The Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference (or CFP, or the Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy) is an annual academic conference held in the United States or Canada about the intersection of computer technology, freedom, and privacy issues. The conference was first held in 1991 in Burlingame, California.[1] Since at least 1999,[2] it has been organized under the aegis of the Association for Computing Machinery. It was originally sponsored by CPSR.
Attendees include high-level government officials, grassroots advocates, and programmers.[3]
Panelists at the 2009 CFP
The first annual US Big Brother Awards were made at CFP99 on Wednesday 7 April 1999,[1] the 50th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The awards were made by the London-based Privacy International to recognize "the government and private sector organizations which have done the most to invade personal privacy in the United States."[4]Simon Davies, managing director of Privacy International, presented the awards, otherwise known as Orwell's. There were five categories of award: Greatest Corporate Invader, Lifetime Menace, Most Invasive Program, People's Choice, and Worst Public Official.[5]
Key Figures
Jim Warren, Founder and Organizer. He was the primary organizational force who conceived the idea of a conference to address the "Hacker Crackdown" and digital liberties.[6]
Mitch Kapor, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation(EFF). Provided the crucial funds necessary to launch the first conference.
John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation(EFF). his rhetoric and participation in the "Crypto War" and other policy's debates as fundamental battles of the CFP
Dorothy Denning, Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown. Chaired many key sessions and often argued the necessity of government access.
Judi Clark, Conference Organizer and Archivist. Central part of the logistical organization of the early conferences. Her personal papers form a key archive of the CFP history
Marc Rotenberg, represented the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility(CPSR) and later the Electronic Privacy Information Center(EPIC), keeping the focus on privacy and government accountability
The Evolution of the CFP
1991 - CFP Begins
Taking place in Burlingame, California during March 26–28, in 1991 this was the first meeting organized by CPSR initially led Jim Warren. His main goal was to bring together all kinds of people from different areas "and participants include people from the fields of computer science, law, business, research, information, library science, health, public policy, government, law enforcement, public advocacy and many others" [7] so that they could conversate and each explain their own worlds to reduce the paranoia in each others community. Collecting full transcripts of the meeting it marked the first serious milestone of the CFP.
1992 - 1998 Early Growth
The Second conference CFP'92 took place in Washington, DC. This was to be a symbol for future growth and to reflect the governments growing interest in digital privacy issues. Many Topic on Data Encryption were discussed in these meeting, and grew the CFP member base heavily.[8]
In 1994 The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration chapter “Theory of Markets and Privacy” used several of the papers of the CFP'94 meeting such as "The Encrypted Self" showing how vital the CPF was to the early discussion of privacy and security of the people and was one of the first areas where people could voice their opinion on this matter.[9]
The last key event of this era in the CFP's early history was the sixth conference held at the prestigious university of MIT. CFP'96 included a Supreme Court Argument with the topic being Communications Decency Act showing the influence the CFP was gaining holding legal style debates on laws that still effect us today.[10]
1999 - Big Brother Awards
Known as the most influential and publicized meeting the CFP has every had. CFP'99 was held April 6–8 in the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C.. Bringing "More than 500 people from 20 countries participated in the ninth annual conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy ‘CFP 99: The Global Internet’ "[11] this meeting had a real emphasis on international participation in laws surrounding technology. A news article written by Library Hi Tech News titled “Internet Policy Issues Debated at 9th Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy” described CFP'99 as a major forum where privacy, censorship, surveillance, and global internet policy's were publicly debated across nine panels of discussion.[12]
As well as challenging global internet policy's the CPF held their Big Brother Ceremony the same year. These were a set of awards made to call out companies who are seen as a "threat to civil liberties".[13] This award ceremony was to bring awareness on companies who were actively harming the peoples right to personal privacy in the space of technology.
