Speaker: Professor Nigel Gilbert, University of Surrey

About this event

In these days of terrorist operations, identity fraud, and cyber crime, there is an ever growing concern about trying to safeguard one’s personal information.  At the same time, more and more personal data are being requested as government and commercial organisations try to cater to our individual needs, while gathering and storing such data is becoming easier with technological developments such as online shopping, image processing attached to surveillance cameras, ‘smart’ credit and identity cards and vast increases in computing power and storage capacity..

On the one hand we have the opportunity to safeguard our society better than ever before, on the other, the privacy of our everyday existence is threatened by these very safeguards. And what if this information falls into the wrong hands?

This is the dilemma which faces us, and is the subject for this guest evening.

The team which is assembled to lead this discussion is eminently suitable for this task.

The chairman is Professor Nigel Gilbert of the University of Surrey, who is the Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee for their Inquiry on ‘A Surveillance Society?’. Professor Gilbert is well known in this field, having recently chaired the Royal Academy of Engineering working group which produced the report Dilemmas of Privacy and Surveillance: challenges of technological change

The other panel members are :-

Jonathan Bamford. Jonathan is the Assistant Commissioner at the Information Commissioner’s Office. This is the UK’s independent authority set up to provide access to official information and to protect personal information.

David Birch. A founder member of Consult Hyperion, David is an expert on the impact of new information and communications technologies. He is well known for his “Second Sight” columns in The Guardian Online supplement.

Tom Ilube. Tom is a director of Garlik, a company which specialises in online security matters. The company’s mission is “to enable persons to keep one step ahead of internet crime”. He was previously chief information officer of Egg.

Martyn Thomas. Martyn is the founder of Thomas Associates, who are consultants in software engineering. He is also a visiting professor of software engineering at the Oxford University Computer Laboratory.

The format of the evening will be that Professor Gilbert will give an opening presentation. The other panel members will then each give a brief talk on highlights of their particular area.

The audience will be invited to question the speakers and to give their views in what it is hoped will be a stimulating evening.