5 November 2018; A general view of Centre Stage ahead of the Web Summit 2018 Opening Ceremony at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal. Photo by Sam Barnes/Web Summit via Sportsfile

Former Cambridge Analytica Director Brittany Kaiser to take the stage at the WebSummit

Today, Web Summit has announced Brittany Kaiser, former Business Development Head of Cambridge Analytica and star of the Netflix series ‘The Great Hack’ as a speaker at this year’s event.

Kaiser is set to address data weaponisation and privacy to over 70,000 attendees in Lisbon from November 4-7. As someone who witnessed how data could be weaponised first-hand to influence and manipulate people, she will be speaking on the Deep Tech track about what could be done to combat such dangers to democracy.

She will also be on the conference’s Future Societies panel with a fellow academic, David Chaum from Elixxir, to discuss the impact of tech on privacy and the possible solutions to the privacy problem from their own perspectives.

Web Summit will be welcoming other privacy and security activists this year such as Edward Snowden, whistleblower and President of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager. Not to mention those who have attended previous editions, from another former Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie to the late Stephen Hawking.

Alongside Snowden and Vestager, other speakers recently announced for this year’s event include the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair; son of Will Smith and founder of JUST Water, Jaden Smith; Guo Ping, Rotating Chairman of Huawei; and football legend, Eric Cantona.