New Internet of Things Research Hub announced: Oxford’s participation in the consortium to be led by researchers from the e-Research Centre and the Oxford Internet Institute.
The PETRAS consortium of nine leading universities, led by UCL links Imperial College London, University of Oxford, University of Warwick, Lancaster University, University of Southampton, University of Surrey, University of Edinburgh and Cardiff University: members will work together over the next three years to explore critical issues in privacy, ethics, trust, reliability, acceptability, and security.
Oxford’s participation in the consortium will tie together expertise from the e-Research Centre, Oxford Internet Institute, Department of Computer Science, Department of Engineering Science and the Saïd Business School, with further collaborations planned.
Facebook ‘studied its users in secret’
The Times, 06/01/2016, p.15, James Dean
Facebook has been accused of conducting an experiment on some users of its app without their consent. The article notes that Bernie Hogan, the chairman of the ethics review board at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute, has called for a ‘Magna Carta for the digital age’ because of the exploitative nature of rogue social media research.
We are pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Martin will be leading a new programme of work with the National University of Singapore, on “Security and Privacy in Smart Grid Systems: Countermeasure and Formal Verification.” (see this announcement for information on five sister-projects funded by EPSRC)
Today Oxford welcomed a delegation from the State of Victoria (Australia), to sign a landmark agreement that will see Oxford University’s world-leading Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre establish its first ever international office in Melbourne, to be co-located with a major new cyber security centre. We look forward to this new phase of work for the Centre!
The Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre was singled out for special mention in George Osborne’s speech to GCHQ on the new national cyber strategy for the UK: “We have helped establish the outstanding Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre in Oxford. In the coming years we will step up these efforts, mindful that we are bound together in cyberspace.”
Researchers from the CDT have been all over the radio today:
Oliver Farnan discussed cyber bank fraud on Howard Bentham’s BBC Radio Oxford show (-2:34:00, here), and Andrew Dwyer was the expert on Call You and Yours on Radio 4 (here).
Also: listen out for Leslie Ann Goldberg discussing P v NP on In Our Time on 5 November on Radio 4. (P versus NP is the basic mathematical concept that underlies modern cryptography.)
Our own Rogier Creemers has published a translation of a Chinese proposal to gamify responsible citizenship: citizens would gaining points for activities like recycling, and lose them for, for example, playing video games or spending too much on clothes. See the 8 October story in Australia’s NEWS.com for details.
*update* Rogier’s translation has enabled the world to pick up this story: see the New Scientist’s take here.
Mariarosaria Taddeo urges organisations to “provide people with information about why the data is important rather than treating people as stupid and just saying it is confidential”, in a panel discussion to inform Cybersecurity for the Work Anywhere Generation (The Guardian, 5 October).
