14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has a new pet project, coincidentally named actually PET. The acronym stands for the Privacy Enhancing Technologies workshop, and the Redmond Company announced that it will participate with award sponsorship. The 2007 PET workshop is focused on the latest evolution in the privacy field, and on discussions based on cryptographic, legislative and economic perspectives on the subject. Debuted six years ago as a conference on anonymous communications, PET itself has grown to a stage where it now addresses the general area of privacy.
"The PET workshop, once more, will gather all people working to make IT compatible with our basic value of privacy. The associated WOTE event focuses exclusively on the hot area of secure electronic elections," commented George Danezis, a post-doctoral researcher in Privacy Technology at the Katholieke Universiteit (KU) in Leuven, Belgium.
Microsoft revealed that its part in the workshop involves providing graduate students with the funding necessary to attend the PET workshop. Additionally, the Redmond Company also offers a ?3,000 prize together with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada. The prize goes on an annual basis to the best research paper in privacy technology.
"Any peer-reviewed paper published in the preceeding year is eligible for nomination for the PET Award. We wanted to support a prize that was judged by leading privacy technologists, for leading privacy technologies. It's a great way for the best researchers from a variety of fields within privacy research to recognise and support the exceptional technical work of their peers," revealed Caspar Bowden, chief privacy advisor for Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa.
The privacy papers are judged in accordance with a set of criteria involving theory, design and implementation. Microsoft stated that it is in no way involved in the candidate judging process, and that its role is resumed to sponsorship.
"This year's PET award finalists are representatives of the breadth of the privacy technology field, with the winner presenting an analysis of a radio frequency identification (RFID) scheme, and the runner-ups looking to protecting privacy in online social networking sites as well as trust negotiation using advanced cryptographic techniques," Danezis added. "These papers will be references for researchers over the next few years. They represent work that is both groundbreaking as well as the culmination of many years of research."