Hackathon Contest Engages Internet Privacy

Birzeit University hosted the Hackathon contest between Palestinian universities on March 1, 2014. The competition gathers programmers to do participatory programming. It was entitled, "How to Protect Yourself on the Internet... You May be under Surveillance." The contest was organized by the student Branch of the Association of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Birzeit University Computer Systems Engineering club.

Mashour Abu-Daqah, former, minister of Communications and chairman of the Board of Directors of the Internet community, also spoke at the event about privacy on the Internet in our daily lives and its importance.

Ten teams from different Palestinian universities participated in the competition, which was held in tandem with related events in San Francisco and Boston in the United States, Bangalore in India and Berlin in Germany.

The competition was sponsored by the Association of Internet Community in Palestine, Birzeit University Najjad Zeenni Information Technology Center of Excellence and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Civic Media.