Funding Matters – a statement about the corporate funding of academic conferences

As privacy scholars and advocates concerned with human rights, we write to express our dismay with the decision to have Palantir as a platinum sponsor for the Amsterdam Privacy Conference (APC).

Privacy is one of the central challenges of our time and a pressing topic in today’s discussions on platforms, algorithms and policy making. The APC is a powerful forum for academics and advocates from around the world to move the field of privacy research forward. The conference is an important venue for privacy scholars from many different disciplines. The presence of Palantir as a sponsor of this conference legitimizes the company’s practices and gives it the opportunity to position itself as part of the agenda. This is deeply problematic and extremely regrettable.

Palantir’s business model is based on a particular form of surveillance capitalism that targets marginalized communities and accelerates the use of discriminatory technologies such as predictive policing, for which the company has already been heavily criticized [1, 2]. Among Palantir’s public clients are police agencies and defense departments from all over the world. In the last year, Palantir has helped the Trump administration to find and deport asylum seekers, undocumented immigrants and refugees, raising serious concerns about wide-scale human rights violations [3]. While the company is largely secretive about its operations, it reportedly collaborated with Cambridge Analytica [4, 5], hedge funds, banks and financial service firms [6].

Despite criticism over Palantir’s sponsorship since the conference’s 2015 edition, APC’s sponsorship strategy has not changed. This stance has consequences: it contributes to the marginalization and exclusion of scholars that otherwise would have participated and enriched the conversation at these events. Hence, it also impacts APC’s ability to nurture public debate on privacy.

Palantir has also surfaced as a sponsor at a range of other prominent privacy and technology policy events. Due to similar concerns, some of these conferences have discontinued Palantir sponsorship, an example that we hope to see replicated. Given the political, economic and societal implications of privacy today, the funding strategies of our conferences matter more than ever. However complicated the process may be, it is time to develop sponsorship criteria and guidelines that ensure academic independence and proper consideration of human rights.

We therefore call for:

The discontinuation of Palantir’s sponsorship of the Amsterdam Privacy Conference,
Organizers and participants alike to engage in an action-oriented discussion on corporate funding of academic events,
The development of rigorous criteria and guidelines for corporate sponsorship, for example, based on Human Rights Impact Assessments.

Signatories:
(If you want to sign on to this statement, send an email to signon@fundingmatters.tech indicating your name and affiliation. If you have other questions, send an email to enquiries@fundingmatters.tech )
(Read statement on why DATACTIVE coordinators of the APC ‘Digital Society and Surveillance’ theme, and Data Justice Lab members withdrew from the APC conference here)

Lina Dencik, Cardiff University
Seda Gurses, KU Leuven
Fieke Jansen, Cardiff University
Becky Kazansky, University of Amsterdam
Stefania Milan, University of Amsterdam
Niels ten Oever, University of Amsterdam
Linnet Taylor, Tilburg Law School
Hans de Zwart, Bits of Freedom

