Overview

This course surveys the current state of digital privacy from multiple perspectives, including technology, philosophy, ethics, law, and policy. The course holds that privacy poses equally difficult challenges to technologists, policy makers, and ethicists. In order to make progress recognizing privacy threats, and protecting against them, representatives from all these domains must understand what privacy means in their respective domains as well as the mutual impacts of the domains on one another. The course will review key technologies , including web and mobile tracking, location tracking, privacy engineering, data analytics and differential privacy, facial recognition, and more. It will also introduce students to differing approaches to privacy, including technical, empirical, legal, and ethical. When addressing privacy threats in these areas, as well as potential solutions, the course sets out to pair a review of relevant technologies with a review of associated considerations in law and policy, ethics, and social sciences. Students will be expected to apply themselves to both the technical and nontechnical material with equal energy and enthusiasm.

Grading Policy

Grading is based on homeworks (72%), a take-home final exam (18%) and in-class attendance and participation (10%).

Instructions

Because the study of privacy benefits from different disciplinary perspectives, all assignments will include a required section and a take-your-pick section. Both sections include a mix of CS and INFO problems.

Assignments