Bruce Schneier introduces his book “Data and Goliah” by highlighting the fact that: “The powers that surveil us do more than simply store this information. Corporations use surveillance to manipulate not only the news articles and advertisements we each see, but also the prices we’re offered. Governments use surveillance to discriminate, sensor, chill free speech, and put people in danger worldwide. And both sides share this information with each other or, even worse, lose it to cybercriminals in huge data breaches”. The Snowden revelations added fuel to the fire by uncovering details of an Internet surveillance program called PRISM, which showed the NSA had obtained direct access to the systems of nine Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, and Apple. The months that followed included a stream of revelations of other internet surveillance programs such as MUSCULAR, XKeyscore and Tempora, as well as the bulk collection of US and European telephone metadata, and large scale data analytics over the collected data. In an interview with the BBC, Tim Berners-Lee called for the online community to take action: “In front of us are two roads - which way are we going to go?”. Tim Berners-Lee suggested to establish a Magna Carta for the world wide web and to crowdsource a set of values which will be so much part of our lives in a way that they become on a level with human rights. Berners-Lee’s call was answered in the form of a number of collaborative efforts to define a bill of rights for the web that are commonly referred to as “The Web We Want”. The impact of data, technology and privacy is so broad that the discussion should have the title “The Society We Want”.

From a legal perspective the landscape has seen considerable changes over the last few years. In December 2015, after nearly four years of negotiations, the European Commission, Parliament and Council finally completed the General Data Protection Regulation, which poses tight restrictions on the use and the flow of personal data and introduces tough penalties - up to 4% of annual global revenue - for those that do not comply.  However, there is still a big question mark surrounding the actual implementation, and the tools that are necessary in order to verify compliance with the regulation. 2015 also saw the collapse of Safe Harbour which left many companies in a state of uncertainty concerning transatlantic data exchange. Early 2016 heralded a new framework for transatlantic data flows known as the EU-US Privacy Shield. The agreement imposes obligations on companies in the U.S. to protect the personal data of Europeans and stronger monitoring and enforcement by the U.S. Department of Commerce and Federal Trade Commission. The focus has now shifted to the actual implementation of the regulation and the tools required to support it. At the same time there has been an upsurge of awareness of the importance of privacy in hot research topics such as “Big Data” and the “Internet of Things”. In this context, the intersection of issues around privacy and semantic web technologies has become immensely topical and of direct relevance to citizens, researchers and funding agencies.

We (the Semantic Web community) are responsible for the conception of technologies that enable large scale integration and mining of personal and public information in all domains of society. We are part of the problem, therefore we should be part of the solution. To date the focus has been on researching specific privacy and security models and frameworks. However, we are “putting the cart before the horse” -- we are proposing technical solutions without fully understanding the societal and legal requirements. This workshop aims to explore and promote discussion around many questions which remain unanswered:

• Given implications of our technology, what is “acceptable behavior” for data aggregation and use? What are the societal norms that we have to develop or emerge? What are the “robots.txt” equivalents that need to be developed to keep data aggregators and governments in check? What should a Magna Carta look like?  

• What policies and laws are already in existence and what else do we need? How do we engage meaningfully in a discussion? What do we need to do in research or policy influencing in order to make a difference? How are these policies and laws developed and supported in an inherently international environment? How do we engage with other communities, e.g. in law and policy making?

• How do we technologically support the described efforts? How do we support the compliance of privacy laws? How is our increased responsibility being reflected in our scientific events and conferences?

• Piero Bonatti, Universita di Napoli Federico II, Italy

• Pompeu Casanovas, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, ​​Spain

• David Corsar, University of Aberdeen, UK

• Luca Costabello, Fujitsu, Ireland

• Ernesto Damiani, University of Milan, Italy

• Tim Finin, University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA

• Kristine Gloria, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), USA

• RV Guha, Google, USA

• Harry Halpin, W3C/INRIA, France

• Benjamin Heitmann, RWTH Aachen University, Germany, Germany

• Pascal Hitzler, Wright State University, USA

• Shinsaku Kiyomoto, Information Security Laboratory, KDDI Research Inc., Japan

• Krzysztof Janowicz, University of California, USA

• Alessandra Mileo, Insight Center for Data Analytics, Ireland

• Ian Niles, Microsoft, USA

• Inah Omoronyia, University of Glasgow, UK

• Axel Polleres, Institute for Information Business of WU, Austria

• Harald Sack, University of Potsdam, Germany

• Ravi Sandhu, University of Texas at San Antonio, USA

• Stefan Schlobach, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands

• Simon Steyskal, Institute for Information Business of WU, Austria

• Jetzabel Serna, Deutsche Telekom Chair of Mobile Business and Multilateral Security, Germany

• Nigel Shadbolt, University of Southampton Highfield, UK

• Keerthi Thomas, The Open University, UK

• Bert Van Nuffelen, Tenforce, Belgium

• Evelyne Viegas, Microsoft, USA

• Serena Villata, INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France

• Rigo Wenning, W3C, France