Privacy Research Group

The Privacy Research Group is a weekly meeting of students, faculty, researchers, and practitioners who are passionate about exploring, protecting, and understanding privacy in the digital age.

Joining 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 Anthony Perrins. If you are interested in these topics, but cannot commit to ongoing participation in PRG, you may wish to join the PRG-All mailing list.

PRG Student Fellows—Student members of PRG have the opportunity to become Student Fellows. Student Fellows help bring the exciting developments and ideas of the Research Group to the outside world. The primary Student Fellow responsibility is to maintain an active web presence through the ILI student blog, reporting on current events and developments in the privacy field and bringing the world of privacy research to a broader audience. Fellows also have the opportunity to help promote and execute exciting events and colloquia, and even present to the Privacy Research Group. Student Fellow responsibilities are a manageable and enjoyable addition to the regular meeting attendance required of all PRG members. The Student Fellow position is the first step for NYU students into the world of privacy research. Interested students should email Student Fellow Coordinator Anthony Perrins with a brief (1-2 paragraph) statement of interest or for more information.

PRG Calendar

Spring 2026

January 28: Katherine Strandburg - Keeping Software Slop Out of Court: Admissibility of Software-based Forensic Evidence

Fall 2025

November 19: Ben Green and Nel Escher - The Limits of Auditing Frameworks for Public Sector Algorithms: A Case Study of the Michigan Integrated Data Automated System (MiDAS)

Abstract: Acknowledging the risks posed by artificial intelligence and automated decision-making systems in the public sector, policymakers have proposed regulations that require audits of algorithmic systems. However, there has been no thorough examination of the efficacy of these policies in addressing algorithmic harms. These policies warrant closer scrutiny, as there are notable cases in which legally-mandated audits have failed to prevent high-stakes harm. We evaluate auditing policies through a case study of the Michigan Integrated Data Automated System (MiDAS), which is akin to other public-sector software systems and has seriously injured jobless people. Our paper proceeds in three steps. First, we collect and analyze themes across 32 policy documents to look for common assumptions about how audits should frame, identify, and address harms. Second, we explore why audits have failed to improve public-sector software systems by analyzing published audits of MiDAS. Third, we evaluate the assumptions motivating audit policies against the limits of the MiDAS audits. We find that auditing frameworks contain flawed assumptions that limit their ability to address the harms of public sector software failures. While audit policies most often frame algorithmic harm as discriminatory bias, a wider range of harms can stem from algorithmic systems in practice, including system security breaches, misallocation of public resources, and violations of due process. While audit policies contemplate public sector software systems as isolated software components, these systems are dynamic and embedded in complex relationships with other technical subsystems and human practices. While audit policies envision that any problems uncovered by audits will be corrected, many public institutions lack the technical capacity and resources to fix or replace software systems. Given these flawed assumptions, regulators must reckon with a challenging reality: despite sound audits, public sector algorithms may continue to operate in a broken state. We conclude with recommendations for improving the governance of public sector algorithms.

November 12: Nofar Shemla Kadosh and Mimee Xu - The Privacy of the Mind

ABSTRACT: Having a chatbot mold their responses to you, ground you, fill in the blank, or otherwise reflect back your thoughts and feelings may sound dreary to some privacy scholars, but it is a force unstoppable. People increasingly use ChatGPT for emotional processing. This self-introspective process externalizes inner voice and outsources inner work, which until recently, cannot be explicitly completed without the use of traditional instruments like personal diaries, trusted friends, or modern psychotherapists. Such an intimate activity is not always an individualistic endeavor, however, as institutions where we share our own intimate thoughts abound: confessions, circles, AA-meetings. What distinguishes diaries, friends, and therapists apart is lack of intrusion of the Other. These extensions of private expression preserves a lack of judgment that allows for the flow of emotional expression. The widespread use of ChatGPT for emotional processing therefore may hint at a privacy relevance unseen before. We ask, is this an emergent form of privacy in the age of AI, that ought to be recognized and studied? We share a philosophical and ethical basis for the intimate use case as an extension of or a witness to the self, or an interception to the becoming of self, map it to modern psychology and technological design, before comparing it with analogies like diaries. Lastly, we apply these analogies’ relevant law and regulations and attempt to contour the notion of Privacy of the Mind.

November 5: Sevinj Novruzova - Corporate Compliance in the Age of AI: Rethinking Design on Code of Conduct and Business Ethics

ABSTRACT: The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in business has exposed significant gaps in traditional Codes of Conduct. According to LRN’s 2025 Code of Conduct Report:

Only 15% of codes of conduct currently reference AI.
Although inclusion has tripled since 2023, 85% of organizations still leave AI-related risks unaddressed.

Emerging AI risks now demand the same level of attention as established compliance issues, such as anti-bribery and conflicts of interest. As AI increasingly drives decision-making, traditional Codes of Conduct rooted in human judgment, cultural understanding, and moral intuition must be rethought and updated to ensure organizations remain aligned with ethical and legal standards. The proposal aims to create a framework for integrating AI governance into corporate ethics and compliance programs. The Company will maintain safeguards to ensure that the use of AI and other technologies complies with laws, prevents misuse, and aligns with its Code of Conduct. This proposal also seeks to promote responsible innovation built on transparency, accountability, and the alignment of machine behavior with human values. These safeguards and governance guardrails shall be grounded in three key principles:

Compliance with applicable laws and regulations;
Adherence to the Company’s core values;
Alignment with established business practices and ethical standards.

