Keynote and Panel featuring:
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Bernard Stiegler (Philosopher, NEXTLEAP)
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Slim Amamou (Tunisian Blogger/Activist, former Secretary of State post-2011 revolution)
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Philip Rogaway (University of California, Author of "The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work")
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Tanja Lange (Eindhoven, Project co-ordinator of PQCRYPTO: Post-Quantum Cryptography)
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Daniel Bernstein (University Illinois/Eindhoven, inventor of Curve25519)
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Moti Yung (Snapshot, inventor of cryptovirology and kleptography)
Researchers and Ph.D. students funded by the EC NEXTLEAP proposal will present their work in progress, including the unveiling of a platform to collectively discuss Internet Rights.
Although historically, cryptography has been restricted to secretive government and industrial use, after revelations of mass surveillance by Snowden, there has been increased interest in securing the everyday communications of citizens: Applications such WhatsApp, Telegram, Silence, Crypto.cat, Signal, and even PGP all use end-to-end encrypted messaging to secure the content of communication to varying degrees. At the same time, trust in the Internet has been eroded as the cryptographic standards put forward by the U.S. government, such as the NIST Dual_EC_DBRG random number generator, were discovered to be subverted intentionally with a hidden "backdoor" by the NSA using kleptography. The European Union has even discussed banning end-to-end encryption or forcing applications to have "backdoors", but these backdoors could easily lead to new attacks against cryptography. Today these hacks and leaks dominate the news, and are even claimed to influence elections. Given that cryptography has moved from an obscure branch of mathematical number theory to a real-world issue of political and social significance, the CAPS Project NEXTLEAP (https://nextleap.eu) is drawing together an interdisciplinary group to build practical tools and foundational research to rebuild trust in the Internet. Please attend for open discussion and questions with philosophers, activists, and cryptographers discussing the social and political significance of cryptography and privacy.
