[This talk is one of a pair of talks on open access that CRCS is co-sponsoring in collaboration with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Science Commons.]
Speaker: Peter Suber
Location: Maxwell Dworkin G125
Time: March 17, 2008, 12-1:30pm
Title: What Can Universities Do to Promote Open Access?
The Center for Research on Computation and Society continues its weekly lunch seminar:
CRCS Privacy and Security Lunch Seminar
Date: Wednesday, 5 March 2008
Time: 12:00pm-1:30 pm
Place: Maxwell Dworkin 319
Topic: Animal-Robot Mixed Colonies for Humanitarian Land-mine Detection
Speaker: Thrishantha Nanayakkara, PhD
Abstract:
One of the main objectives of humanitarian demining is to detect and remove landmines with minimum damage to the environment, whereas in military demining on-site detonation of land-mines is acceptable. Unfortunately, a lack of appropriate technologies for humanitarian de-mining slows down many post-conflict human re-settlement programs in many developing countries. Since de-mining is a pre-requisite to post-conflict economic revival, there are vast opportunities for novel technologies that could make a direct impact on the speed and safety of de-mining. The talk elaborates a project in progress in Sri Lanka, which has also been proposed to be extended in a Harvard Initiative to develop appropriate technologies for humanitarian de-mining. The current focus is on a heterogeneous system of trained rodents, field robots, and human experts to detect landmines in an unstructured forest environment. A salient feature of the proposed system is that each sub-system (robots, animals, and humans) improve their individual capabilities by interacting with each other. It will also discuss current work on distributed sensing techniques for on-the-go estimation of a parametric model of the distribution of land-mines in a given minefield to improve the efficiency of area coverage.
The Center for Research on Computation and Society continues its weekly lunch seminar:
CRCS Privacy and Security Lunch Seminar
Date: Wednesday, 13 February 2008
Time: 12:00pm-1:30 pm
Place: Maxwell Dworkin 319
Topic: The dotCrime Manifesto: How to Stop Internet Crime
Speaker: Phil Hallam-Baker, Principal Scientist, Verisign
Abstract:
As business has moved to the Internet, crime has followed. Today
the Internet ‘is where the money is’. Internet crime is professional
and organized according to the decentralized, market driven collective
models of Web 2.0. Many people have analyzed Internet crime, the
point is to stop it. But is this even possible?
Clearly we cannot eliminate the possibility of Internet crime any more
than we can eliminate crime in the offline world. But we can certainly
make the Internet a less crime-permissive environment and we can stop
many Internet crimes completely. There is a precedent for this, the
booming business in pirate satellite TV decoders that existed in the mid
1990s was shut down within a few years through a combination of
technical and law enforcement means.
The technical infrastructure has scaled much more gracefuly than the
social infrastructure. In particular the accountability mechanisms that
were present in the primordial Internet have snapped. To defeat Internet
crime we must establish reliably marked areas of the Internet where
businesses (and in some cases users) are subject to accountability.
The Center for Research on Computation and Society continues its weekly lunch seminar:
CRCS Privacy and Security Lunch Seminar
Date: Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm
Place: Maxwell Dworkin 119
Topic: Expectations of Privacy for a Database Age
Speaker: Wendy Seltzer: Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society and
Visiting Professor, Northeastern University School of Law
http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/
Abstract:
Much of privacy law centers on the public’s “reasonable
expectations of privacy.” Yet in the Internet era, our expectations and
experiences may become disconnected: we don’t often realize how much
information we’ve given to search engines, social network sites, and
other Internet intermediaries, nor how that information looks when
aggregated. How can we balance the interests of the collectors and the
collected? Can technologists help us to understand the identifying
implications of data collection?
Bio:
Wendy is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northeastern University
Law School, studying intellectual property, privacy, and free expression
online. As a Fellow with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet &
Society, Wendy founded and leads the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse,
helping Internet users to understand their rights in response to
cease-and-desist threats. She has an A.B. from Harvard College and J.D.
from Harvard Law School, and occasionally takes a break from legal code
to program (Perl and MythTV).