However, embedding ethical values in AI systems remains a challenge, as AI lacks intuition, empathy, and contextual awareness the human capacities that inform ethical decision-making. Addressing this gap requires a new design paradigm that bridges technological capability with moral and cultural intelligence. With an overwhelming majority of employees supporting mandatory AI disclosure, companies that withhold information about their AI use risk and make it Ethical Disclosure Imperative:

Losing trust among employees and stakeholders,
Triggering internal resistance to AI adoption, and
Being viewed as ethically negligent in their business practices.

The project will provide organizations with actionable guidelines and design principles for creating AI-aware compliance structures promoting ethical integrity, trust, and lawful innovation in an AI-driven business landscape.

October 29: Giulia Pernazza - Comparative Legal Frameworks for the Secondary Use of Health Data: A Transatlantic Analysis of US and EU Legislations

ABSTRACT: This study analyzes the divergent regulatory frameworks governing the secondary use of health data in the United States and the European Union. The EU’s GDPR establishes a uniform, consent-based, and rights-driven model that ensures rigorous privacy safeguards but potentially constraining research efficiency. Conversely, the US framework under HIPAA employs a sectoral, exception-based approach that facilitate data reuse yet offers limited individual oversight. This research seeks to inform regulatory refinement by advancing a balanced approach that reconciles scientific progress with the protection of fundamental privacy rights.

October 22: Omar Vásquez Duque - Can Data Exploitation be Properly Addressed by Competition Law? A Note of Caution

ABSTRACT: In this brief piece of caution, we argue that competition law is not well-suited for dealing with exploitative data practices. As consumers usually act as if they did not value their privacy, legal remedies that neglect what social scientists call “the privacy paradox” are unlikely to improve the current status quo. We claim that privacy exploitation is better explained by informational and behavioral failures. Our analysis has important policy and legal implications as is shown in our assessment of the German Facebook Case. Under plausible assumptions, if consumer demand does not police the privacy attribute, any competitor will exploit it and thus competition will fail to yield higher privacy protection standards.

October 15: Moritz Schramm - Governance by Emulation: The Oversight Board, the Digital Services Act, and the Struggle for Platform Accountability

ABSTRACT: Social media giants like Meta and transnational regulators such as the European Union are transforming private governance by creatively emulating public law frameworks. Drawing on exclusive interviews and in-depth analysis of Meta's Oversight Board and the EU's Digital Services Act, this book explores how these approaches blend European and American perspectives, bridging distinct legal traditions to address the challenges of platform governance. Analysis of content moderation practices and their implications uncovers a critical pattern in the evolution of governance for industries that will define the future, from digital platforms to emerging technologies. Combining public and private law in innovative ways, the book sheds light on bold governance experiments that will shape the digital world-for better or worse. This study offers crucial insights for understanding the next chapter of global governance in an increasingly interconnected and privatized world. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

October 8: Daniella Ferrari and Mallory Knodel - How to Think About End-to-End Encryption and AI: Training, Processing, Disclosure, and Consent

ABSTRACT: End-to-end encryption (E2EE) has become the gold standard for securing communications, bringing strong confidentiality and privacy guarantees to billions of users worldwide. However, the current push towards widespread integration of artificial intelligence (AI) models, including in E2EE systems, raises some serious security concerns. This work performs a critical examination of the (in)compatibility of AI models and E2EE applications. We explore this on two fronts: (1) the integration of AI "assistants" within E2EE applications, and (2) the use of E2EE data for training AI models. We analyze the potential security implications of each, and identify conflicts with the security guarantees of E2EE. Then, we analyze legal implications of integrating AI models in E2EE applications, given how AI integration can undermine the confidentiality that E2EE promises. Finally, we offer a list of detailed recommendations based on our technical and legal analyses, including: technical design choices that must be prioritized to uphold E2EE security; how service providers must accurately represent E2EE security; and best practices for the default behavior of AI features and for requesting user consent. We hope this paper catalyzes an informed conversation on the tensions that arise between the brisk deployment of AI and the security offered by E2EE, and guides the responsible development of new AI features.

October 1: Maroussia Lévesque - Hallucinating Deregulation

September 24: Daji Landis - Security and Interoperability

ABSTRACT: Concerns about big tech’s monopoly power have featured prominently in recent media and policy discourse, as regulators across the EU, the US, and beyond have ramped up efforts to promote healthier market competition. One favored approach is to require certain kinds of interoperation between platforms, to mitigate the current concentration of power in the biggest companies. Unsurprisingly, interoperability initiatives have generally been met with resistance by big tech companies. Perhaps more surprisingly, a significant part of that pushback has been in the name of security—that is, arguing against interoperation on the basis that it will undermine security. We conduct a systematic examination of “security vs. interoperability” (SvI) discourse in the context of EU antitrust proceedings. Our resulting contributions are threefold. First, we propose a taxonomy of SvI concerns in three categories: engineering, vetting, and hybrid. Second, we present an analytical framework for assessing real-world SvI concerns, and illustrate its utility by analyzing several case studies spanning our three taxonomy categories. Third, we undertake a comparative analysis that highlights key considerations around the interplay of economic incentives, market power, and security across our diverse case study contexts, identifying common patterns in each taxonomy category. Our contributions provide valuable analytical tools for experts and non-experts alike to critically assess SvI discourse in today’s fast-paced regulatory landscape.

