Privacy and Internet Governance in Rio

I have arrived in Rio de Janeiro last night to attend the second Internet Governance Forum, a massive multi-stakeholder global policy dialogue organized by the United Nations. I am mainly doing field research for a study on NGO participation I am about to finish this year. But I am also involved in a couple of events here which I am very much looking forward to:

• a workshop "Security and Privacy Challenges for new Internet Applications: A Multi-stakeholder approach" I have organized together with colleagues from the LSE and the French Government
• a workshop "Privacy in Internet Identity Management: Emerging Issues and New Approaches" I have organized together with a colleague from Harvard and the Identity Commons
• the meeting of the Dynamic Coalition on Privacy, a kind-of multi-stakeholder working group on privacy issues that must not be called a working group in UN terminology
• the main IGF session on security, where I was asked to be a panelist
• the scholarly annual symposium of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GIGANet), where I served in the programme committee this year.

And all this (and more) will happen in just one week. I am afraid I won't have any time to go to Copacabana or Ipanema at all, though this is my first time in Rio. But the conference will be fascinating enough, as there are so many smart people from all parts of the world and with so many different backgrounds. Even last night, after an 18-hour trip and pretty tired, I got stuck in an inspiring discussion with a Hungarian hacker about how to develop a materialist critique of human rights discourses (privacy etc.) under conditions of social networking technologies. Wow.