The Center for Research on Computation and Society continues its weekly lunch seminar:
CRCS Privacy and Security Lunch Seminar
Date: Wednesday, 20 February 2008
Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm
Place: Maxwell Dworkin 319
Topic: Seeing the Light: The Simplest Problems are the Hardest
or: Shining Light on the Federal Speech Commission and the Opportunity Dynamic
Speaker: Bob Frankston
Abstract:
A light switch seems very simple — you just turn it on and the bulb
lights. What happens when that relationship is no longer implicit and
we can rethink even the simplest assumptions? Seemingly simple
problems force us to confront our understanding. If we can’t
understand the relationship between a light switch and whatever it is
supposed to do how can we begin to understand the Internet which is
about relationships and not about telecommunications?
When we can decouple systems we have an opportunity to discover new
possibilities yet we can pretend that nothing has changed. We find
ourselves talking past each other. We can’t begin to communicate until
we recognize that we aren’t communicating. Computing and understanding
information should be part of our basic literacy and not just
something done by skilled professionals. How else can we describe and
understand our dynamic and evolving world?
Normally we resolve such conflicts by waiting for a generation to
select for those who understand the new possibilities. Can we do
better?
Bio:
Bob Frankston has been working with computers since 1963. His academic
work involved Multics and the predecessor to the internet. In the
business world, Bob and Dan Bricklin created the VisiCalc spreadsheet
program, known as the first “killer app.” Other adventures in the
software industry include creating Lotus Express, working on early
pen-based mobile computing and playing a central role in making home
networking happen while at Microsoft. He has applied his experience to
understanding the Internet and related policy issues.
The Center for Research on Computation and Society continues its weekly lunch seminar:
CRCS Privacy and Security Lunch Seminar
Date: Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Time: 12:00pm-1:30 pm
Place: Maxwell Dworkin119
Topic: Computer Science Applications to Improve Health Delivery in Low-Income Countries.
Speaker: Neal Lesh, PhD, MPH. Chief Technology Officer of D-tree International (www.d-tree.org), Director of Special Projects, Dimagi (www.dimagi.com)
Abstract:
It is increasingly possible to apply computer innovation to improve aspects of health care delivery in low-income countries. In this talk, I will discuss opportunities for computer science in global health, reporting on the last few years I have spent working in Rwanda, Tanzania,
Bangladesh, and South Africa on a variety of health delivery projects. These include electronic patient record systems for public AIDS treatment programs, PDAs to guide health workers step-by-step through medical treatment algorithms, and simple solutions to improve the management of blood tests and other laboratory data. Throughout, I will try to provide some of the context for how computer and mobile phone technology are contributing to global health efforts.
Bio:
Neal Lesh received a PhD in computer science from the University of Washington in 1998. As a Senior Scientist at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory (MERL) in Cambridge, MA, he worked in a variety of areas including planning, intent inference, information visualization, interactive optimization, and human-computer collaboration. In 2004, Neal got a Master in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Since then, he has been working and living mostly abroad. In Tanzania, he has worked on electronic medical record systems for a large Harvard-supported AIDS treatment program with tens of thousands of patients in care or treatment. He worked with Partners in Health during the early stages of their operations in rural Rwanda, helping to build reporting systems and laboratory systems. In South Africa and Tanzania, he is investigating the use of handhelds to deliver standardized care to improve the treatment of common causes of child mortality and triaging of HIV+ patients. He will soon start work in Bangladesh to deliver essential information over mobile phones.