September 17: Joseph Bonneau - Publicly Verifiable Randomness

ABSTRACT: Motivated and inspired by the emergence of blockchains, many new protocols have recently been proposed for generating publicly verifiable randomness in a distributed yet secure fashion. These protocols work under different setups and assumptions, use various cryptographic tools, and entail unique trade-offs and characteristics. In this paper, we systematize the design of distributed randomness beacons (DRBs) as well as the cryptographic building blocks they rely on. We evaluate protocols on two key security properties, unbiasability and unpredictability, and discuss common attack vectors for predicting or biasing the beacon output and the countermeasures employed by protocols. We also compare protocols by communication and computational efficiency. Finally, we provide insights on the applicability of different protocols in various deployment scenarios and highlight possible directions for further research.

September 10: Ari Waldman - The Problem of Stale Information

Spring 2025

April 23: Maria P. Angel - Breaking Up with Privacy: The FTC’s Shift to Commercial Surveillance and its Reimagined Role in Data Governance
April 16: Ashit Srivastava - Atmanirbhar Bharat and Personal Data Protection
April 9: Mark Verstraete - Training Data Protectionism
April 2: Mimee Xu - Input-Private Fairness Audits
March 19: Ignacio Cofone - The Fairness-Accuracy Tradeoff Myth in AI
March 12: PRG Student Fellows
March 5: Nicholas Tilmes (with Ignacio Cofone and Katherine Strandburg) - Taxonomizing Synthetic Data for Law
February 26: Danny Huang and Grace McGrath - Toward helping non-expert users detect hidden cameras in real-world environments
February 19: Sky Ma - AI in Judicial Decision-Making: A Theoretical Framework Based on the Fact-Law Dichotomy
February 12: Ronald J. Coleman - Human Confrontation
February 5: Alexis Shore Ingber and Nazanin Andalibi - Regulating Emotion AI in the United States: Insights from Empirical Inquiry
January 29: Ari Waldman - The Digital Iron Cage: The Radical Death of Tech Ethics and Safety (with Danielle Keats Citron)

Fall 2024

November 20: Nathalie Smuha - Drafting, Thinking, Judging: What We Delegate to Generative AI and How it Can Threaten Democracy
November 13: Sky (Qin) Ma - Paternalistic Privacy
November 6: Sevinj Novruzova - Broaden Compliance: What are Guardrails for the Financial Institutions in Ensuring Global Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Terrorism Financing (AML/CFT) in AI Use
October 30: Seb Benthall - Agents, Autonomy, Intelligence, Persons, and Properties
October 23: Aileen Nielsen and Yafit Lev-Aretz - Current Prospects for Automated Data Privacy Opt-Outs
October 15: Chinmayi Sharma - Interoperable Obscurity
October 9: Arna Wömmel - Algorithmic Fairness: The Role of Human Bias
October 2: Ari Waldman - Technology Expertise in Technology Policy
September 25: Michael Goodyear - Dignity and Deepfakes
September 18: Aniket Kesari - Federal Open Data as an Artificial Intelligence Resource

Spring 2024

April 17: Elettra Bietti - Data is Infrastructure
April 10: Angela Zhang - The Promise and Perils of China's Regulation of Artificial Intelligence
April 3: Sebastian Benthall - Complex Sociotechnical System Alignment
March 27: Katja Langenbucher - Financial Profiling
March 13: Thomas Streinz - With Pride and Without Prejudice: Constructing European Data Law around the GDPR
March 6: Yafit Lev-Aretz and Aileen Nielsen - Understanding Privacy as a Public Health Priority
February 28: Ari Waldman - Compromised Advocates: Civil Society and the Future of Privacy Law
February 21: PRG Student Fellows - Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of AI
February 14: Stein & Florencia Marotta-Wurgler - Training 'Legal Thinking': An Automated Approach to Interpreting Privacy Policies
February 7: Fabien Lechevalier & Marie Potel-Saville - Moving from Dark to Fair Patterns: Regulation & countermeasures for human-centered digital
January 31: Moritz Schramm - Platform Administrative Law: A Research Agenda
January 24: Priyanka Nanayakkara - Will Challenges of Understanding Differential Privacy Prevent it from Becoming Policy?

Fall 2023

November 29: Monika Leszczynska - Defining the Boundaries of Marketing Influence: Public Perception and Unfair Trade Practices in the Digital Era
November 15: Aileen Nielsen & Arna Woemmel - Ageism unrestrained: the perplexing lack of action to protect older adults in the digital world
November 8: Aniket Kesari - A Legal Framework for Explainable AI
November 1: Toussaint Nothias - The Idea of Digital Colonialism: An Intellectual History At the Intersection of Research and Digital Rights Advocacy
October 25: Sebastian Benthall - Regulatory CI: Adaptively Regulating Privacy as Contextual Integrity
October 18: Michal Shur-Ofry - Multiplicity as an AI Governance Practice
October 11: Michael Goodyear - Infringing Information Architectures
October 4: Yafit Lev-Aretz - Humanized Choice Architecture
September 27: Alexis Shore - Governing the screenshot feature: Fighting interpersonal breaches of privacy through law and policy
September 20: Moritz Schramm - How the European Union and Big Tech reshape Judicial Power
September 13: David Stein – Rethinking IP (and Competition) in the Age of Online Software

