Welcome to the Privacy Research Group home page. The Privacy Research Group is a weekly meeting of students, professors, and industry professionals who are passionate about exploring, protecting, and understanding privacy in the digital age.
- Visit the PRG Blog: Check out all the latest news from the Privacy Research Group.
Joining the PRG: Because we deal with early-stage work in progress, attendance at meetings of the Privacy Research Group is generally limited to researchers and students who can commit to ongoing participation in the group. To discuss joining the group, please contact Professor Helen Nissenbaum or Professor Katherine Strandburg. If you are interested in these topics, but cannot commit to ongoing participation in the PRG, please check out the offerings of our Colloquium on Information Technology and Society.
PRG Calendar — Fall 2013
- September 11: Organizational meeting
- September 18: Discussion - NSA/Pew Survey
- September 25: Luke Stark: "The Emotional Context of Information Privacy"
- October 2: Joris van Hoboken: "A Right to be Forgotten"
ABSTRACT: In this talk I will present my ongoing work on the so-called 'right to be forgotten' and the underlying questions relating to balancing privacy and freedom of expression in the context of online services. This right to be forgotten was officially proposed in 2012 by the European Commission as a new element of the EU data protection rules. I will discuss the policy backgrounds of this proposal for a strengthened right to erasure and in particular its relation to new types of publicity facilitated by online intermediaries (search engines and social media in particular). As is clear from an analysis of the proposal which I recently conducted for the European Commission (attached as background) the right to be forgotten has captured the attention of many but fails to address let alone solve the hard issues on the interface of data privacy law, media law and intermediary liability regulations. While the EC proposal may actually be considered 'a right to be forgotten', the underlying questions of how to regulate personal data in online services remain. - October 9: Katherine Strandburg
- October 16: Seda Güerses
- October 23: Brian Choi
- October 30: Danah Boyd
- November 6: Karen Levy
- November 13: Discussion - The Transparency Move
- November 20: Nathan Newman
- December 4: TBD
Spring 2013
- January 30: Welcome meeting and discussion on current privacy news
- February 6: Helen Nissenbaum: "The (Privacy) Trouble with MOOCs"
- February 13: Joe Bonneau: "What will it mean for privacy as user authentication moves beyond passwords?"
- February 20: Brad Smith: "Privacy at Microsoft"
Readings: Healthcare Entities, Cloud-Based IT Services, and Privacy Requirement; FERPA and the Cloud: Why FERPA Desperately Needs Reform; From a Cloud Service Provider: The Importance of Keeping Your School's Data Safe; Microsoft response to the Ministry of Justice Call for Evidence on EU Data Protection Proposal - Regulation COM(2012)11 - February 27: Katherine Strandburg: "Free Fall: The Online Market's Consumer Preference Disconnect"
- March 6: Mariana Thibes: "Privacy at Stake, Challenging Issues in the Brazillian Context"
- March 13: Nathan Newman: "The Economics of Information in Behavioral Advertising Markets"
- March 27: "Privacy News Hot Topics" - US v. Cotterman, Drones' Hearings, Google Settlement, Employee Health Information Vulnerabilities, and a Report from Differential Privacy Day
- April 3: Ira Rubinstein: "Voter Privacy: A Modest Proposal"
- April 10: Katherine Strandburg: ECPA Reform; Catherine Crump: Cotterman Case; Paula Helm: Anonymity in AA
- April 17: Heather Patterson: "Contextual Expectations of Privacy in User-Generated Mobile Health Data: The Fitbit Story"
- April 24: Hannah Block-Wheba and Matt Zimmerman: National Security Letters [NSL's]
- May 1: Akiva Miller: "What Do We Worry About When We Worry About Price Discrimination"
Readings: Price Discrimination Table: Incomplete Thesis
Fall 2012
- September 19: Nathan Newman: "Cost of Lost Privacy: Google, Antitrust and Control of User Data"
- September 26: Karen Levy: "Privacy, Professionalism, and Techno-Legal Regulation of U.S. Truckers"
- October 3: Agatha Cole: "The Role of IP address Data in Counter-Terrorism Operations & Criminal Law Enforcement Investigations: Looking towards the European framework as a model for U.S. Data Retention Policy"
- October 10: Discussion of 'Model Law'
- October 17: Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius: "Behavioural Targeting. How to regulate?"
- October 24: Matt Tierney and Ian Spiro: "Cryptogram: Photo Privacy in Social Media"
- November 7: Sophie Hood: "New Media Technology and the Courts: Judicial Videoconferencing"
- November 14: Travis Hall: "Cracks in the Foundation: India's Biometrics Programs and the Power of the Exception"
- November 21: Lital Helman, "Corporate Responsibility of Social Networking Platforms"
- November 28: Scott Bulua and Catherine Crump: "A framework for understanding and regulating domestic drone surveillance"
- December 5: Martin French, "Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse: The Privacy Implications of (Contemporary Developments in) Public Health Intelligence"
