Hacker 2/HACKER2.mdf/cud/cud524b.txt

Text File | 1995-01-03 | 5KB | 114 lines

Date: Wed, Mar 10, 1993  (03:12)
From: Eric S Theise <[e-mail]>
Subject: File 2--Computer Freedom and Privacy III Conf. (Report 1)

Objective reporting this won't be, especially at 3:00 a.m.

I'm having a great time at the conference.  I arrived late for the
first tutorial session today.  It started at 9, and I drifted in
closer to 9:30.  They hadn't got my e-mail registration -- partly
because of the hard disk business yesterday, partly because they
had
other things to worry about -- but Bruce Koball and Judi Clark told
me
to go on in and pay up later.

I attended James Love's 'Access to Government Information' tutorial
which was crowded and very good.  He outlined strategies for
getting
information via the Freedom of Information Act and gave examples of
online systems that are and are not available to the public as well
as
examples of some of the horrible contracts that have been struck
between government and contractor that have essentially sealed off
any
hope of affordable public access to certain information because of
lack of vision and understanding on the part of the government.
Love
works on the Taxpayer Assets Project for Ralph Nader.

I heard good things about Mike Godwin's tutorials on Constitutional
Law and Civil Liberties and about Mark Graham and Tim Pozar's
Internet
Journeys.  They gave away free copies of Krol's book!

I spent most of my lunch break chatting in the hallway, and grabbed
and wolfed a quick sandwich just before attending Russell Brand's
tutorial on Practical Data Inferencing: What We Think We Know About
You.  As someone trained in mathematical models, statistics, and
artificial intelligence, I was hoping to learn about -- even
non-technically --some of the tools being run on disparate datasets
to
make inferences about individuals' characteristics.  Brand did a
fair
amount of consciousness raising about the information available
from
public records and tricks used to get information out of people.
He
spent altogether too much time giving snippets of data and asking
the
audience to make inferences.  Around 4:00 I realized that this was
all
he was going to do, and got disappointed.  It was a fun little
gossipy
session, but it was not terribly deep.

It seemed that New York State Police Investigator Donald Delaney's
Telecommunication Fraud tutorial was the place to be in the
afternoon.
Apparently he's given the talk before, but it's a must-hear once.

Then there was the *long* break before the reception (4:30 - 8:00).
Another hour or so spent chatting in the lobby, then a spontaneous
Thai dinner in Belmont with five people I barely knew.  Good
conversation about mid-80s Internet politics that I had only a fair
knowledge of, as well as current trends in acceptable use policies.
The Pad Thai was okay.

The reception featured piles of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry
ice
cream with add-ins; big sugar rush and mucho schmoozing!  Spent
time
with Marc Smith and a table of sociologists and others from UCLA.
Talked with a few of the scholarship recipients who bemoaned the
provincialism of the Bay Area (aw, they're just jealous, knowing
that
they're going to have to go back to Bowling Green next week 8-) ).
And had a long chat out in the hallway with Hugh Daniel and some of
the NYC contingent from the near-EFF chapter that's working with
many
of the same issues as the Bay Area's own This!Group.

Bay Area Women In Communications had a dinner meeting which I
*didn't*
hear about; maybe someone could report on that?

I left the hotel at 1:00 and, after giving a jump to a tow truck at
my
local Safeway, I thought I'd log in for a little while tonight.
Conf
starts up again at 9 am.

What struck me the most was how different this conference was for
me
from the first CFP.  At the first CFP I was a relatively naive
BITNET
user who knew *no one*.  I didn't yet have an account on the WELL.
This year I know people everywhere I turn, and there are many
delights
in meeting people face-to-face for the first time.  Conferences in
the
field I'm trained in -- operations research -- are pretty damn
boring.
CFP's fun, and tomorrow (today) -- with the arts panel that Anna
Couey, Mike Godwin, and I put together, as well as sessions on
Electronic Democracy, Electronic Voting, Censorship and Free Speech
on
the Networks, EFF's Pioneer Awards, and Willis Ware as a dinner
speaker -- promises to really shift up into a higher gear.

And the CFP hallmark -- Feds and crackers doing the dialogue --
continues!

Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253