se dévoile à nous sont rares : ce monde est fabriqué pour nous connecter au réseau des réseaux de façon indolore et instantanée. De surcroît, il s’appuie sur des discours d’invisibilité, d’universalité et de « nuages ». Il s’agit pourtant d’un monde très concret, dont les opportunités et les contraintes sont intimement liées à sa matérialité. En naviguant dans les « dessous » matériels de la Toile, on montrera quelques-unes de ces opportunités et contraintes – et pourquoi elles nous concernent en tant que citoyens et consommateurs du numérique. Francesca Musiani est chargée de recherche à l’Institut des Sciences de la Communication du CNRS. Elle est officiellement sociologue et membre du team des chercheurs de NextLeap, ong européenne financé dans le cadre H2020.
Pour voir la vidéo, cliquez ici.
The purpose of this workshop is the mobilisation of a core group of researchers and practitioners to investigate the core characteristics of a minimal viable platform for scholarly communication that is researcher-centric, interlinked, and web-native. As visible outcomes, this workshop aims to deliver insights regarding these core characteristics and will determine the most appropriate approach to engage in a sustained effort aimed at tackling technical challenges and promoting adoption of solutions.
The workshop will be held at the The Web Conf 2018 and host invited talks and research presentations. Giacomo Gilmozzi (IRI) presents the latest development made on the Hypothes.is platform, within the Plaine Commune and NetRights projects.
Program: Draft timeline for the invited talks.
09:00 — 09:10: Hello world!
09:10 — 09:40: Building a researcher-centric world on the user-centric platform, Solid, Tim Berners-Lee
09:40 — 10:00: Epistemology in the Cloud, Henry Story
10:00 — 10:20: Incentivizing data reuse [archived], Christine Chichester and Antonis Loizou
10:20 — 11:00: Take a break
11:00 — 11:30: Blockchain based educational certificates as a model for a P2P commons of scholarly metadata interaction [archived], Lambert Heller
11:30 — 12:00: Verified, shared, modular research communication with the Dat protocol [archived], Chris Hartgerink
12:00 — 12:15: Recommender Systems as Enabling Technology to Interlink Scholarly Information [archived], Elisabeth Lex
12:15 — 12:30: Contributive Research: Hypothes.is Implementation for Academic research Purpose [archived], Giacomo Gilmozzi
12:30 — ∞: Make it so!
In this workshop Harry Halpin (INRIA), George Danezis (UCL) and Giacomo Gilmozzi (IRI) discussed with IETF and IRTF people on human rights and protocols. IRI also presented their developments on the Hypothes.is instance they created within the NetRights Project for furthering the online-netrights-debate.
How will the unprecedented hyper-connectivity enabled by digital technologies serve the social good? How can we use these connected technologies to develop solutions for some of society’s biggest challenges?
Showcase the achievements and impact of your innovation to the digital society! Join us on 14-15th February in Brussels to exchange knowledge and experience, discuss priorities, and discover the many opportunities of a more human-centric Next Generation Internet, Keynotes, Hands-on sessions, Networking, etc. Giacomo Gilmozzi (IRI/NextLeap) attends.
For more information visit the following link.
La Paillasse, 226 rue Saint-Denis, Paris.
Following NextLeap CryptoPartyCamp (Mains d’Œuvres, 28-29 october, 2017)
ADN #3 : Mercredi 7 février 2018, 19H00
[Past events]
ADN #2 : Mercredi 10 janvier 2018, 19H30
ADN #1 : Mercredi 8 novembre 2017, 19H00
Julia Pohle (researcher at WZB Berlin) discusses and presents with Francesca Musiani (CNRS, ISCC) her current and recent research during the ISCC’s seminar “Politique(s) d’internet: de l’international à une comparaison nationale” (Internet Policy(s): from International to National Comparison).
More info at the following link : http://www.iscc.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article2411
NetCommons and NextLeap, two EU-funded research project working on alternative networks and encryption, are convening a discussion on alternative Internet infrastructures. In this workshop, activists and researchers are gathered to discuss the state of play, reflect on the success and failures of the “alternet movement” and lay out strategies that can help it grow and flourish in the coming years.
