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The CPSR Compiler - November 2006

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The CPSR Compiler - November 2006 - 5.5
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COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS for SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Turning Thoughts to Actions

 * COMPILER BACK FROM HIATUS
 * ANNUAL MEETING: SAN FRANCISCO, DEC. 16, TECH POLICY CAMP: DEC. 17
 * CPSR JOINS NEW COALITIONS
    - IGF Dynamic Coalitions: Privacy, Open Standards, Access to Knowledge
    - Digital Freedom Campaign
 * CPSR PARTICIPATION AT IGF/ATHENS
 * OTHER RECENT CPSR ACTIVITIES
    - PDC 2006, Trento, Italy
    - Stanford BarCamp
    - Board Members
 * ANNOUNCEMENTS
    - LaborTech 2006, Nov 17-19, 2006
    - Internet Identity Workshop (IIW), Dec 4-6, 2006
    - Call for Volunteers: CSPR Election Committee 2007


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COMPILER BACK FROM HIATUS

We're happy to return to publication of the Compiler after a break during August, September and October (issues 5.2-5.4 were skipped). Changes in office location and staffing interrupted our day-to-day activities, followed by a period of learning and catching up with our obligations.

With this issue, we return to regular publication and look forward to informing you about CPSR activities and developments in policy issues of importance to us.  We will be re-examining the features we present here, and are interested in your opinion about what you would like to see included.  Please send your feedback to Dan Krimm, CPSR's new Communication Director, at [ dan (at) cpsr (dot) org ].


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ANNUAL MEETING: SAN FRANCISCO, DEC. 16, TECH POLICY CAMP: DEC. 17

Our annual members' meeting and dinner reception will be held Saturday, December 16, 2006, 6-9 pm in San Francisco at the Open Source Applications Foundation, 543 Howard Street.  This follows our annual board meeting earlier in the day, and board members will be in town for this event.  The Board and Communication Director will lead a discussion about CPSR's future that we hope will be very interactive.  This is *your* organization.  Please come and help us make it as effective as it can be for members and the public.

We will send final details to members as soon as they are firmly established.  We look forward to seeing you there!

On the following day (Sunday, December 17), CPSR will be hosting a BarCamp on TechnoPolitics at a venue to be determined.  Stay tuned:

   http://barcamp.org/BarCampTechnoPolitics


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CPSR JOINS NEW COALITIONS


* IGF Dynamic Coalitions

Arising out of the Internet Governance Forum inaugural meeting in
Athens, 30 Oct - 2 Nov, 2006, several new coalitions of civil society organizations and others will address important Internet issues, including Privacy, Access to Knowledge/Freedom of Expression, Open Standards, etc.  CPSR has already joined the first two coalitions and will be joining the third.

Dynamic Coalition on Privacy:

   http://igf2006.intgovforum.org/wiki/Privacy

Dynamic Coalition on Access to Knowledge and Freedom of Expression:

   http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dvt3w7x_10dks6j3

Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards

   http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/wsis-pct/2006-October/001191.html


 * Digital Freedom Campaign

CPSR joins with EFF, Public Knowledge, the Consumer Electronics Association, Computer and Communications Industry Association, New America Foundation and others in a coalition to protect and preserve balanced fair use and personal use rights for digital technologies.
For more information, see:

   http://www.digitalfreedom.org/


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CPSR PARTICIPATION AT IGF/ATHENS

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is an international forum for multi-stakeholder dialogue concerning Internet governance policy, established by the United Nations Secretary-General.  It arose out of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), and had its inaugural meeting in Athens from 30 October to 2 November.

CPSR has provided an important email list that is used by almost 300 members of civil society organizations to coordinate activities surrounding Internet Governance, starting at WSIS.  Many members of this list have collected into an ad hoc coalition called the Internet Governance Caucus (IGC), whose mission is to address the definition and proper models of Internet governance as well as technical, usage, and access-related policy matters.

