TPRC54 Pre-Conference Tutorials

Thursday, September 24, 2026
Full Day Tutorial 9:00am - 5:00pm

"Identity Online: Shaping governance through digital identifiers"

Milton Mueller, Georgia Institute of Technology
Karim Farhat, Georgia Institute of Technology
Brenden Kuerbis, Georgia Institute of Technology
Karl Grindal, University of New Hampshire
Vagisha Srivastava, Georgia Institute of Technology
Johannes Sedlmeir, University of Muenster

This TPRC Tutorial focuses on digital identifiers and their role in cyberspace governance. The Internet and proliferation of digital devices have opened up vast new spaces for social interaction, creating many new and unique problems related to identification. Am I talking to a human or a bot? How can we control minors’ access to adult content? What authority is the source of trust in a global PKI? Is the face I am seeing online a live human or a digital mask with a synthesized voice trained to sound like my boss? Is the software update modifying my computer coming from the legitimate software vendor, or an attempt by an adversary to install malware? We are developing an analytical framework for identity systems. The identifier regimes we study include the Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs) for domain names, routing, and websites; the newly developing system of Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs); efforts to establish a system of content provenance identifiers (C2PA); and legally-imposed implementations of age verification. We also apply our framework to policy and technical discussions around identifier systems that would allow us to reliably differentiate humans from AI agents in the online environment. Identifier systems with that goal are in the earliest stages of development, so we will focus mainly on debates about the need for such a system, and the social and policy issues of various possible designs.

Thursday, September 24, 2026
Half Day Tutorial 2:00pm - 5:00pm

"Informing Data-Driven Broadband Policy: Tools for Policymakers, Scholars, and Advocates"

Arpit Gupta, University of California Santa Barbara
Tejas Narechania, University of California Berkeley
Elizabeth Belding, University of California Santa Barbara
Laasya Koduru, University of California Santa Barbara

This tutorial introduces researchers and practitioners—including policymakers from state broadband offices, public utility commissions, and municipal broadband programs—to practical tools for measuring broadband availability, affordability, and adoption. We first introduce the Broadband-Plan Querying Tool (BQT+), which collects address-level broadband plan information—including upload and download speed, price, and adoption—directly from ISPs’ websites. Second, we present BQT-SaaS, a platformized version of BQT+ designed for policymakers. BQT-SaaS allows public agencies to put BQT+ to their own use, to audit broadband availability, evaluate pricing, and measure adoption—without technical expertise. Lastly, we introduce the Broadband Affordability Dashboard, a tool that translates broadband data, such as that collected by BQT-SaaS, into affordability policy. Collectively, these tools can help empower policymakers to collect and analyze broadband plans at the address level across multiple ISPs, thereby enabling an empirically grounded approach to designing and evaluating broadband policy.