Spring 2023

April 19: Anne Bellon - Seeing through the screen. Transparency as regulation in the digital economy
April 12: Gabriel Nicholas, Christopher Morton & Salome Viljeon - Researcher Access to Social Media Data: Lessons from Clinical Trial Data Sharing
April 5: Amanda Parsons & Salome Viljeon - How Law Collides with Informational Capitalism
March 29: Cade Mallett - Judicial Review of Administrative Action Based on AI
March 22: Stein - Innovation Protection for Platform Competition
March 8: Aileen Nielsen & Yafit Lev-Aretz - Disclosure and Our Moral Calculus: Do Data Use Disclosures Change Data Subjects’ Sense of Culpability
March 1: Ari Ezra Waldman - Privacy Civil Society
February 22: Thomas Streinz - Contingencies of the Brussels Effect in the Digital Domain
February 15: Sebastian Benthall - New Computational Approaches to Information Policy Research
February 8: Argyri Panezi, Leon Anidjar, and Nizan Geslevich Packing - The Metaverse Privacy Problem: If you built it, it will come
February 1: Aniket Kesari - The Consumer Review Fairness Act and the Reputational Sanctions Market
January 25: Michelle Shen - The Brussels Effect as a ‘New-School’ Regulation Globalizing Democracy: A Comparative Review of the CLOUD Act and the European-United States Data Privacy FrameworkAlgorithmic Turn

Fall 2022

November 30: Ira Rubenstein - Artificial Speech and the First Amendment: A Skeptical View
November 16: Michal Gal - Synthetic Data: Legal Implications of the Data-Generation Revolution
November 9: Ashit Srivastava - Default Protectionist Tracing Applications: Erosion of Cooperative Federalism
November 2: María Angel - Privacy's Algorithmic Turn
October 26: Mimee Xu - Netflix and Forget
October 19: Paul Friedl - Dis/similarities in the Design and Development of Legal and Algorithmic Normative Systems: the Case of Perspective API
October 12: Katja Langenbucher - Fair Lending in the Age of AI
October 5: Ari Waldman - Gender Data in the Automated State
September 28: Elettra Bietti - The Structure of Consumer Choice: Antitrust and Utilities' Convergence in Digital Platform Markets
September 21: Mark Verstraete - Adversarial Information Law
September 14: Aniket Kesari - Do Data Breach Notification Laws Work?

Spring 2022

April 27: Stefan Bechtold - Algorithmic Explanations in the Field
April 20: Molly de Blanc - Employing the Right to Repair to Address Consent Issues in Implanted Medical Devices
April 13: Sergio Alonso de Leon - IP law in the data economy: The problematic role of trade secrets and database rights for the emerging data access rights
April 6: Michelle Shen – Criminal Defense Strategy and Brokering Innovation in the Digital and Scientific Era: Justice for Whom?
March 30: Elettra Bietti – From Data to Attention Infrastructures: Regulating Extraction in the Attention Platform Economy
March 23: Aniket Kesari - A Computational Law & Economics Toolkit for Balancing Privacy and Fairness in Consumer Law
March 9: Gabriel Nicholas - Administering Social Data: Lessons for Social Media from Other Sectors
March 2: Jiaying Jiang - Central Bank Digital Currencies and Consumer Privacy Protection
February 23: Aileen Nielsen & Karel Kubicek - How Does Law Make Code? The Timing and Content of Open Source Responses to GDPR and CCPA
February 16: Stein - Unintended Consequences: How Data Protection Laws Leave our Data Less Protected
February 9: Stav Zeitouni - Propertization in Information Privacy
February 2: Ben Sundholm - AI in Clinical Practice: Reconceiving the Black-Box Problem
January 26: Mark Verstraete - Probing Personal Data

Fall 2021

December 1: Ira Rubinstein & Tomer Kenneth - Health Misinformation, Online Platforms, and Government Action
November 17: Aileen Nielsen - Can an algorithm be too accurate?
November 10: Thomas Streinz - Data Capitalism
November 3: Barbara Kayondo - A Governance Framework for Enhancing Patient’s Data Privacy Protection in Electronic Health Information Systems
October 27: Sebastian Benthal - Fiduciary Duties for Computational Systems
October 20: Jiang Jiaying - Technology-Enabled Co-Regulation as a New Regulatory Approach to Blockchain Implementation
October 13: Aniket Kesari - Privacy Law Diffusion Across U.S. State Legislatures
October 6: Katja Langenbucher - The EU Proposal for an AI Act – tested on algorithmic credit scoring
September 29: Francesca Episcopo - PrEtEnD – PRivate EnforcemenT in the EcoNomy of Data
September 22: Ben Green - The Flaws of Policies Requiring Human Oversight of Government Algorithms
September 15: Ari Waldman - Misinformation Project in Need of Pithy