Several current and former CPSR board members were present in Athens, including William Drake, Robert Guerra, Desiree Miloshevic and Joichi Ito, along with several other CPSR members, participating in significant capacities such as giving presentations at workshops, chairing panels, and participating in the IGF Advisory Group.  The aim of this inaugural meeting was to allow individuals, non-profits, academics, governments and international organizations to discuss key Internet issues in an open format allowing broad dialogue on Internet governance.  There was a fairly broad consensus that the event was a success as a first step in discussing principles, processes, and policies.

An important result of civil society activities was the formation of several new "Dynamic Coalitions" to address issues such as Open
Document Format (ODF), Privacy, Capacity Building, Open Standards, Access to Knowledge / Freedom of Expression, etc., with CPSR joining the Dynamic Coalitions on Privacy and Access to Knowledge, and aiming to join the coalition on Open Standards.

CPSR's involvement in data privacy issues is long standing, and our original statement of Electronic Privacy Principles from 1996 can be found here:

   http://www.cpsr.org/issues/privacy/epp


Dynamic Coalition on Privacy:

   http://igf2006.intgovforum.org/wiki/Privacy


Dynamic Coalition on Access to Knowledge and Freedom of Expression:

   http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dvt3w7x_10dks6j3


Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards

   http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/wsis-pct/2006-October/001191.html


The <governance@lists.cpsr.org> list can be found at:

   http://lists.cpsr.org/lists


Several CPSR members are involved with related efforts, including:

 * Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet)
   http://www.intgovforum.org/giganet_program.html

 * DiploFoundation Internet Governance Capacity Building Program
   http://www.diplomacy.edu/ig/

 * Internet Governance Project
   http://www.internetgovernance.org/


The main IGF web site is located at:

 * http://www.intgovforum.org/


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OTHER RECENT CPSR ACTIVITIES

 * PDC 2006, Trento, Italy

The latest in CPSR's series of Participatory Design Conferences was held July 31 to August 5 in Trento, Italy, on the subject of "Expanding Boundaries in Design" focusing attention on the multiple contexts in which design takes place and on an expanding range of possible design outcomes. For more information, see:

   http://www.cpsr.org/issues/pd/pdc2006/index_html


 * Stanford BarCamp, CPSR BarCamp

Since August 2005, a series of "unconferences" modeled loosely on the open-space workshop format have sprung up as a complement to the "FooCamps" instituted as invitation-only events by Tim O'Reilly. See the Wikipedia description:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcamp

On August 25-27 at Stanford University, the Symbolic Systems Program hosted a BarCamp on Technology and Politics, with several CPSR members involved including CPSR President Todd Davies, Associate Director of Symbolic Systems.

   http://barcamp.org/Technology%20and%20politics

CPSR is hosting a followup BarCamp on TechnoPolitics on Sunday, December 17, 2006, following our annual members' meeting the day before.  (Details TBD.)


 * Board Members -- recent participation by board members in outside events
   NOTE: No CPSR general funds are used to support participation in non-CPSR
   events


President Todd Davies gave a talk at the Towards e-Democracy Conference (TED 06) in Mantova, Italy, 24 October, 2006, entitled "From Messages to Meetings: The Challenge and Promise of Online Deliberation" addressing barriers that have thus far stood in the way of "e-democracy" and outlining a strategy for overcoming them.

   http://www.mi.imati.cnr.it/conferences/ted06.html


Director-at-Large William McIver, Jr. recently participated in two events of note:

He gave the keynote at the COMINF'06 workshop on November 2, 2006. The talk was titled "Community Informatics and Human Development."  He discussed the specific role that community informatics has to play in contributing to the realization of the Millennium Development goals and the improvement of human development in general.  COMINF was latest addition to the annual OnTheMove OTM Federated Conferences and
Workshops held in Montpellier, France.

   http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/fedconf/index.html?page=home

