Date: Wed, Mar 10, 1993 (03:12) From: Eric S Theise 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