Salle Triangle, Centre Pompidou : 18:00 - 20:00
The purpose of this ECRYPT-CSA/Nextleap workshop on crypto-policies is to bring together cryptographers with policy makers, lawyers, law enforcement, NGOs, and industry to discuss the key issues (pun intended) related to cryptology and policy.
The lectures will be held from Monday 09:30 until Tuesday 17:00. Registration are open : register here.
The workshop is organized by the Coordination and Support Action ECRYPT-CSA (H2020-ICT-2014-1) in collaboration with the NEXTLEAP project (H2020-ICT-2015, ICT-10-2015). For more information visit the following link : https://www.cosic.esat.kuleuven.be/events/ecrypt-csa-workshop-crypto/
Computer Science faculty BC 420 - fourth floor of BC building (1015 Ecublens, Lausanne, CH).
The NEXTLEAP project aims to create and deploy communication and computation protocols that can serve as pillars for secure decentralization, a cornerstone in the development of messaging applications. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together the NEXTLEAP partners with experts on decentralization and distributed systems, as well as users of the NEXLEAP protocol to gather feedback about project developments.
For more information please click here
Real World Crypto 2018, takes place at the Volkshaus Zurich in Zurich, Switzerland on January 10-12, 2018. Real World Crypto 2018 is organized by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR).
More info at the following link : https://rwc.iacr.org/2018/index.html
The ECRYPT-CSA School on Societal Aspects of Cryptology and on Business and Innovation in Crypto takes place 7-9 January 2018 in Hotel Steigenberger Bellerive au Lac in Zurich, Switzerland. The lectures is held from Sunday 14:00 until Tuesday 17:00 (lunch breaks from 12:30-14:00 and two coffee breaks during the day). The school will be be co-located with Real World Crypto 2018.
For more information visit the following link : https://www.cosic.esat.kuleuven.be/events/ecrypt-csa-school-cryptology/
How do people represent “secure communications”? How do they represent an “adversary”? What can we learn about crypto from visual forms? This session is based on Ksenia Ermoshina’s ongoing collection of 50+ drawings from around the world representing encryption, key exchange, security flaws, surveillance, MITM and so on. These drawings have been done by a variety of folks: from high-risk activists from Ukraine, Russia, Middle East to well-know cryptographers, journalists or security experts.
More info at the following link : https://teahouse.homecomputing.fr/events/29.html
19-20 december 2017, Grande salle du Centre Pompidou
In collaboration with European project NextLeap, ANR project Epistémè and Plaine Commune’s Chaire de Recherche Contributive
Within the scope of a global reflection on a new articulation of data processing within the data economy (reticulated artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning in general and intensive calculus), on one hand, and of the interpretation of this data and these processes, on the other hand, and within the present scientific context as well as within the exercising of citizenship and more generally of responsibility, this eleventh edition of the New Industrial World Forum intends to analyse the impact of scientific instruments on the constitution of academic knowledge in a time when the technologies stemming from mathematics, as applied to computer science and networks, tend to establish themselves in all domains on the basis of efficiency criteria prescribed by the markets.
Security, Privacy and Applied Cryptographic Engineering (SPACE 2017)
Francesca Musiani (Cnrs, Nextleap partner) elected Vice-president in charge of Research of the Internet Society France.
A book review of La Toile que nous voulons (dir. by Bernard Stiegler and supported by the Web Foundation) .
Current issues in SDO decision-making for the Internet
Article on the website of “FM4” Radio about the EU commission funding open source encryption, and in which the Nextleap project is cited.
As part of the NextLeap European Program, IRI is organizing a “CryptoCamp” open to all technological, creative and political contributions related to topics of the NextLeap project: 1) group dynamics, personal data and cryptography and 2) platforms , governance, decentralized systems and the future of the web.
