Balancing societal security and individual privacy
Mark Ryan, School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham
Date and time: Thursday 18th April 2013 at 11:00
Location: 245, School of Computer Science
Mobile phones, wireless transport ticket systems, bank cards, email and web are systems which minute by minute log the minutiae of our daily lives. Although these logs are undesirable from a privacy point of view, governments and law enforcement officers like them because they are used to solve crimes. For example, about 440,000 requests by the police, local authorities and other permitted organisations to monitor telephone calls, emails and text messages were requested in a 15 month period in 2005-06 in the UK.
I want to discuss some early thoughts on how the requirements of individual privacy and societal security could be balanced, and what sort of technology could make that verifiable for the citizen. It will be a short talk, because I'm mostly looking for feedback on preliminary ideas.