Online Anonymity: Right or Threat? | One-day Symposium

Centre for Research in Communication and Culture, Loughborough University

Wed 8 February 2017, 13:00 – 18:00

Loughborough University, Brockington Building, Room B.1.11

 

Whenever we navigate the Web, we leave a trace of our movements through our IP address, which can in turn be used to establish our identity - for instance, by cross-checking it with a user’s Internet subscription. By using software such as VPN and Tor, however, it is possible to avoid leaving such traces, becoming anonymous in the web.

A lively debate among policy-makers, security professionals, hacker communities, and human rights associations has recently ensued regarding the question if such anonymity is acceptable and in which form. On the one side, advocates of online anonymity point to the right to privacy and the potential risks of an ever-reaching surveillance state; on the other side, its antagonists emphasize the presence of close links between anonymity and criminal activities online.

This half-day symposium aims to encourage dialogue between scholars, institutions, stakeholders, and the wider community about an issue of web governance that will be of crucial importance in the next years in order to build the civic society of the information age.

 

Convenors: Mark Monaghan, Simone Natale, Thais Sardá and Nikos Sotirakopoulos

 

Programme

1:00-1:10 – Welcome
John Downey (director of the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture) and symposium convenors

1:10-2:00 - Timandra Harkness (presenter of BBC Radio 4 series, FutureProofing), "Anonymity, Autonomy, Privacy and Secrecy"

2:00-3:00 - Tim Jordan (University of Sussex), “Anonymity: A Complex Right”

3:00-3:30 - Break

3:30-4:30 - Judith Aldridge (University of Manchester), “Drug-trade and anonymity in cryptomarkets: harms and benefits for users and sellers”

4:30-5:50 - Round table with Dave Elder-Vass (Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University), Wendy M. Grossman, representative of the ngo Open Rights Group (https://www.openrightsgroup.org), and Russell Lock (Department of Computer Science, Loughborough University)

5:50-6:00 – Conclusions

 

For information, please contact Thais Sardá: [log in to unmask]

 

The event is free and open to the public. Conference abstracts and registration: http://crcc2017.eventbrite.com    

***
Dr. Simone Natale
Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies
Loughborough University
Department of Social Science
Leicestershire
LE11 3TU
United Kingdom
Phone (work): (+44) (0) 1509223380

Institutional webpage: 

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/socialsciences/staff/natale-simone.html

Academia.edu: 

https://lboro.academia.edu/SimoneNatale 

 

Latest publication: “There are no old media” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcom.12235/abstract

 

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