José van Dijck, Utrecht University
Cathy O’Neil, ORCAA
Frank Pasquale, University of Maryland
Eleni Kosta, Tilburg Law School
Nadya Purtova, Tilburg Law School
Robin Pierce, Tilburg Law School
Lillian Edwards, KU Leuven (visiting)
Evan Selinger, Rochester Institute of Technology
Paul Dourish, University of California, Irvine
Sasha Costanza-Chock, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Noortje Marres, University of Warwick
Donatella Della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore
Geert Lovink, Institute of Network Cultures
Evelyn Ruppert, Goldsmiths, University of London
Claudia Padovani, University of Padova
David Murakami Wood, Queens University
Robin Celikates, University of Amsterdam
Ned Rossiter, Western Sydney University
Rosamunde van Brakel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Claudia Diaz, KU Leuven
Data Justice Lab
DATACTIVE
Michael Veale, University College London
Maya Ganesh, Leuphana University
Corinne Cath, University of Oxford
Chiara Poletti, Cardiff University
ARTICLE19
Derechos Digitales
Mark Graham, University of Oxford
Melanie Rieback, Radically Open Security
Free Press Unlimited
Joël van der Weele, University of Amsterdam
Alice Mattoni, Scuola Normale Superiore
Lorenzo Zamponi, Scuola Normale Superiore
Claudio Agosti, tracking.exposed
Jeremy Shtern, Ryerson University
Arne Hintz, Cardiff University
Digital Defender Partnership
Digital Rights Foundation
Elena Pavan, Università di Trento
IT-Political Association of Denmark
PersonalData.IO
Zara Rahman, Harvard Kennedy School (visiting)
Davide Beraldo, University of Amsterdam
Lonneke van der Velden, University of Amsterdam
Fabien Cante, University of Birmingham
Guillen Torres, Univeristy of Amsterdam
Kersti Wissenbach, University of Amsterdam
Aaron Martin, Tilburg Law School
Reuben Binns, University of Oxford
Tamar Sharon, Maastricht University
Javier Sánchez-Monedero, Cardiff University
Beatrice Martini, Aspiration
Francien Dechesne, Leiden University
Tamar Sharon, Radboud University
Lucas Melgaço, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Joanna Redden, Cardiff University
Vanessa Rhinesmith, Simmons University
Irina Baraliuc, Privacy Salon
Shazade Jameson, Tilburg Law School
Cathy Dwyer, Pace University
Fundacion Datos Protegidos
Patricia Peña, Universidad de Chile
Paul-Olivier Dehaye, Independent Researcher
Matthias Leese, ETH Zurich
Aleš Završnik, Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law, Ljubljana
Pinelopi Troullinou, The Open University
Philip Di Salvo, Università della Svizzera italiana
Bytes For All
Sarah Eskens, University of Amsterdam
Alex J. Wood, University of Oxford
Irene Kamara, Tilburg University / Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Tristan Henderson, University of St Andrews
Gabriella Coleman, McGill University
Gabrielle Botbol, LRCCN
Sara Suárez-Gonzalo, Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona
Dean Wilson, University of Sussex
Ben Wagner, Vienna University of Economics and Business
Bruno Oliveira Martins, Peace Research Institute Oslo
J. Marie Celine Schulte, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Philippa Metcalfe, Cardiff University
Lorenzo Dalla Corte, Tilburg Law School / TU Delft
Mariam Asad, Georgia Institute of Technology
Simone Tulumello, University of Lisbon
Heleen Janssen, Cambridge University
Sefa Ozalp, Cardiff University
Blayne Haggart, Brock University / University of Duisburg-Essen
Jonathan Cinnamon, University of Exeter
Daniel Gray, Cardiff University
Aviva de Groot, Tilburg University
Natasha Tusikov, York University
Nick Seaver, Tufts University
Félix Tréguer, ISCC-CNRS
Esther Keymolen, Tilburg Law School
Vladan Joler, SHARE Lab
Klaske Wijkstra, Independent Researcher
Christina Neumayer, IT University of Copenhagen
Ine van Zeeland, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Julian Posada, University of Toronto
Jo Pierson, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Zach Tilton, Western Michigan University
David Golumbia, Virginia Commonwealth University
Martin French, Concordia University
Anne Roth, Senior policy advisor on digital policy for The Left at the German parliament
Michael Katell, University of Washington
Dina Solveig Jalkanen, ICANN NPOC
Jean-Christophe Plantin, London School of Economics
Seeta Peña Gangadharan, London School of Economics and Political Science
Asociación por los Derechos Civiles
Aram Sinnreich, American University
Silvia Masiero, Loughborough University
Andrew McStay, Bangor University
Thilo Hagendorff, University of Tuebingen
Meg Young, University of Washington