2000 - 2005 Transition To ACM
As CPSR, original sponsor of the CFP, began to loose influence the Association of Computing Machinery(ACM) being the worlds largest educational and scientific computing society became the primary sponsor of the CFP. Starting as early as 2000 the CFP conferences were being formally published in the ACM Digital Library. With key conferences such as CFP ’00:"Proceedings of the tenth conference on Computers, freedom and privacy: challenging the assumptions" and CFP ’02:"Proceedings of the 12th annual conference on Computers, freedom and privacy".[14] As well as The Seattle Times covering CFP 2005 annual meeting which was sponsored by the ACM.[15] This sponsor switch allowed the CFP to gain a lot more traction in the computing space allowing their message to reach a lot more people
2015 - Final Year And End Of CFP Conferences
Since its 25th meeting ACM lists CSP 2015 as the last set of publish proceedings, indicating that CSP'25 was the final meeting ending off on the topic of online free speech.[16]
Legacy
While the CFP is no longer active they have changed how people have viewed and accepted technology bringing together people of different professions to meet during the early era of the internet. Often cited in academic and policy writings the CFP is credited as one of the earliest and longest running forums dedicated to digital rights, privacy, and security. Discussions and debates hosted by the CFP later became main stream policy issues that appeared in congressional hearings and news reporting's.
Key Event: The Crypto War
The Crypto War is the name given to a long standing issue which primarily plays out mostly in the United States, debating whether regular people should be allowed to use and share strong encryption technology without the influence of the government.[17] One of the parties that voted against giving the people encryption was enforcement and intelligence agencies, such as the FBI and NSA, who wanted "lawful access" to encrypted information for monitoring and surveillance. The parties that voted in favor of the right for encryption were mainly consisting of tech founders, civil liberties groups, and digital rights activists who believed that privacy and security was a given right to everyone.[18] This ongoing debate, often reduced to a simple choice between privacy and security, was strongly influenced by public advocacy and mainly debated in CFP Conferences and other institutions that advocated in the peoples right for technology.[19]
The beginning of this conflict went back to the years after World War II, when the U.S. government classified crypto tools as "munitions" under the Arms Export Control Act and successfully kept a strong control over these ciphers.[18] But in 1976, the invention of public key cryptography by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman made secure digital communication available to everyone, challenging the government’s grip on encryption.[19]
The Crypto War reached its peak in the 1990s. When in 1993, the Clinton administration tried to introduce the controversial Clipper Chip ,backed by a key member of the CFPDorothy Denning, a microchip that would let people use strong encryption, but only if a copy of the decryption key was stored with trusted third parties chosen by the government essentially still giving them full access to all of your encrypted files.[19] The plan was to make sure law enforcement could still do court approved surveillance and monitoring.[19] Because of this clause in the Clipper Chip instant widespread outrage was faced from technical experts, industry leaders, and privacy advocates. Many argued that the system was insecure and threatened basic privacy rights. The plan was collapsed after a major cryptographic flaw was discovered in 1994.[19]
At the same time, another equally important battle in the "Crypto War" was over sharing encryption software should be illegal or not. In 1991, software developer named Phil Zimmermann released Pretty Good Privacy (PGP),[18] which was the first end-to-end encryption system that everyday people were able to use. The U.S. Justice Department launched a three year criminal investigation against him, claiming that by sharing PGP, he was illegally "exporting weapons".[18] Activists like John Gilmore, who was one of the founders of the cypherpunk movement and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), jumped in to defend Zimmermann. They argued that software source code was a kind of free speech protected by theFirst Amendment. And to prove their point, supporters even published the PGP source code as a physical book, showing that you can’t ban mathematical instructions without violating free expression.[18]
These legal and fights were happening very often and out in the open, especially at events like the Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy (CFP), becoming the main stage for critics of government policy and fighting for the right to private information. The government’s main argument was that strong, end-to-end (E2E) encryption would help "child molesters, terrorists, drug dealers, and money launderers" a scare tactic sometimes called the "Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse".[20] At the 1994 CFP, NSA lawyer Stewart A. Baker pointed to the criminal use of PGP, but activists pushed back. They argued that every new technology, from the telephone to the printing press, could be abused, but we still allow them because their benefits are greater than the risks. Advocates managed to shift the debate away from just privacy versus security, arguing that strong encryption is actually vital for everyone’s safety, for economic growth, and for the future of the internet.
Thanks to these advocacy efforts, things changed. By the late 1990s, the Clinton Administration started loosening export controls, eventually removing almost all restrictions on the sale of encryption products.[19] Legal wins and pressure from the tech industry played a huge role in this victory, which basically ended the first phase of the Crypto War. It set an important precedent: strong encryption was here to stay and was essential for the modern digital world. But the debate didn’t end. The rise of end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Telegram, plus new surveillance scandals after 2013, reignited the conflict. Today’s version sometimes called "Crypto War 2.0" still centers on the struggle between government surveillance and digital privacy.[20]
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