Arvind Narayanan and I are excited to announce that the Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection (ConPro ’18) will return in May 2018, once again co-located with the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.
The first ConPro brought together researchers from a wide range of disciplines, united by a shared goal of promoting consumer welfare through empirical computer science research. The topics ranged from potentially misleading online transactions to emerging biomedical technologies. Discussions were consistently insightful. For example, one talk explored the observed efficacy of various technical and non-technical civil interventions against online crime. Several—including a panel with technical and policy experts—considered steps that researchers can take to make their work more usable by policymakers, such as examining and documenting the agreement between researched practices and a company’s public statements.
We think the first workshop was a success. Participants were passionate about the social impact of their own research, and just as passionate in encouraging similarly thoughtful but dramatically different work. We aim to foster and build this engaged and supportive community.
As a result, we are thrilled to be organizing a second ConPro. Our interests lie wherever computer science intersects with consumer protection, including security, e-crime, algorithmic fairness, privacy, usability, and much more. Our stellar program committee reflects this range of interests. Check out the call for papers for more information. The submission deadline is January 23, 2018, and we look forward to reading this year’s great work!