Spring 2021

April 16:Tomer Kenneth — Public Officials on Social Media
April 9: Thomas Streinz — The Flawed Dualism of Facebook's Oversight Board
April 2: Gabe Nicholas — Have Your Data and Eat it Too: Bridging the Gap between Data Sharing and Data Protection
March 26: Ira Rubinstein — Voter Microtargeting and the Future of Democracy
March 19: Stav Zeitouni
March 12: Ngozi Nwanta
March 5: Aileen Nielsen
February 26: Tom McBrien
February 19: Ari Ezra Waldman
February 12: Albert Fox Cahn
February 5: Salome Viljoen & Seb Benthall — Data Market Discipline: From Financial Regulation to Data Governance
January 29: Mason Marks — Biosupremacy: Data Protection, Antitrust, and Monopolistic Power Over Human Behavior

Fall 2020

December 4: Florencia Marotta-Wurgler & David Stein — Teaching Machines to Think Like Lawyers
November 20: Andrew Weiner
November 6: Mark Verstraete — Cybersecurity Spillovers
October 30: Ari Ezra Waldman — Privacy Law's Two Paths
October 23: Aileen Nielsen — Tech's Attention Problem
October 16: Caroline Alewaerts — UN Global Pulse
October 9: Salome Viljoen — Data as a Democratic Medium: From Individual to Relational Data Governance
October 2: Gabe Nicholas — Surveillance Delusion: Lessons from the Vietnam War
September 25: Angelina Fisher & Thomas Streinz — Confronting Data Inequality
September 18: Danny Huang — Watching loTs That Watch Us: Studying loT Security & Privacy at Scale
September 11: Seb Benthall — Accountable Context for Web Applications

Spring 2020

April 29: Aileen Nielsen — "Pricing" Privacy: Preliminary Evidence from Vignette Studies Inspired by Economic Anthropology
April 22: Ginny Kozemczak — Dignity, Freedom, and Digital Rights: Comparing American and European Approaches to Privacy
April 15: Privacy and COVID-19 Policies
April 8: Ira Rubinstein — Urban Privacy
April 1: Thomas Streinz — Data Governance in Trade Agreements: Non-territoriality of Data and Multi-Nationality of Corporations
March 25: Christopher Morten — The Big Data Regulator, Rebooted: Why and How the FDA Can and Should Disclose Confidential Data on Prescription Drugs
March 4: Lilla Montanagni — Regulation 2018/1807 on the Free Flow of Non Personal Data: Yet Another Piece in the Data Puzzle in the EU?
February 26: Stein — Flow of Data Through Online Advertising Markets
February 19: Seb Benthall — Towards Agend-Based Computational Modeling of Informational Capitalism
February 12: Yafit Lev-Aretz & Madelyn Sanfilippo — One Size Does Not Fit All: Applying a Single Privacy Policy to (too) Many Contexts
February 5: Jake Goldenfein & Seb Benthall — Data Science and the Decline of Liberal Law and Ethics
January 29: Albert Fox Cahn — Reimagining the Fourth Amendment for the Mass Surveillance Age
January 22: Ido Sivan-Sevilia — Europeanization on Demand? The EU's Cybersecurity Certification Regime Between the Rationale of Market Integration and the Core Functions of the State

Fall 2019

December 4: Ari Waldman — Discussion on Proposed Privacy Bills
November 20: Margarita Boyarskaya & Solon Barocas [joint work with Hanna Wallach] — What is a Proxy and why is it a Problem?
November 13: Mark Verstraete & Tal Zarsky — Data Breach Distortions
November 6: Aaron Shapiro — Dynamic Exploits: Calculative Asymmetries in the On-Demand Economy
October 30: Tomer Kenneth — Who Can Move My Cheese? Other Legal Considerations About Smart-Devices
October 23: Yafit Lev-Aretz & Madelyn Sanfilippo — Privacy and Religious Views
October 16: Salome Viljoen — Algorithmic Realism: Expanding the Boundaries of Algorithmic Thought
October 9: Katja Langenbucher — Responsible A.I. Credit Scoring
October 2: Michal Shur-Ofry — Robotic Collective Memory
September 25: Mark Verstraete — Inseparable Uses in Property and Information Law
September 18: Gabe Nicholas & Michael Weinberg — Data, To Go: Privacy and Competition in Data Portability
September 11: Ari Waldman — Privacy, Discourse, and Power

Spring 2019

April 24: Sheila Marie Cruz-Rodriguez — Contractual Approach to Privacy Protection in Urban Data Collection
April 17: Andrew Selbst — Negligence and AI's Human Users
April 10: Sun Ping — Beyond Security: What Kind of Data Protection Law Should China Make?
April 3: Moran Yemini — Missing in "State Action": Toward a Pluralist Conception of the First Amendment
March 27: Nick Vincent — Privacy and the Human Microbiome
March 13: Nick Mendez — Will You Be Seeing Me in Court? Risk of Future Harm, and Article III Standing After a Data Breach
March 6: Jake Goldenfein — Through the Handoff Lens: Are Autonomous Vehicles No-Win for Users
February 27: Cathy Dwyer — Applying the Contextual Integrity Framework to Cambride Analytica
February 20: Ignacio Cofone & Katherine Strandburg — Strategic Games and Algorithmic Transparency
February 13: Yan Shvartshnaider — Going Against the (Appropriate) Flow: A Contextual Integrity Approach to Privacy Policy Analysis
January 30: Sabine Gless — Predictive Policing: In Defense of 'True Positives'

