Honorary Doctor Karen Sandler will discuss possible avenues for accountability, transparency and access to remedies.

Karen Sandler has dedicated her career to advocating for free and open-source software, particularly in relation to medical devices. She is a firm believer in software freedom and has been the executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy for several years. The Software Freedom Conservancy is a non-profit organisation with the mission of ensuring the right to repair, improve and reinstall software.

When Karen discovered at a young age that she had a life threatening heart condition, the last thing she expected to have to worry about was software. With a heart device implanted in her body, she has come to understand not only how vulnerable medical devices are but how the compromises we make with our software permeate through every level of our society.

KU Leuven Student Council cordially invite you to attend this lecture on Tuesday January 31 at 16h in the Promotiezaal. (The lecture will be in English.) The lecture will be streamed. You can access the livestream via www.livestream.kuleuven.be with the pincode 882021.

Karen will touch on potential avenues for accountability, transparency, and access to remedies as we hurtle towards an Internet of Things built on proprietary source code that prevents us from knowing exactly how these vital devices work, what data they are collecting and to what ends, what their vulnerabilities might be, and the extent to which their closed, proprietary nature keeps us from developing societal mechanisms and review processes to keep us safe.