The panel discussion on "Privacy and Safety in the Global Information Society" takes place
on April 18, 2007 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Japanese-German Center Berlin (JDZB),
and is organized in the context of this year’s Joint German-Japanese Symposium of the Münchner Kreis on ‘Convergent Media & Networks’ in Berlin, in which the JDZB is a collaborator.
The information society is already an essential part of daily life and business and becomes more and more important. The internet provides new opportunities for global communication, but also bears a lot of risks. Privacy, the security of information and its infrastructure are vulnerable and need protection.
But, how can we avoid intrusion into individual behaviour, manipulation of information, how can we make the computer and internet safe, less prone to viruses, malware, attacks from hackers, and thus more reliable?
Legal measures, training and new technical tools and developments like ‘trusted computing’, which spread widely unnoticed and has potential for German-Japanese cooperation, can improve the safety of the information society. All of these aspects will be discussed by eminent panelists who have extensive experience in German-Japanese dialogue.
Prof. Dr. Dr. Hayashi Koichiro is an economist and lawyer, who studied in Japan and the US and worked with NTT. He is now Professor at Keio University and vice President of the Institute of Information Security. Dr. Ulrich Sandl is director of the division 'Standardization and Copyright Protection in the Information & Communication Technologies - ICT' at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology and played an important part in drafting the German government’s IT policy.