Fall 2018

December 5: Discussion of current issues
November 28: Ashley Gorham — Algorithmic Interpellation
November 14: Mark Verstraete — Data Inalienabilities
November 7: Jonathan Mayer — Estimating Incidental Collection in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
October 31: Sebastian Benthall — Trade, Trust, and Cyberwar
October 24: Yafit Lev-Aretz — Privacy and the Human Element
October 17: Julia Powles — AI: The Stories We Weave; The Questions We Leave
October 10: Andy Gersick — Can We Have Honesty, Civility, and Privacy Online? Implications from Evolutionary Theories of Animal and Human Communication
October 3: Eli Siems — The Case for a Disparate Impact Regime Covering All Machine-Learning Decisions
September 26: Ari Waldman — Privacy's False Promise
September 19: Marijn Sax — Targeting Your Health or Your Wallet? Health Apps and Manipulative Commercial Practices
September 12: Mason Marks — Algorithmic Disability Discrimination

Spring 2018

May 2: Ira Rubinstein — Article 25 of the GDPR and Product Design: A Critical View [with Nathan Good and Guilermo Monge, Good Research]
April 25: Elana Zeide — The Future Human Futures Market
April 18: Taylor Black — Performing Performative Privacy: Applying Post-Structural Performance Theory for Issues of Surveillance Aesthetics
April 11: John Nay — Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning for Law and Policy Texts
April 4: Sebastian Benthall — Games and Rules of Information Flow
March 28: Yann Shvartzshanider and Noah Apthorpe — Discovering Smart Home IoT Privacy Norms using Contextual Integrity
February 28: Thomas Streinz — TPP’s Implications for Global Privacy and Data Protection Law
February 21: Ben Morris, Rebecca Sobel, and Nick Vincent — Direct-to-Consumer Sequencing Kits: Are Users Losing More Than They Gain?
February 14: Eli Siems — Trade Secrets in Criminal Proceedings: The Battle over Source Code Discovery
February 7: Madeline Bryd and Philip Simon — Is Facebook Violating U.S. Discrimination Laws by Allowing Advertisers to Target Users?
January 31: Madelyn Sanfilippo — Sociotechnical Polycentricity: Privacy in Nested Sociotechnical Networks
January 24: Jason Schultz and Julia Powles — Discussion about the NYC Algorithmic Accountability Bill

Fall 2017

November 29: Kathryn Morris and Eli Siems — Discussion of Carpenter v. United States
November 15:Leon Yin — Anatomy and Interpretability of Neural Networks
November 8: Ben Zevenbergen — Contextual Integrity for Password Research Ethics?
November 1: Joe Bonneau — An Overview of Smart Contracts
October 25: Sebastian Benthall — Modeling Social Welfare Effects of Privacy Policies
October 18: Sue Glueck — Future-Proofing the Law
October 11: John Nay — Algorithmic Decision-Making Explanations: A Taxonomy and Case Study
October 4:Finn Bruton — 'The Best Surveillance System we Could Imagine': Payment Networks and Digital Cash
September 27: Julia Powles — Promises, Polarities & Capture: A Data and AI Case Study
September 20: Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo AND Yafit Lev-Aretz — Breaking News: How Push Notifications Alter the Fourth Estate
September 13: Ignacio Cofone — Anti-Discriminatory Privacy

Spring 2017

April 26: Ben Zevenbergen — Contextual Integrity as a Framework for Internet Research Ethics
April 19: Beate Roessler — Manipulation
April 12: Amanda Levendowski — Conflict Modeling
April 5: Madelyn Sanfilippo — Privacy as Commons: A Conceptual Overview and Case Study in Progress
March 29: Hugo Zylberberg — Reframing the fake news debate: influence operations, targeting-and-convincing infrastructure and exploitation of personal data
March 22: Caroline Alewaerts, Eli Siems and Nate Tisa will lead discussion of three topics flagged during our current events roundups: smart toys, the recently leaked documents about CIA surveillance techniques, and the issues raised by the government’s attempt to obtain recordings from an Amazon Echo in a criminal trial.
March 8: Ira Rubinstein — Privacy Localism
March 1: Luise Papcke — Project on (Collaborative) Filtering and Social Sorting
February 22: Yafit Lev-Aretz and Grace Ha (in collaboration with Katherine Strandburg) — Privacy and Innovation
February 15: Argyri Panezi — Academic Institutions as Innovators but also Data Collectors - Ethical and Other Normative Considerations
February 8: Katherine Strandburg — Decisionmaking, Machine Learning and the Value of Explanation
February 1: Argyro Karanasiou — A Study into the Layers of Automated Decision Making: Emergent Normative and Legal Aspects of Deep Learning
January 25: Scott Skinner-Thompson — Equal Protection Privacy