This workshop is being held as part of the Festival Rou (-x) tor at Mains d’oeuvre, Saint Ouen : Friday, October 27, 2017 - 14h - 19h Saturday, October 28, 2017 - 15h - 23h Sunday, October 29, 2017 - 14h - 19h
By alternating presentations of digital tools and practices with hacking, improvisation and role-playing sessions, the goal is to explore autonomous and decentralized digital practices in interaction with artistic performances proposed by the Festival.
Information and registration website: http://nextleap.eu/events/cryptocamp-mdo-2017.html
*** NEXTLEAP> http://nextleap.eu/ The European project NextLeap aims to create, confirm and disseminate communication protocols for a better foundation of the Internet, based on essential security, trust and respect for individual freedoms. NEXTLEAP is a European research project focused on an interdisciplinary study combining expertise in cryptography, privacy and decentralization. The team includes specialists in computer science, formal protocol verification, science and technology studies, sociology, philosophy and engineering. Partnership involves Inria, UCL, CNRS, IRI, and Merlinux (H2020 CAPS - Collective Awareness Project)
*** ROUXTEUR / NEMO at Mains d’Oeuvres, St Ouen
In the first of three conferences to be held over the next year, Didier Bigo (CERI-Sciences Po), Laurent Bonelli (ISP-Paris-10 Nanterre) and Sebastien-Yves Laurent (CMRP-Bordeaux) from the ANR project UTIC are bringing together representatives of major online service providers for a high-level experts roundtable. Participants will look at the ways in which technology firms engage with policy-makers and law enforcement agencies to address today’s major security challenges: How did their relationship with intelligence and law enforcement agencies evolve amidst heated post-Snowden debates on surveillance and privacy? What are the main legal hurdles faced by online service providers to protect the rights of their users, and what changes in legislation are called for? How do these companies adapt their business practices to help address today’s security challenges? By looking at these important issues at the intersection of policy, law and technology, the roundtable will analyse public-private relationships in the fields of surveillance and security, offering an opportunity for a much-needed discussion between key international stakeholders and researchers. To facilitate the discussion, the roundtable will be divided in two parts during which representatives of leading Internet companies will share their insights in interaction with researchers. The audience will have an opportunity to join the discussion during Q&A sessions.
CERI-56 rue Jacob, 75006 Paris / Salle de conférences
The documentary « Nothing to Hide », dedicated to electronic surveillance and its acceptance in society, will be released this Wednesday (September 6th) at the cinéma Saint-André-des-Arts in Paris (14 screenings at 1 pm). The documentary will also be screened at the Cinéma le Rio (Clermont-Ferrand, Sept 13-27) and September 24 and 28 at the cinema Le Régent (Saint-Gaudens).
On September 30, the film will be released on the Internet (Creative Commons Non Commercial).
Availability, Reliability, and Security (ARES)
International Association for Computing and Philosophy Conference
New article : Simpler secure group messaging?
Advocates for :
Privacy-Enhancing Technologies Symposium
NEXTLEAP’s members Ksenia Ermoshina, Harry Halpin and Francesca Musiani will present their joint paper “Can Johnny build a protocol? Co-ordinating developer and user intentions for privacy-enhanced secure messaging protocols” at the 2nd European Workshop on Usable Security. The paper gives an overview of some common protocol design questions facing developers of secure messaging protocols and tests the competing understandings of these questions using STS-inspired interviews with the designers of popular secure messaging protocols ranging from older protocols like PGP and XMPP+OTR to newer unstandardized protocols used in Signal and Briar. Far from taking users as a homogeneous and undifferentiated mass, the paper distinguishes between the low-risk users that appear in most usability studies (such as university students in the USA and Europe) and high-risk activist user-bases in countries such as Ukraine, Iran, Russia and Egypt where securing messages can be a matter of life or death.