The workshop program and abstracts are at:

   http://ciresearch.webstylus.net/cominf06/?n=Main.COMINF2006WorkshopProgram

McIver also participated in the annual meeting of the International Federation of Information Processing's (IFIP) Working Group on ICT and Sustainable Development (WG 9.9) in Maribor, Solvenia.  WG9.9 is a part of IFIP's Technical Committee 9 on the Relationship between Computers and Society.  The scope and aims of IFIP WG9.9 include facilitating research on the sustainable use of ICT, networking among experts, and facilitating education in this area.  McIver became a member of WG9.9 in 2005. WG9.9 is planning to hold a graduate summer school on ICT for Sustainable Development in the summer of 2008.  The location is to be announced.  For further information on WG9.9 and IFIP see:

   http://www.ifip.org/bulletin/bulltcs/memtc09.htm and http://www.ifip.org


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ANNOUNCEMENTS

 * LaborTech 2006, Nov 17-19, 2006
   University Of San Francisco
   http://www.labortech.net/conferences.htm

LaborTech.net has had conferences since 1990 bringing together labor video, computer, labor media activists and labor educators to advance knowledge and use of the the Internet and multi-media by working people.

This year's conference also includes an international labor competition for the best labor animation and also will include an educational component of research and education papers about telecommunication and how technology is being used to further exploit and spy working people.


 * Internet Identity Workshop (IIW), Dec 4-6, 2006
   Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA
   http://www.windley.com/events/iiw2006b/announcement

The Interenet Identity Workshop is about moving User-Centric Identity ideas and technologies forward.  User-centric identity starts with the individual, and his or her needs, not with enterprise or technology vendors.  It is about working relationships and services between individuals and retailers, employers, membership bodies, and organizations of any kind.  It is not about a centralized solution, or anybody's silo.  As such it solves different problems than the familiar ones of providing authentication and authorization services within a single organization, or federation between different organizations.

Internet Identity Workshops are informal and purpose-driven.  In every IIW so far, a high degree of progress has been made, within and between separate development efforts.  IIWs also serve as the main forums for face-to-face meeting of the whole user-centric identity community.  The workshops are organized by a working group within Identity Commons, and are run on Open Space practices and principles -- no formal presentations, no keynotes, no panels.  Instead, topics are vetted and chosen by participants when the workshop convenes, and open meetings are organized and scheduled for the day that follows.

The following are expected to come up at the workshop:
 - Technical protocols and frameworks
 - The nitty gritty implementation experiences
 - The user experiences of identity systems
 - Legal and social issues


 * Call for Volunteers: CSPR Election Committee 2007

Director-at-Large Lillie Coney will be heading up a committee to plan CPSR's 2007 election.  Anyone interested in volunteering to participate in this committee should contact her at [ coney (at) epic.org ].


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 * About the CPSR Compiler:

The CPSR Compiler is a monthly notice with short updates on recent activities of our members and opportunities to engage in the development of the public voice through CPSR projects.

To report news for future issues, email a sentence or two (and URL if available) to cpsr (at) cpsr.org -- please begin your subject header with "FOR COMPILER: " for reliable recognition.


 * About CPSR:

CPSR provides a discussion and project space where individuals can contribute to the public debate and design of our global digital future. Through CPSR's chapters and working groups, members focus on regional and civic issues developing the public voice.  To ensure a democratic future in a time of intense globalization, the voice of the public must command a prominent position on the world stage.  CPSR frames and channels the public voice.


 * Members:

When in doubt about how to get more out of your CPSR membership, refer to the Activists Handbook or email [ cpsr (at) cpsr (dot) org ] to get help in getting the most out of your membership.

To get involved in policy work through CPSR, consider joining one of CPSR's Working Groups or email [ cpsr (at) cpsr (dot) org ] about starting a new one.

CPSR-Activists is the main members forum of CPSR, where the board and members discuss current policy and organizational issues.  Only subscribed members can post to this list.

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(c) Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility 2006. Redistribution of this email publication -- both internally and externally -- is encouraged if it includes this paragraph.

CPSR is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.  Donations are tax deductible.

Pay Dues or Make Donations via:

   http://cpsr.org/membershipForm

Find out about email discussion lists and Working Groups hosted by CPSR at:

   http://lists.cpsr.org

The CPSR Compiler is emailed to CPSR members in good standing who have provided CPSR with their email address.

Created by dkrimm
Last modified November 21, 2006 07:42 AM
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