Fall 2016

December 7: Tobias Matzner — The Subject of Privacy
November 30: Yafit Lev-Aretz — Data Philanthropy
November 16: Helen Nissenbaum — Must Privacy Give Way to Use Regulation?
November 9: Bilyana Petkova — Domesticating the "Foreign" in Making Transatlantic Data Privacy Law
November 2: Scott Skinner-Thompson — Recording as Heckling
October 26: Yan Shvartzhnaider — Learning Privacy Expectations by Crowdsourcing Contextual Informational Norms
October 19: Madelyn Sanfilippo — Privacy and Institutionalization in Data Science Scholarship
October 12: Paula Kift — The Incredible Bulk: Metadata, Foreign Intelligence Collection, and the Limits of Domestic Surveillance Reform
October 5: Craig Konnoth — Health Information Equity
September 28: Jessica Feldman — the Amidst Project
September 21: Nathan Newman — UnMarginalizing Workers: How Big Data Drives Lower Wages and How Reframing Labor Law Can Restore Information Equality in the Workplace
September 14: Kiel Brennan-Marquez — Plausible Cause

Spring 2016

April 27: Yan Schvartzschnaider — Privacy and loT AND Rebecca Weinstein - Net Neutrality's Impact on FCC Regulation of Privacy Practices
April 20: Joris van Hoboken — Privacy in Service-Oriented Architectures: A New Paradigm? [with Seda Gurses]
April 13: Florencia Marotta-Wurgler — Who's Afraid of the FTC? Enforcement Actions and the Content of Privacy Policies (with Daniel Svirsky)
April 6: Ira Rubinstein — Big Data and Privacy: The State of Play
March 30: Clay Venetis — Where is the Cost-Benefit Analysis in Federal Privacy Regulation?
March 23: Diasuke Igeta — An Outline of Japanese Privacy Protection and its Problems; Johannes Eichenhofer — Internet Privacy as Trust Protection
March 9: Alex Lipton — Standing for Consumer Privacy Harms
March 2: Scott Skinner-Thompson — Pop Culture Wars: Marriage, Abortion, and the Screen to Creed Pipeline [with Professor Sylvia Law]
February 24: Daniel Susser — Against the Collection/Use Distinction
February 17: Eliana Pfeffer — Data Chill: A First Amendment Hangover
February 10: Yafit Lev-Aretz — Data Philanthropy
February 3: Kiel Brennan-Marquez — Feedback Loops: A Theory of Big Data Culture
January 27: Leonid Grinberg — But Who BLocks the Blockers? The Technical Side of the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

Fall 2015

December 2: Leonid Grinberg — But Who BLocks the Blockers? The Technical Side of the Ad-Blocking Arms Race AND Kiel Brennan-Marquez - Spokeo and the Future of Privacy Harms
November 18: Angèle Christin - Algorithms, Expertise, and Discretion: Comparing Journalism and Criminal Justice
November 11: Joris van Hoboken — Privacy, Data Sovereignty and Crypto
November 4: Solon Barocas and Karen Levy — Understanding Privacy as a Means of Economic Redistribution
October 28: Finn Brunton — Of Fembots and Men: Privacy Insights from the Ashley Madison Hack
October 21: Paula Kift — Human Dignity and Bare Life - Privacy and Surveillance of Refugees at the Borders of Europe
October 14: Yafit Lev-Aretz and co-author, Nizan Geslevich Packin — Between Loans and Friends: On Soical Credit and the Right to be Unpopular
October 7: Daniel Susser — What's the Point of Notice?
September 30: Helen Nissenbaum and Kirsten Martin — Confounding Variables Confounding Measures of Privacy
September 23: Jos Berens and Emmanuel Letouzé — Group Privacy in a Digital Era
September 16: Scott Skinner-Thompson — Performative Privacy
September 9: Kiel Brennan-Marquez — Vigilantes and Good Samaritan

Spring 2015

April 29: Sofia Grafanaki — Autonomy Challenges in the Age of Big Data; David Krone — Compliance, Privacy and Cyber Security Information Sharing; Edwin Mok — Trial and Error: The Privacy Dimensions of Clinical Trial Data Sharing; Dan Rudofsky — Modern State Action Doctrine in the Age of Big Data 
April 22: Helen Nissenbaum — Respect for Context' as a Benchmark for Privacy: What it is and Isn't
April 15: Joris van Hoboken — From Collection to Use Regulation? A Comparative Perspective
April 8: Bilyana Petkova — Privacy and Federated Law-Making in the EU and the US: Defying the Status Quo?
April 1: Paula Kift — Metadata: An Ontological and Normative Analysis 
March 25: Alex Lipton — Privacy Protections for the Secondary User of Consumer-Watching Technologies 
March 11: Rebecca Weinstein (Cancelled)
March 4: Karen Levy & Alice Marwick — Unequal Harms: Socioeconomic Status, Race, and Gender in Privacy Research 
February 25 : Luke Stark — NannyScam: The Normalization of Consumer-as-Surveillorm 
February 18: Brian Choi — A Prospect Theory of Privacy 
February 11: Aimee Thomson — Cellular Dragnet: Active Cell Site Simulators and the Fourth Amendment 
February 4: Ira Rubinstein — Anonymity and Risk 
January 28: Scott Skinner-Thomson — Outing Privacy 

