Nowhere to Hide
29 June - 01 July 2020
St John's College, Cambridge, UK
Overview
This conference brings you into close contact with privacy regulators, challenges conventional wisdom, offers great networking experience and provides excellent value for money.
Nowhere to Hide is a privacy issue which applies to both individuals and organisations.
Do individuals have somewhere to hide? For the mass of individuals, the question is whether they can pursue their daily lives without always being tracked? For privacy advocates, a high degree of control over the collection and use of one’s personal data is a fundamental right, at least in most of Europe, and increasingly so elsewhere.
Privacy advocates want to maximise anonymity. But there is a tension between this objective and the wish by billions of people to be connected to friends via a host of online services. Research by the Norwegian Consumer Council and academics shows the way that leading companies ensure engagement to influence people by the use of powerful persuasive techniques.
Adtech, facial recognition and other biometric identification techniques make privacy a concept stretched to breaking point, despite some companies making an effort to adopt anonymising techniques and accountability programmes.
If privacy for individuals is in danger of becoming a mirage, how effective are the countervailing powers? They fall into two main categories:
- regulatory action in the form of Data Protection Authorities’ sanctions (warnings, fines, orders to amend and/or shut down processing etc); and
- growing scope for collective (class) action, in the US; parts of Asia; and in Europe, through GDPR rights for individuals to work together, or via representative organisations, to seek redress for both material and non-material damage.
Do companies have somewhere to hide? Companies are highly visible but often their collection and use of personal data is opaque, as revealed by investigations in Canada and the United Kingdom into Facebook/Cambridge Analytica, and the UK Information Commissioner’s investigations into adtech. Greater transparency is becoming compulsory.
It is now an open question whether data protection law alone can be an effective constraint on corporate appetite for personal data. However, there is a trend in many countries towards the convergence of data protection, consumer and competition laws, such as by the German Federal Cartel Office action against Facebook (not yet concluded). But not all regulators agree that this is an appropriate way forward.
Is there a way to redress the balance to give law abiding individuals somewhere to hide if they wish, and to ensure that companies and the public sector have fewer places to hide from making clear their harvesting of personal data? ‘Data havens’ are fast disappearing as more countries adopt strong data privacy laws, and extra-territorial jurisdiction is starting to become the norm.
Our 33rd Annual International Conference will cover these and many other issues.
A unique summer-school atmosphere
This residential conference is an opportunity to enjoy a unique friendly summer school atmosphere while mingling with a group of Data Protection Commissioners, privacy managers, specialist lawyers and academics from many countries.
Held at the beautiful St John’s College, Cambridge, where participants will enjoy the excellent facilities at the conference centre. Come and experience a classic Cambridge college and walk across the Bridge of Sighs over the River Cam.
Attending this conference will empower you to increase your return on investment by getting privacy right.
This event qualifies for up to 12 CPE credits
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