The US and United Kingdom (UK) will collaborate on a series of innovation prize challenges to catalyze research and advancements related to privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs). These technologies give the user greater control over the data being processed to protect personal information and intellectual property. The aim of the prize challenge is to bring together the top minds in both countries to encourage and facilitate the adoption of PETs.
As a large problem area and growing concern among scientists, both countries heavily invested in privacy-enhancing technologies over the past decade. PETs are already used to address a number of societal problems from Covid-19 contact tracing to protecting online banking transactions. This project will build on past contributions, with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology leading an interagency initiative to develop challenges alongside a team of specialists from the UK.
“Privacy-enhancing technologies are a critical component of the suite of democracy-affirming capabilities that can support our shared democratic values in the face of authoritarian exploitation of emerging technologies” said Dr. Eric Lander, the President’s Science Advisor and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “It is imperative that we come together as democracies to develop approaches to unlock the economic, scientific, and societal benefits of emerging technologies while protecting shared values such as privacy, accountability, and transparency.”
The United States and the United Kingdom plan to launch the initiative in spring of 2022 as a part of a series of International Grand Challenges on Democracy-Affirming Technologies, alongside Censorship Circumvention and Peer-to-Peer Challenges (Open Technology Fund) and Tech4Democracy Global Entrepreneurship Challenge (U.S. Embassy Madrid & IE University). Results of the US-UK Prize Challenges on Privacy-Enhancing Technologies are expected to be announced at the second Summit for Democracy.