Colloated with EuroS&P and Eurocrypt 2016. Today, the security and privacy properties of blockchain technologies are still an emerging field that is need of further research. The Bitcoin electronic cash system introduced the new field of blockchain technology as a practical mechanism for a permissionless and censorship-resistant e-cash over the Internet. However, the decentralized network and public verifiability of Bitcoin often do not provide the security and privacy properties assumed by its users. For example, despite a common assumption that Bitcoin is anonymous, transactions can be de-anonymized, limiting the commercial utility of the network and also harms individual privacy. Generalizations of Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology as a platform for smart contracts by Ethereum are still immature. For example, security issues in the underlying programming language for smart contracts in Ethereum led to the massive DAO Hack. More than ever, proper security and privacy properties need to be designed into the underlying framework for blockchain technologies.
Rightscon 2017
CryptoAction Symposium
NEXTLEAP researchers participated in giving a large two-hour session on Autocrypt which discussed community, useability, protocol and implementation aspects of bringing email encryption to a wider audience. About 70 people attended the session including many major implementors and people involved in the e2e email encryption space. Several conversations and new co-operations ensued.
The whole team met to discuss last advances in sub-projects. Autocrypt team have presented their new UX design approach in order to bring easy encryption to the mass. Claimchain is still at an early stage but fundamental technical considerations have been discussed.
Alfredo Pironti (ioactive) have also presented a shord talk about PGP: 15 years of broken emails… and we are still doing it wrong”
Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection Conference
Holger Krekel and Max Wiehle (Merlinux) were invited to organize this new “automatic mail encryption” conference which aims to bring developers and activists together and make progress towards more massively encrypted mails.
Bernard Stiegler (IRI) participated in a roundtable about the necessity of sharing data and source codes in a non- proprietary, open and reusable format, animated by Henri Verdier (French State Chief Technology Officer and Chief data officer, deputy to the Secretary General for Government Modernization) with Claire Legros and Yann Moulier-Boutang.
This paper presented by Harry Halpin (INRIA) (with Kelsey Cairns and Graham Steel) formally analyses the security issues with the W3C Web Cryptography API in Javascript, as used by Crypto.cat and other secure messaging tools.
In this paper, Dario Fiore (IMDEA) (with A. Mitrokotsa and L. Nizzardo), E. Pagnin. introduced and formally define multi-key Has, proposing a construction of a multi-key homomorphic signature based on standard lattices and supporting the evaluation of circuits of bounded polynomial depth.
This ‘Open source’ discussion between Francesca Musiani and the cryptographer Ludovic Perret was animated by a journalist.
Abstract: Access to all kinds of data and the ability to collect and exploit them have now reached an unprecedented level. We are facing a unique paradox: we have to give thought to the issues of both access to data and data protection, with an emphasis on personal data protection. How does cryptology - then the science of secrecy, now a science based on trust - evolve, in today’s and tomorrow’s contexts? How should individuals now adapt their behaviours?”
Harry Halpin gave this talk aimed at designers and artists interested in privacy issues and served on the jury panel to chose the Crypto Design Award winner.
Harry Halpin (with Elijah Sparrow, Kali Kaneko, and Ruben Pollan) submitted a paper on behalf of NEXTLEAP. His paper gives an overview and open security issues with the open-source codebase that some of the NEXTLEAP partners will be using in secure messaging protocols.
Harry Halpin (INRIA) gave the opening talk at the workshop, discussing security and privacy considerations on open data.
Karthikeyan Bhargavan (INRIA) presented “Formal Verification of Smart Contracts.” focussing on a formal analysis of the reasons for the failure of smart contracts like the DAO in Ethereum, as explored in D2.1
Marios Isaakidis presented UnlimitID, a work details privacy-preserving federated identity based on Oauth that uses blind signatures to prevent the identity provider from violating the privacy of its users (D2.2). Open Access: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2994637&CFID=857072842&CFTOKEN=74551814
These hackathons are made to bring together developers, operators and designers to come up with creative new tools and visualisations that benefit the entire Internet community. With people from CAIDA, Forth and AMS-IX Marios Isaakidis worked on “The Remote Peering Jedi”. The purpose of the project was to detect unreported remote peerings so as to make the IXP peer selection process more transparent.