The Center for Research on Computation and Society continues its weekly lunch seminar:
CRCS Privacy and Security Lunch Seminar
Date: Wednesday, 12 December 2007
Time: 12:00pm-1:30 pm
Place: MD 221
Topic: Cooperation and Human Systems Design
Speaker: Yochai Benkler, Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law
Abstract:
Globalization and rapid innovation cycles make the social and economic environment more complex and harder to characterize for planning or pricing. In response, we see adoption of loosely-bound, permeable human systems— technical platforms, business processes, and institutional devices—that enable pervasive experimentation and learning through decentralization of practical capacity and authority to act. Providing such practical freedom for human agency creates new challenges in design for cooperation. Doing so requires attention to work in social and biological sciences, political science and business management, that diverges from dominant interpretations of human action as selfishly motivated, and developes a more cooperative view of human nature, human interaction, or both. Observed heterogeneity of motivational profiles and practices of sustained cooperation suggests the potential for design aimed not at aligning individual selfish incentives, but at enabling the dynamics of self-reinforcing, cooperative social-psycological processes.
The Center for Research on Computation and Society continues its weekly lunch seminar:
CRCS Privacy and Security Lunch Seminar
Date: Wednesday, 5 December 2007
Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm
Place: Maxwell Dworkin119
Topic: Protecting the Privacy of the Users of Wireless Devices
Speaker: David Wetherall, Intel Research and University of Washington
Abstract:
We have started a new research effort to build wireless systems that provide a high degree of privacy for the users of mobile devices. Existing wireless protocols such as 802.11 transmit unique identifiers, e.g., MAC addresses, that allow users to be tracked and profiled by any nearby observer; they do not provide security models that work well in unmanaged environments. This is becoming problematic as wireless devices become more ubiquitous and more personal (with the proliferation of mobile phones, personal fitness and medical devices, headsets, and consumer electronics) and security problems become more pressing (with the rise in identity theft and unintended disclosures).
We are developing techniques that selectively disclose addresses and other distinguishing information that maps to high-level identities, and which restrict connectivity to intended service regions. The former is challenging because addresses play a basic role in protocols such that they cannot be concealed without impact; traditional encryption methods such as WPA2, IPSEC and SSL do not prevent tracking and profiling. The latter is challenging because wireless signals propagate in unpredictable ways and leak across boundaries in the physical world.
The Center for Research on Computation and Society continues its weekly lunch seminar:
CRCS Privacy and Security Lunch Seminar
Date: Wednesday, 28 November 2007
Time: 12:00pm-1:30 pm
Place: Maxwell Dworkin119
Topic: Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software
Speaker: Christopher M. Kelty, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Rice University and a Visiting Professor at the Department of the History of Science at Harvard.
Abstract:
Christopher M. Kelty will discuss his research on the history and cultural significance of Free Software, revealing the people and practices that have transformed not only software, but also music, film, science, and education. Free Software is a set of practices devoted to the collaborative creation of software source code that is made openly and freely available through an unconventional use of copyright law. Kelty shows how these specific practices have
reoriented the relations of power around the creation, dissemination, and authorization of all kinds of knowledge after the arrival of the Internet. This work also makes an important contribution to discussions of public spheres and social imaginaries by demonstrating how Free Software is a “recursive public”–a public organized around the ability to build, modify, and maintain the very infrastructure that gives it life in the first place..
The Center for Research on Computation and Society continues its weekly lunch seminar:
CRCS Privacy and Security Lunch Seminar
Date: Wednesday, 7 November 2007
Time: 12:00pm-1:00pm (Lunch Provided)
Place: Maxwell Dworkin119
Speaker: Michael O. Rabin, Harvard University Thomas J. Watson, Sr. Professor of Computer Science
Topic: Highly Efficient Zero Knowledge Proofs and Practical Secure and Secrecy Preserving Auctions
Abstract:
We consider a new model of an Evaluator
Prover who receives input values from parties
P_1, …, P_n, performs a computation on these values
and publishes the result together
with a ZKP of its correctness. The efficiency is achieved
by working directly with input numbers rather than at the bit/circuit
level. It achieves a hundred-fold efficiency improvement
over methods employing homomorphic encryptions.
Classical ZKPs can be made a special case as n =0. Applications
include practical secure and secrecy preserving auctions. Presentation will be self contained.
Joint work with Rocco Servidio and Chris Thorpe.