Held at the World Trade Centre in the Catalan city of Barcelona and covering areas such as cryptocurrency and ICO regulation, the benefits, pitfalls and ethics of trustless distributed ledger technology, alternatives to peer arbitration, business applications of blockchain data and much more, the conference is an exploration of the ethics surrounding big data and its applications in the modern world. First conceived in light of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal to look at the complex ethical and practical questions arising from the use of information and data in consequence of the development of decentralized technologies, this year's WDF has already established itself as one of the most significant events of its kind. In addition to the renowned theorist and computer scientist Ralph Merkle (inventor of public key cryptography, hash encryption and Merkle trees for example) who will address what he believes to be the structural deficiencies of and solutions to current democratic processes, our speakers also include barrister Jennifer Robinson, the spokesperson for and longest-serving member of the legal team defending Julian Assange and Wikileaks. We look forward to welcoming you this September. Headline Speakers Jennifer Robinson Barrister Jennifer Robinson has a long list of high-profile international clients. Her focus is advising media organisations, journalists and whistle-blowers on all aspects of media law, as well as free speech and civil liberties. She advises Julian Assange and Wikileaks and has acted for a La Repubblica journalist in a UK freedom of information case over correspondence related to Assange and his potential US extradition. Other recent cases include acting with French counsel for a group of NGOs in Google v CNIL on the right to be forgotten and helping the BBC World Service in their action against Iran over the persecution of BBC Persian staff and their families. In the past, her work on behalf of Nobel Peace Prize nominated West Papuan leader Benny Wenda, a former political prisoner, led to successful campaign to reform the Interpol system, as well as a global advocacy campaign for the West Papuan independence movement. Ms Robinson is with Doughty Street Chambers in London. Ralph Merkle Dr. Merkle received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1979 where he co-invented public key cryptography and invented Merkle Trees. He joined Xerox PARC in 1988, where he pursued research in security and computational nanotechnology until 1999. He was a Nanotechnology Theorist at Zyvex until 2003, when he joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as a Professor of Computing until 2006. He is now a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, a Director of Alcor, and a Chair Emeritus of Nanotechnology at Singularity University. He received the Feynman Prize for Nanotechnology, the ACM's Kanellakis Award, the IEEE Kobayashi Award, the RSA Award in Mathematics, and the IEEE Hamming Award; he is a Fellow of the IACR, a Fellow of the Computer History Museum, and a National Inventor’s Hall of Fame Inductee. Dr. Merkle has over eighteen patents, has published extensively and has given hundreds of talks. His home page is www.merkle.com Annie Machon Annie Machon was an intelligence officer for the UK's Security Service, MI5, before resigning to help blow the whistle on the crimes and incompetence of the British spies. She is now a writer, media pundit, and international public speaker on a variety of related issues: the wars on terrorism, on whistleblowers, on drugs, and on the internet. She also regularly commentates on “Russiagate” and the Middle East. She is a member of the Sam Adams Associates, a global group of intelligence, diplomatic and military whistleblowers, served four years as the European Director of Law Enforcement Action Partnership, and is an advisory board member of the Good Technology Collective and the Courage Foundation.Annie has an MA (Hons) Classics from Cambridge University. David Brin David Brin is a scientist, inventor, and New York Times bestselling author. A film by Kevin Costner was based on Brin’s novel, The Postman. His newest - about our survival in the near future - is Existence. Brin’s 16 novels, including NY Times Bestsellers and Hugo Award winners, have been translated into more than twenty languages. In 1989 one of them, Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyberwarfare and the world wide web. Dr. Brin serves on the external advisory council of NASA's Innovative and Advanced Concepts program (NIAC). David appears frequently on shows such as Nova and The Universe and Life After People, speaking about science and future trends. He has keynoted scores of major events hosted by the likes of IBM, GE, Google, Boeing and the Institute for Ethics in Emerging Technologies. His non-fiction book -- The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? -- won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association. Gold Partners Silver Partners Media Partners