Ksenia Ermoshina presenting Nextleap on a roundtable “Outstanding Activism” with Sarah Harrison, Ksenia Ermoshina and Katharina Nocun.
Carmela Troncoso (IMDEA)
Freedom Not Fear attended is the annual meeting for civil rights activists from all across Europe. Marios Isaakidis (UCL) got involved in discussions about surveillance, privacy and EU legislation.
Bernard Stiegler (IRI)
The Internet Rules, But How? An STS take on “Doing” Internet Governance Pre-conference to AoIR by Francesca Musiani.
Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Conference
Harry Halpin (INRIA) attended at the invitation of Slim Amamou, NEXTLEAP Advisory Board member, and briefly presented the NEXTLEAP project. Users for future user studies were recruited from over 50+ at-risk human rights activists from North Africa and the Middle East.
Carmela Troncoso (IMDEA) will be presenting NEXTLEAP to the CAPSSI Community workshop.
Bernard Stiegler (IRI) gave a talk on disruption and the different ways to resist to the blind and destructive implementation of technologies and innovation into society. He stressed the need to select and appropriate the algorithms and software that reach them at the heart of their personal lives as well as their political rights. The video is online: http://www.tvreze.fr/Le-numerique-et-la-societe-qui-vient-comment-agir-face-a-une-technologie-aveugle_a2605.html
Harry Halpin (INRIA) attended the Web Authentication Working Group meeting, whose technology will be likely used in our open source code after a thorough privacy analysis.
Ksenia Ershomina (CNRS) will be presenting NEXTLEAP and delivering a paper called “End-to-end Encrypted Messaging Protocols”.
OpenPGP Conference
“Materializing governance by information infrastructure”, a talk by Francesca Musiani.
Internet Governance Middle East (IGMena) Summit
When we talk about blockchains as “part of the Web”, we face some specific questions: How does this fit into the same origin security model of the Web? What are the privacy implications, especially when talking about identity management? What part of the Web stack would be involved: client-side, server-side, protocols, interchange formats? What is the relationship to payments, including W3C’s Web Payments work.
Francesca Musiani discussed centralization and p2p systems from a socio-technical perspective, as explored in D2.2. (CNRS)
Nadim Kobeissi (INRIA)
Harry Halpin (INRIA) discussed ethical and technical issues in standardization relating to privacy and security. Open Access: https://www.securityweek2016.tu-darmstadt.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Group_securityweek2016/pets2016/4_responsibility_of_open_standards.pdf
NEXTLEAP co-organizes a panel on Decentralization and Privacy. Participants: Carmela Troncoso (IMDEA), Nadim Kobeissi (INRIA Paris), George Danezis (UCL), Harry Halpin (INRIA Paris).
Nadim Kobessi (INRIA) was involved in updating the software used for IETF standardization.
PGPSummit
Vincent Puig (IRI) attended this workshop of presentation of CAPS Project. The afternoon discussion group about several technologies such as the blockchain, Libre Office, Owncloud, Etherpad, KDEN Live (Alternative to Première), ABC (Attribute Based Credentials), and others was fruitful and provided input to the European Commission on the importance of supporting decentralized, open source, and free software.
This event attended by Marios Isaakidis (UCL) was a participatory discussion about hacktivism as a way to protest for social or political goals. On the basis of the fact that hacktivism is often misunderstood and overlooked, the purpose of the debate was to explore how persecution of hacktivists affects other campaigns and how citizens and other activists can show solidarity. Prominent activists such as Lauri Love, Privacy International researcher Eva Blum- Dumontet and Oliver Shykles from Queer Friends of Chelsea Manning participated.
Harry Halpin participated on a panel on “Human Rights and Technology” with Patrice Chazerand (Director in charge of Digital Economy and Trade Groups, DIGITALEUROPE), Henrik Biering (CEO Peercraft), and Jacques Bus (Digital Enlightenment Forum).