Fall 2014

December 3: Katherine Strandburg — Discussion of Privacy News [which can include recent court decisions, new technologies or significant industry practices] 
November 19: Alice Marwick — Scandal or Sex Crime? Ethical and Privacy Implications of the Celebrity Nude Photo Leaks 
November 12: Elana Zeide — Student Data and Educational Ideals: examining the current student privacy landscape and how emerging information practice and reforms implicate long-standing social and legal traditions surrounding education in America. The Proverbial Permanent Record [PDF] 
November 5: Seda Guerses — Let's first get things done! On division of labor and practices of delegation in times of mediated politics and politicized technologies
October 29: Luke Stark — Discussion on whether “notice” can continue to play a viable role in protecting privacy in mediated communications and transactions given the increasing complexity of the data ecology and economy.
Kristen Martin — Transaction costs, privacy, and trust: The laudable goals and ultimate failure of notice and choice to respect privacy online 
Ryan Calo — Against Notice Skepticism in Privacy (and Elsewhere) 
Lorrie Faith Cranor — Necessary but Not Sufficient: Standardized Mechanisms for Privacy Notice and Choice
October 22: Matthew Callahan — Warrant Canaries and Law Enforcement Responses
October 15: Karen Levy — Networked Resistance to Electronic Surveillance
October 8: Joris van Hoboken — The Right to be Forgotten Judgement in Europe: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead 
October 1: Giancarlo Lee — Automatic Anonymization of Medical Documents
September 24: Christopher Sprigman — MSFT "Extraterritorial Warrants" Issue  
September 17: Sebastian Zimmeck — Privee: An Architecture for Automatically Analyzing Web Privacy Policies [with Steven M. Bellovin]
September 10: Organizational meeting

Spring 2014

April 30: Seda Guerses — Privacy is Security is a prerequisite for Privacy is not Security is a delegation relationship
April 23: Milbank Tweed Forum Speaker — Brad Smith: The Future of Privacy
April 16: Solon Barocas — How Data Mining Discriminates - a collaborative project with Andrew Selbst, 2012-13 ILI Fellow
March 12: Scott Bulua & Amanda Levendowski — Challenges in Combatting Revenge Porn 
March 5: Claudia Diaz — In PETs we trust: tensions between Privacy Enhancing Technologies and information privacy law: The presentation is drawn from a paper, "Hero or Villain: The Data Controller in Privacy Law and Technologies” with Seda Guerses and Omer Tene 
February 26: Doc Searls — Privacy and Business
February 19: Report from the Obfuscation Symposium, including brief tool demos and individual impressions February 12: Ira Rubinstein — The Ethics of Cryptanalysis — Code Breaking, Exploitation, Subversion and Hacking
February 5: Felix Wu — The Commercial Difference which grows out of a piece just published in the Chicago Forum called The Constitutionality of Consumer Privacy Regulation
January 29: Organizational meeting

Fall 2013

December 4: Akiva Miller — Are access and correction tools, opt-out buttons, and privacy dashboards the right solutions to consumer data privacy? & Malte Ziewitz —What does transparency conceal?
November 20: Nathan Newman — Can Government Mandate Union Access to Employer Property? On Corporate Control of Information Flows in the Workplace
November 6: Karen Levy — Beating the Box: Digital Enforcement and Resistance
October 23: Brian Choi — The Third-Party Doctrine and the Required-Records Doctrine: Informational Reciprocals, Asymmetries, and Tributaries
October 16: Seda Güerses — Privacy is Don't Ask, Confidentiality is Don't Tell
October 9: Katherine Strandburg — Freedom of Association Constraints on Metadata Surveillance
October 2: Joris van Hoboken — A Right to be Forgotten
September 25: Luke Stark — The Emotional Context of Information Privacy
September 18: Discussion — NSA/Pew Survey
September 11: Organizational Meeting

Spring 2013

May 1: Akiva Miller — What Do We Worry About When We Worry About Price DiscriminationApril 24: Hannah Block-Wheba and Matt Zimmerman — National Security Letters [NSL's] April 17: Heather Patterson — Contextual Expectations of Privacy in User-Generated Mobile Health Data: The Fitbit Story
April 10: Katherine Strandburg — ECPA Reform; Catherine Crump: Cotterman Case; Paula Helm: Anonymity in AA April 3: Ira Rubinstein — Voter Privacy: A Modest Proposal
March 27: Privacy News Hot Topics — US v. Cotterman, Drones' Hearings, Google Settlement, Employee Health Information Vulnerabilities, and a Report from Differential Privacy Day 
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
February 27: Katherine Strandburg — Free Fall: The Online Market's Consumer Preference Disconnect
February 20: Brad Smith — Privacy at Microsoft
February 13: Joe Bonneau — What will it mean for privacy as user authentication moves beyond passwo
February 6: Helen Nissenbaum — The (Privacy) Trouble with MOOCs
January 30: Welcome meeting and discussion on current privacy news

Fall 2012

December 5: Martin French — Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse: The Privacy Implications of (Contemporary Developments in) Public Health Intelligence
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 28: Scott Bulua and Catherine Crump — A framework for understanding and regulating domestic drone surveillance 
November 21: Lital Helman — Corporate Responsibility of Social Networking Platforms
October 24: Matt Tierney and Ian Spiro — Cryptogram: Photo Privacy in Social Media
October 17: Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius — Behavioural Targeting. How to regulate?
October 10: Discussion of 'Model Law' 
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
September 26: Karen Levy — Privacy, Professionalism, and Techno-Legal Regulation of U.S. Truckers
September 19: Nathan Newman — Cost of Lost Privacy: Google, Antitrust and Control of User Data