Latanya Sweeney: How technology impacts humans and dictates our civic future

Technology designers are the new policymakers. No one elected them, and most people do not know their names, but the decisions they make when producing the latest gadgets and online innovations dictate the code by which we conduct our daily lives and govern our country. Challenges to the privacy and security of our personal data are part of the first wave of this change; as technology progresses, every demographic value and every law comes up for grabs and will likely be redefined by what technology does or does not enable. Examples include data privacy and the 2016 U.S. Presidential election,  as well as racial discrimination in online ads. Join Prof. Sweeney, who is just back from serving as chief technology officer at the Federal Trade Commission and writing a book on the topic, for a session that will brainstorm how to engineer the way forward.

About the Distinguished Speaker

Latanya Sweeney is a Professor at Harvard University; Faculty Dean at Harvard's Currier House; Editor-in-Chief of Technology Science; Director and Founder of Harvard’s Data Privacy Lab; the former Chief Technology Officer at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission; and Commissioner in the U.S. Commission on Evidence-based Policy Making. Dr. Sweeney holds four patents and is credited with more than 100 academic publications. She is a recipient of the prestigious American Psychiatric Association’s Privacy Advocacy Award, an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, and has testified before government bodies worldwide. Dr. Sweeney became the first African American woman to earn a PhD in computer science from MIT in 2001.