Marios Isaakidis attended this conference about various contemporary issues like post- quantum, lightweight/low zero cryptography, cryptography for embedded systems, new requirements for emerging/novel applications/distributed ledger technology (eg, digital currency), cryptographic aspects of next- generation identity management, eg, biometrics, computing on encrypted data, privacy and anonymity, protocol, Cryptanalysis and Computationally Sound Analysis of Protocols.
Harry Halpin participated as part of panel “From cybersecurity to terrorism - are we all under surveillance?” with Jans Kleijssen (Council of Europe), Gregory Mounier (Europol), Valentina Pellizzer (OneWorld Platform), and Sacha van Geffen (Greenhost). Policy issues involving encryption and “end-user” cybersecurity were put forward.
With a presentation by Georges Danezis (UCL).
Videos are available at https://digital-studies.org/wp/seminaire-digital-studies-2015-2016/
Holger Krekel (Merlinux) attended this gathering of CAPS-related EU projects and interested parties. He gave an impromptu overview on aspects of NEXTLEAP and thereafter enjoyed fruitful discussions with Stravroula Maglavera from the MAZI project (offline communication infrastructures for physical communities) and with Renato Lo Cigno from the NETCOMMONS project (network infrastructure as commons). They gathered interest in arranging another meet-up to exchange research, development and community insights and tools.
Harry Halpin presented “A Batalha pelo Controle dos Padrões Abertos: o IETF, W3C, DRM, Blockchains e além” (A battle to control the Web: IETF, W3C, DRM, Blockchains, and More”) that discussed open standards and encryption with an audience of concerned citizens and human rights defenders in Brazil.
Summer school on real-world cryptography and privacy, with a presentation by Carmela Troncoso (IMDEA).
Nadim Kobeissi (INRIA)
Marios Isaakidis (UCL) organized a cryptoparty with invited talks from Cyprus University of Technology, the developers of the private message and file sharing system Peerio (https://peerio.com) and the EMEA Internet Observatory (http://hack66.info/observatory). Marios Isaakidis gave a talk on the peer-to-peer censorship circumvention system CENO (https://censorship.no).
Max Wiehle (Merlinux) attended the LEAP and PIXELATED gatherings in order to establish contact with a major integration community of NEXTLEAP and also to discuss how future NEXTLEAP efforts relate to LEAP. They discussed in-depth with developers about current and planned key management protocols and discussed challenges and tasks. Discussions also took place with South American email providers and activists who are looking at using LEAP and automatic key management.
NetFutures 2016 “Sharing Economy” Panel with Harry Halpin (INRIA) and George Danezis (UCL).
This event attended by Harry Halpin (INRIA) featured a discussion over the role of DRM (Digital « Rights » Management) in open standards via Encrypted Media Extensions, including the dangers to security researchers. Other participants included Joi Ito (Media Lab), Richard Stallman (Free Software Foundation), and Danny O’Brien (EFF).
Max Wiehle (Merlinux) went to this annual convention of activists and programmers and led a workshop on how to fight vandalism in Wikis and other collaborative contexts. A particularly interesting discussion came about with Debian developer and cryptographer Daniel Kahn Gillmor and Marios Isaakidis (UCL) on how a provider/server can prove that a client initiated a key change to deflect false “I didn’t submit this key” accusations. The IFF also helped NEXTLEAP to get a better picture of end-user use cases. The audience and participants included activists, researchers, trainers, journalists and social scientists. This diversity made it very clear that the use cases depend heavily on the community in question.
Karthik Bhargavan (INRIA) attended. The work presented formal verification over TLS, a key protocol on the network layer for identity and encrypted messaging systems.
NextLEAP team F2F meeting
Marios Isaakidis (UCL) attended the largest Free Software Developers meeting in Europe and got involved in the security, synchronous communications and decentralizations dev-rooms.
Carmela Troncoso (IMEDA) gave a talk at a panel entitled “Enhancing privacy and security through technological innovation” organized by DG CONNECT. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHQblksLL4s