Balázs Bodó, University of Amsterdam
Ben Grosser, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Max Maass, TU Darmstadt
Steve Foerster, New World University
Nicolo Zingales, Sussex University
Jan F. Schrijver
Jer Thorp, New York University
Astrid Voorwinden, University of Groningen
Center for Digital Democracy
Paula Chakravartty, New York University
Patrick McCurdy, University of Ottawa
Vincent Mosco, Queen’s University
David Carrol, Parsons School of Design
Aaron Shapiro, University of Pennsylvania
Philipp Winter, UC San Diego
Martin Dittus, University of Oxford
Elizabeth O’Neill, Eindhoven University of Technology / Cornell Tech
Alessandro Mantelero, Politecnico di Torino
Michael Nagenborg, University of Twente
Anne Kaun, Södertörn University
Scott Robbins, Delft University of Technology
Yola Georgiadou, University of Twente
Aral Balkan, Ind.ie
Jennifer Cobbe, University of Cambridge
Urvashi Aneja, Tandem Research
Claudia Quelle, Tilburg University
Pieter Verdegem, University of Westminster
Abhayraj Naik, Independent Researcher
Hans Bernhard, Academy of Media Arts
Ian Alan Paul, Stony Brook University
Karin Wilkins, University of Texas at Austin
Manu Luksch, Goldsmiths, University of London (visiting)
Jonathan Gray, King’s College London
Oliver Leistert, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
Erica Robles-Anderson, New York University
Christina Dunbar-Hester, University of Southern California
Moses Karanja, University of Toronto
Nishant Shah, ArtEZ University of the Arts
Karin Spaink
Nathan Andrew Fain
Eva Lievens, Ghent University
Arzak Khan, Internet Policy Observatory Pakistan
Thomas Poell, University of Amsterdam
Mehmet Tahir SANDIKKAYA, Istanbul Technical University
Vesna Manojlovic, UnCiv.nl
Tanya Lokot, Dublin City University
Keith Sanborn, The New School
Dorien Zandbergen, University of Amsterdam/Gr1p Foundation
Martin Degeling, Ruhr-University Bochum
Richard Rogers, University of Amsterdam
Matti Minkkinen, University of Turku
Evgeny Morozov
Alex Gekker, University of Amsterdam
Markus Stauff, University of Amsterdam
Stefanie Felsberger, American University in Cairo
Giulia Ranzini, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Paola Ricaurte Quijano, Tecnológico de Monterrey
Ian Goldberg, University of Waterloo
Ansgar Koene, University of Nottingham
Nathan Fisk, University of South Florida
Frederic Guerrero-Solé, University Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona
Eugenia Siapera, Dublin City University
Tetyana Krupiy, Tilburg University
Nathalie Maréchal, University of Southern California
David Stodolsky, Institute for Social Informatics
Florian Sprenger, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Leandro Navarro, Technical University of Catalonia
BetaNYC
Liam Pomfret, The University of Queensland
Monique Mann, School of Justice
Angela Daly, Chinese University of Hong Kong / Tilburg University
Merel Noorman, Tilburg University
Megan Archer, University of Brighton
Jan-Hinrik Schmidt, Hans-Bredow-Institut for Media Research
padeluun, Digitalcourage
Rikke Frank Jørgensen
Wolfie Christl, Cracked Labs
Karina Rider, Queen’s University
Carlos A. Afonso, Instituto Nupef
Association for Progressive Communications
Daniel Trottier, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Payal Arora, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Alison Powell, London School of Economics and Political Science
Neal Andrew, University of Edinburgh
Victor Pickard, University of Pennsylvania
Zeerak Wasem, University of Sheffield
Winifred Poster, Washington University
Kristina Irion, University of Amsterdam
Joan Ramon Rodriguez-Amat, Sheffield Hallam University
Maša Galič, Tilburg University
Raphaël Gellert, Tilburg University
Tobias Preuss, Gesellschaft für Informatik working group “Computing and Ethics”
Philip Pettit, Princeton University
Jana Korunovska, Vienna University of Economics and Business
Luke Stark, Microsoft Research / Harvard University
Marleen Stikker, Waag
Julia Maria Mönig, Stuttgart Media University / Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Enda Brophy, Simon Fraser University
Matthijs Pontier, Piratenpartij
Marguerite Barry, University College Dublin
Hadi Asghari, Delft University of Technology.
Didem Özkul, University College London
René Mahieu, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Emerald de Leeuw, Eurocomply
Evan Light, York University
Jefta Hoed, Rijkshemelvaartsdienst Amsterdam
Federico Ferretti, University of Bologna
Stefan Popenici, Charles Darwin University
Felicity Ruby, Sydney University
Dominique Dillabough-Lefebvre, London School of Economics