<synthesis> [CFP] [TICS] Topics on Internet Censorship and Surveillance 2020

[Vasilis]

Hello,

TICS has a new call for papers that may be of interest to some of you.

Please feel free to share widely. Thank you!

Online version: https://tics.site/cfp/

# TICS 2020

**Co-located with the [2020 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conference on Web
Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (WI-IAT
2020)](http://wi2020.vcrab.com.au/), to be held online.**

## Introduction

Over the past years there has been a greater demand from large-scale players
such as governments and dominant media companies for online censorship and
surveillance, as an understandable reaction against hate speech, copyright
violations, and other cases related to citizen compliance with civil laws and
regulations by national authorities. Unfortunately, this is often accompanied by
a tendency of extensively censoring online content and massively spying on
citizens actions.

Numerous whistle-blower revelations, leaks from classified documents, and a vast
amount of information released by activists, researchers and journalists, reveal
evidence of government-sponsored infrastructure that either goes beyond the
requirements and scope of the law, or operates without any effective regulations
in place. In addition, this infrastructure often supports the interests of big
private corporations, such as the companies that enforce online copyright
control.

Mobile networks are particularly vulnerable to the above points. Due to the
nature of their deployment, few actors can achieve far-reaching results, and
end-users are left unprotected; we are interested in tracking developments that,
without sacrificing functionality and convenience, allow end-users to get
control on the amount and breadth of information generated, stored and processed
on them.

TICS is a special track the area of Internet censorship, surveillance and other
adversarial burdens to technology that bring in danger; to a greater extend the
safety (physical security and privacy) of its users. Proposals for TICS 2020
should be situated within the field of Internet censorship, network
measurements, information controls, surveillance and content moderation.

## Workshop topics

The goal of TICS is to raise awareness around the implications of network
interference, by inviting researchers from complementary disciplines to consider
the effect of their own domain on online censorship and surveillance. Along
those lines, we invite submissions that address the following topics:

* Research on technologies and policies that build upon advancements on the
  field of web intelligence to imply blocking, limitation or distortion of the
  availability of network services and online content
* The application of web intelligence concepts such as behavioral modeling, data
  mining, and social network analytics to target groups and individuals by law
  enforcement agencies and private corporations
* The implications of algorithmic and AI-assisted user content classification
  (such as for identification of hate-speech, copyright, or disinformation)
* Novel techniques that leverage web intelligence to defend netizens against
  censorship and surveillance, or privacy enhancements to the existing AI
  infrastructure to mitigate these threats
* Measurement methodologies that detect network interference or content
  moderation based on crowd knowledge or web analytics
* The socio-economic consequences and implementation limitations and fallacies
  of upload filters and recommendation systems
* Business models and amendments to legal frameworks which promote the use of
  web intelligence in ways that build a pluralistic, private, and human-centric
  experience without violating user freedoms
* Privacy on mobile networks
* Network measurements
* Radio frequency communications
* Data leaks
* Surveillance
* Backdoors into carrier equipment (base stations, antennas, switches, software)
* Law enforcement
* Telcos security and advance persistent threats
* Network espionage and nation state threats (e.g. "operation Soft Cell")
* Middleboxes / DPI
* Content regulation
* Wiretapping
* Net neutrality
* Data retention
* GDPR
* Device/radio blocking (Network IMEI)
* Ownership of infrastructure, and community-operated networks
* Spectrum sharing
* License-exempt spectrum

## Important dates

* Paper Submission due:            September 15th, 2020
* Notification to authors:         October 15th, 2020
* Final, camera ready papers, due: November 15th, 2020
* Workshop date:                   December 14th, 2020

## Paper Submission

**[Paper Submission
Page](https://wi-lab.com/cyberchair/2020/wi20/scripts/submit.php?subarea=S07&undisplay_detail=1&wh=/cyberchair/2020/wi20/scripts/ws_submit.php)**

Submitted papers should be limited to a maximum of 8 pages in the standard ACM
2-column format.\
The ACM Proceedings Manuscript Formatting Guidelines can be
found at: <https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template>

## Committees

### Program Chairs

* Vasilis Ververis, Humboldt University Berlin, vasilis at tics.site
* Marios Isaakidis, University College London, marios at tics.site
* Gunnar Wolf, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, gwolf at tics.site

You can contact all of the chairs by addressing your mail to:
<chairs at tics.site>

### Program Committee

* Chrystalenni Loizidou, University of Nicosia
* Keith McManamen, Psiphon
* Will Scott, University of Michigan

## Past Workshops

- [2019 (Valencia, Spain)](https://tics.site/2019)


Best regards,
~Vasilis

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