Foundations of Privacy
18734/08-604
Instructor: Anupam Datta
Office hours: Monday 2-3PM EDT (in CIC 2118)
TA: Arunesh Sinha
Office hours: Friday 1-2PM EDT (in CIC 2214)
Course hours: Mon,Wed: 03:30-05:20PM EDT (12:30-2:20PM PDT)
Recitation hours: Fri: 02:30-04:20PM EDT (11:30AM-1:20PM PDT)
Location: HH1107 (Pittsburgh), B23 211 (SV)
Course Description:
Privacy
is a significant concern in modern society. Individuals share personal
information with many different organizations - healthcare, financial and
educational institutions, the census bureau, Web services providers and online
social networks - often in electronic form. Privacy violations occur when such
personal information is inappropriately collected, shared or used. We will
study privacy in a few settings where rigorous definitions and enforcement
mechanisms are being developed - statistical disclosure limitation (as may be
used by the census bureau in releasing statistics), semantics and logical
specification of privacy policies that constrain information flow and use
(e.g., by privacy regulations such as the HIPAA Privacy Rule and the
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act), principled audit and accountability mechanisms for
enforcing privacy policies, anonymous communication protocols - and other
settings in which privacy concerns have prompted much research, such as in
social networks, location privacy and Web privacy (in particular, online
tracking & targeted advertising).
Prerequisite: An undergraduate course
equivalent to 15-251 or permission of instructor.
Grading:
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Homework: 60%
·
Reading and class participation: 10%
·
Project: 30%