The CPSR Compiler - April 2005 - 3.9 < <
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COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS for SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Turning Thoughts to Actions

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* BOARD OF DIRECTOR ELECTIONS

* WEBSITE UPDATE
* UBIQUITOUS NETWORKED SENSING AND SOCIETY
* ONLINE DELIBERATION / DIAC 2005
* WEBSITE UPDATE
* 2004-05 ESSAY CONTEST DEADLINE JUNE 1, 2005
* 2003-04 ESSAY CONTEST WINNER
* ELECTION PROJECT
* PRIVATERRA
* CHAPTER NEWS
* CPSR MEMBER NEWS
* RECOMMENDATIONS

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BOARD OF DIRECTOR ELECTIONS

We are pleased to announce three candidates are running for the two open Director-at-Large positions -
David Casacuberta, Todd Davies, and Joichi Ito.

Ballots were mailed on April 11 to all members, who were members in good standing as of March 14th, with postal addresses on file. Ballots must be postmarked back to the CPSR office no later than Monday, May 23, 2005.

Members can have access to the candidates to discuss issues with them by joining the Elections list via http://lists.cpsr.org/elections

Ballots will be counted June 23, 2005.

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CPSR LOS ANGELES CHAPTER CO-SPONSORING

UBIQUITOUS NETWORKED SENSING AND SOCIETY
By Gregory J Pottie
UCLA Electrical Engineering Department

Wednesday, May 4
Loyola Marymount University

Dinner, 6-7 p.m. (optional and unhosted):
Faculty and Staff Dining Room Talk, 7-8:30 p.m.:
Macintosh Room, University Hall 4520

Talk Abstract:
Recent developments in networked sensing will soon enable the widespread deployment of many new networked sensing technologies, for applications including ecological study, environmental monitoring, military and border security, warehouse and production chain logistics, and home medical monitoring. While sensors have long been employed in point security solutions (e.g. building cameras), factory production, and in internal automotive sensing, what is new is that the costs of networking and processing the information they produce are rapidly declining.

Consequently, sensing systems may be more cheaply and widely deployed, and information from a wide variety of sources aggregated. This can bring both tangible societal benefits (e.g., better pollution monitoring and water management) and societal risks (e.g., a potentially massive invasion of privacy). The technological foundations of this coming revolution will be outlined, with emphasis on some exciting research projects at the NSF-sponsored Center for Embedded Networked Sensing. This will be followed by a discussion of how and why societal values must be embedded in its design if it is to enhance our democracy.

This event is co-sponsored by CPSR/Los Angeles LA ACM
L.A. Council Chapters of the:
- IEEE Computer Society
- IEEE Engineering Management Society
- IEEE Society on the Social Implications of Technology

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ONLINE DELIBERATION: DESIGN, RESEARCH, AND PRACTICE / DIAC 2005
Stanford University, May 20-22

The conference will bring together software developers, social science researchers, and practitioners of online deliberation for three days of presentations and workshops. We plan to discuss the possibility of a new society for online deliberation with an international membership, to support cross-disciplinary scholarship, principled design, and informed practice in the use of online environments for group deliberation and democratic participation. This conference is the latest in a series of conferences on Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing (DIAC), presented in association< with the Public Sphere Project (a CPSR Initiative). The DIAC symposia which was launched by CPSR/Seattle in 1987 is one of the oldest conference series devoted to the social implications of computer technology.

Doug Schuler will be presenting on the e-Liberate system for online deliberation (using Roberts Rules of Order) this May at DIAC-05 and this June in Milan, Italy and Graz, Austria. We continue to get queries about e-Liberate, including many from people requesting the code. Although we will be releasing the code under some type of free/open< source license, we want to use the system to convene some "real" meetings before we release it. Hopefully this will help uncover any problems with functionality, Roberts Rules implementation, or the user interface.

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WEBSITE UPDATE

Be part of our Content Management System Group!

New content is now regularly being added to the site, so please visit when you can.

Issues and Working Groups

We now have templates that can be used to organize each Issue and Working Group section, similar to the Privacy section. We hope to launch new, improved versions of other sections soon, but we need help.

You can see a list of sections of Issues and Working Groups at http://www.cpsr.org/issues.

If you are interested in helping us integrate old content from the previous site, update and/or revive any of these, please contact Nancy Brigham nbrigham(a)cpsr.org and copy cpsr(a)cpsr.org.

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We also invite all chapters to put your news and information on the web site and to use its CMS for collaborative information- sharing.

If you are interested in helping us update and/or revive your Chapter, or others, please contact Nancy Brigham
nbrigham(a)cpsr.org and copy cpsr(a)cpsr.org.

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PREVIOUS WEBSITE

You can now review anything from the previous site (without frames) by going to http://www.cpsr.org/prevsite or adding "prevsite" into the URL you want to access. For example, a page that was formerly at http://www.cpsr.org/program/peace is now available at http://www.cpsr.org/prevsite/program/peace.
If there is content in that section that you think should be moved to the current site or that you are interested in updating for the current site, let Nancy Brigham know. It is now also easy to create redirects from the old URLs, so if you are using URLs for old pages for which you want automatic redirects, let us know.

