Boston Freedom in Online Communications Day (BFOC)

The Internet offers great promise for improving the communication capabilities of citizens, but our increasing dependence on networked communications also makes it easier for organizations and governments to control, monitor, and block communications. The growing trend toward blocking, tampering, or otherwise restricting communications on the Internet calls for improved techniques both for monitoring the state of restrictions on Internet content and communications, in order to inform users, and for circumventing attempts to censor, degrade, or otherwise tamper with Internet communications. Many researchers and practitioners in the Boston area are engaged in studying, detecting, or circumventing practices that inhibit free and open communications on the Internet. Building on the success of many recent Boston and NYC “Days” (e.g. this, this and this), the main purposes of BFOC is to encourage collaboration between local researchers and practitioners in technology, law, and policy that are working in this area. The overall structure of the day will involve longer ”keynote” talks by invited speakers, with a short talks session and a poster session. Confirmed speakers include: Andrew Lewman, Executive Director, the Tor project. And more to be added in the coming days. Date / Location BFOC 2013 will be held at Boston University on Friday, March 8, 2013 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Registration / Call for Presentations Attendance is free, but registration is required for planning purposes. Register now! For short talks and posters, send an email to bfoc@cs.bu.edu by Thursday, February 21 2013, including a brief (<300 word) description of your work, along with an indication of a preference for the work to be presented as a short talk or a poster, or be considered for both. We will select a number of short talks and put together a poster session. Organizing Information BFOC 2013 is generously hosted by the Hariri Institute. The organizing committee is Sharon Goldberg (Boston University) and Nick Feamster (Georgia Tech).