For those of you in the Washington, DC, area, the NSF is hosting a series of talks about trustworthy computing. It’s called the Washington Area Trustworthy Computing Hour (WATCH):

Today we are regularly obliged to trust a cyberinfrastructure that is in fact untrustworthy. Transforming today’s infrastructure into one that can meet society’s growing demands is major national challenge and opportunity. Meeting the challenge requires not only technical advances in the fabric of computing and communication but also improved understanding of how individuals and organizations comprehend and use technology, how economic and policy incentives can affect adoption of new technology, and how to develop human-centered systems that can serve users with different national, cultural, and technical backgrounds around the planet. WATCH aims to provide a series of thought-provoking talks by innovative thinkers with ideas that illuminate these challenges and provide signposts toward solutions.

Among the speakers:

• Fred Schneider, Professor of Computer Science at Cornell (and a CCC Council member), on “Cybersecurity Doctrine: Towards Public Cybersecurity”;
• Paul Harris, Professor of Education at Harvard, on “Selective Credulity” — coming up July 7th; and
• Ken Klingenstein, Director of the Internet2 Middleware and Security Initiative, on “Trust and Turtles All the way Down…” — Aug. 4th.

The series is sponsored by NSF’s CISE Directorate and the CISE Trustworthy Computing Program, as well as NSF’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) and Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI).

For more details, visit the WATCH website.

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)