We have several volunteers for beta testing. If you would like to be a beta tester for the member section and features of the site, contact Nancy Brigham nbrigham(a)cpsr.org and copy
cpsr(a)cpsr.org.

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CPSR'S 2004-05 ESSAY CONTEST

http://www.cpsr.org/act/contest/2004-5rules
Students can be published and win awards in CPSR's Essay Contest !

CPSR is looking for papers that will advance its work within its Working Groups and interests:

Participating students and faculty may join or renew their memberships in CPSR for one year for $15 and $25,
respectively.

Deadline for submissions is June 1, 2005.

The Essay Contest guidelines are at http://www.cpsr.org/act/contest/2004-5rules

Last year's Essay Contest Winners are posted via http://www.cpsr.org/act/contest/2003-4winners

Who would like to help review papers in June ? If you are interested, please write to cpsr@cpsr.org with the subject
"Essay Reviewer", and let us know your expertise or interest.

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Read about the first place winner of CPSR's 2003-04 Essay Contest, Jim MacAulay, a student at Pennsylvania State University. Investigating e-voting, he told us, helped him to think beyond the technical aspects of computers and technology, to consider the role of technology in society. Often that meant confronting the skepticism of his friends, who viewed technology more narrowly as computer languages and coding. His winning essay is E-voting: A Trail of Money, Lies and Deceit.
See http://www.cpsr.org/act/contest/macaulay

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ELECTION PROJECT

Erik Nilsson, Barbara Simons and Lillie Coney organized "Privacy and Security Risks of Centralized Voter Registration Databases" for CFP2005 (http://www.cfp2005.org ) in Seattle, WA.

Abstract:
The Help America Vote Act, passed in 2002, requires that each state create a centralized database of registered voters by 2006. The intent of the drafters of the law was to minimize voter disenfranchisement. But a large centralized database, especially one that is not implemented with adequate security and privacy protections, can introduce new risks - such as identity theft, voter harassment, the padding of voting rolls, and massive voter disenfranchisement - into the voter registration process.

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PRIVATERRA

Robert Guerra had the pleasure of speaking at the University of Indiana, specifically at the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics and the centre for cybersecurity. He spoke about Privaterra's recent work implementing privacy and security technology, technological education, and support in Central and South America, Central Asia and Central Africa.

The first 80 min of the presentation was recorded, and is available at
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/media/rkcsi_2005/guerra.mov

See http://www.privaterra.org/blog-rg/university-of-indiana- presentation.html

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CHAPTER NEWS

CPSR Seattle hosted a meeting during CFP for locals and visiting
attenders. They talked a little shop and a lot of privacy, as well as about
bioterror and bio research.


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CPSR MEMBER NEWS

Bill Drake gave a presentation on "Civil Society's Role and Impact"
at the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the
United Nations (CONGO) briefing for the UN Human Rights
Commission, The World Summit on the Information Society/Tunis
Phase: Considerations for the Human Rights Community, Geneva;
April, 13.

Bill Drake gave a presentation on "The Research Agenda" at the Workshop on ICT4Peace, Center for Humanitarian Dialogue,
Geneva; April 7.

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RECOMMENDATIONS

Karen Coyle suggests "Privacy in the Workplace: Case Studies
on the Use of Radio Frequency Identification in Access Cards,"
It concludes that RFID "door cards" are used for more than just
unlocking doors, but employees are not informed about other uses.
See http://www.rand.org/publications/RB/RB9107/RAND_RB9107.pdf

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Commons: Toward Global Knowledge Sharing
Santa Clara University, CA - April 21

The Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Santa Clara
University is hosting an international conference to bring together leaders
from academia, business, government and non-governmental
organizations to explore how to take the digital revolution to the next
step. How can we equitably share knowledge to address social and
environmental issues and promote social justice?

See http://www.scu.edu/sts/2005-International-Conference.cfm
Ask about a possible special CPSR member registration rate.

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RTPNet's conference, "Bringing Together Volunteers and
Technology for Community Development." conference
in Chapel Hill, NC on May 20 will offer a full day of breakout
sessions along three topic tracks: Technology Volunteer,
Technology Infrastructure, and Technology Innovation.
See http://www.rtpnet.org/conf/

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"Engaging and Empowering Educators: High Performance Classroom."
November 12-15, Seattle, WA
The deadline for applications is May 23.
See http://sc05.supercomputing.org/programs/edu-outreach.php

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My apologies if I overlooked any entries for this Compiler issue,
and/or if any of your questions/requests to me have not been
answered.Please feel free to send me reminders, maybe with
the Subject beginning - "NUDGE". Thanks, Susan evoy (a)cpsr.org

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The CPSR Compiler is a monthly notice with short updates on recent
activities of our members and opportunities to engage in the development
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(c) Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility 2005.
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--
Susan Evoy * Managing Director
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
P.O. Box 717 * Palo Alto * CA * 94302
Phone: (650) 322-3778 * (650) 322-4748 (fax)