From smartwatches to credit card purchases, sensors and devices are collecting a tremendous amount of information about citizens that can be used to predict behavior.
While it's sometimes helpful - a suggested purchase - the analysis can answer many more questions: How's our health? When will we leave a job? Will we pay this credit card bill? Perhaps even, will we commit a crime?
"Privacy, Big Data and the Law" will explore the legal and ethical issues that arise from the growing use of big data, said UC Santa Cruz Chief Campus Counsel Michael Troncoso. This is the first in a series of DataLex events this coming year that will look at new topics at the intersection of big data and the law.
"While data analytics promise to unlock extraordinary advances in productivity and research, fascinating legal and ethical issues arise as Big Data is deployed in new contexts," Troncoso said. "This event will bring together some of the leaders in the field to discuss how it will affect people for years to come."
For the inaugural event, DataLex will feature data scientists, policymakers, legal scholars, and privacy advocates to collectively consider these important issues using technical, social and ethical lenses simultaneously.
The event is part of UC Santa Cruz Data Science Week. Registration for the Oct. 13 event is $99 and can be done online.
Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, will give the opening address. Dempsey is a leading expert on privacy, who has spent nearly two decades with the Center for Democracy & Technology. Additionally, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent agency within the executive branch charged with advisory and oversight roles regarding the nation's counterterrorism programs.
Travis LeBlanc, chief of enforcement for the Federal Communications Commission, will deliver a lunchtime keynote talk on the development and regulation of the information economy and emerging issues in privacy enforcement.
The day will be broken into three panels. The first will explore privacy with genomic data and whether restrictions are holding back precision medicine.
The second panel will look at whether algorithms are fair or whether they can discriminate when it comes to grading, rewarding, hiring and firing people.
The final panel will focus on data governance and tools for navigating institutional values and regulatory uncertainty.
