| Description | Required Texts | Schedule | Requirements | Project | Research and Communication Skills | Poster Fair |
Fall 2013: Tuesday and Thursday 3 - 4:20 pm, NSH 3002
Class web site: http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/courses/pplt-fa13/
[previous semesters]
Class mailing list: http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/privacy-class
Instructor: Lorrie Cranor, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering & Public Policy
Teaching Assistant: Manya Sleeper
This course focuses on policy issues related to privacy from the perspectives of governments, organizations, and individuals. We will begin with a historical and philosophical study of privacy and then explore recent public policy issues. We will examine the privacy protections provided by laws and regulations, as well as the way technology can be used to protect privacy. We will emphasize technology-related privacy concerns and mitigation, for example: social networks, smartphones, behavioral advertising (and tools to prevent targeted advertising and tracking), anonymous communication systems, big data, and drones.
This course is part of a three-course series of privacy courses offered as part of the MSIT-Privacy Engineering masters program. These courses may be taken in any order or simultaneously. Foundations of Privacy (offered in the Fall semester) offers more indepth coverage of technologies and algorithms used to reason about and protect privacy. Engineering Privacy in Software (offered in the Spring semester) focuses on the methods and tools needed to design systems for privacy.
This course is intended primarily for graduate students and advanced undergraduate students (juniors and seniors) with some technical background. Programming skills are not required. 8-733, 19-608, and 95-818 are 12-unit courses for PhD students. Students enrolled under these course numbers will have extra assignments and will be expected to do a project suitable for publication. 8-533 is a 9-unit course for undergraduate students. Masters students may register for any of the course numbers permitted by their program. This course will include a lot of reading, writing, and class discussion. Students will be able to tailor their assignments to their skills and interests, focusing more on programming or writing papers as they see fit. However, all students will be expected to do some writing and some technical work. A large emphasis will be placed on research and communication skills, which will be taught throughout the course.
Readings will be assigned from the following text, which will be available from the instructor. Additional readings will be assigned from papers available online or handed out in class. All online papers are either publicly available for free, available through the CMU library for free, or available in a password-protected part of this website to students in this course. (The CMU library provides a VPN for off-campus and wireless access to library materials.)
Note, this schedule is subject to change. The class web site will have the most up-to-date version of this calendar. Assignments will be finalized at least one week before due date or as announced in class.
Date |
Topics |
Assignment |
Tuesday, August 27 |
Overview [slides]
|
No required reading |
Thursday, August 29 |
Conceptions of privacy [slides]
|
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Tuesday, September 3 |
Privacy harms [slides]
Research and communication skills |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Thursday, September 5 |
Privacy economics, attitudes, and behavior [slides] Research and communications skills |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Tuesday, September 10 |
Privacy economics, attitudes, and behavior [slides] Homework 1 discussion |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
Homework 1 due |
Thursday, September 12 |
Fair information practices and privacy principles [slides] Introduce course project Research and communication skills |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Tuesday, September 17 |
Privacy law overview [slides] |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Thursday, September 19 |
Privacy regulation, self-regulation, and enforcement [slides] |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Tuesday, September 24 |
International privacy laws and cultural differences [slides] Homework 2 discussion |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
Homework 2 due |
Thursday, September 26 |
Health and genetic privacy Guest speaker: Bradley Malin, Director of the Health Information Privacy Laboratory, Vanderbilt University |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Tuesday, October 1 | Privacy notice and choice [slides] |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Thursday, October 3 |
Internet monitoring and web tracking [slides] |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Tuesday, October 8 |
Location tracking [slides] Homework 3 discussion |
Required reading:
Optional reading
Homework 3 due |
Thursday, October 10 |
The Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) [slides] |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Tuesday, October 15 |
Biometrics and facial recognition Field trip to biometrics lab |
Required reading
Optional reading:
One-paragraph project description due |
Thursday, October 17 |
Do Not Track [slides] |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Tuesday, October 22 |
Smartphone privacy concerns [slides] |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Thursday, October 24 |
Data privacy and big data Homework 4 discussion |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
Homework 4 due Project proposal due |
Tuesday, October 29 |
Identity and anonymity [slides] | Required reading: Optional reading:
|
Thursday, October 31 |
Government surveillance Guest speaker: Christopher Soghoian, Principal Technologist and Senior Policy Analyst, American Civil Liberties Union |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Tuesday, November 5 |
Parents, teenagers, and student privacy issues [slides] |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Thursday, November 7 |
Privacy engineering, privacy by design, privacy impact assessments, and privacy governance [slides] |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
Homework 5 due |
Tuesday, November 12 |
Data breach and identity theft Research and communications skills |
Required reading:
Optional reading:
|
Thursday, November 14 |
Spam, junk mail, and telemarketing |
Required reading:
Optional reading
|
Tuesday, November 19 |
Privacy on social networks |
Required reading:
Optional reading
Reading summaries for November 12-19 due |
Thursday, November 21 | No class |
No required reading Draft project paper due |
Tuesday, November 26 |
Government surveillance, audio and video surveillance, and emerging surveillance technologies [slides] |
No required reading Optional reading
|
Thursday, November 28 |
Thanksgiving break, no class |
No required reading |
Tuesday, December 3 |
Current issues |
No required reading |
Thursday, December 5 |
Poster fair |
No required reading |
Monday, December 16, noon |
Deadline |
Final project due |
Your final grade in this course will be based on:
You are expected to complete the reading assignments before the class session for which they were assigned. Class discussions will often be based on these assignments and you will not be able to participate fully if you have not done the reading. It is suggested that you write up summaries and highlights as you read each chapter or paper and bring them with you to class.
All homework assignments must be typed and submitted in hard copy in class on the day it is due. Every homework submission must include a properly formatted bibliography that includes all works you referred to as you prepared your homework. These works should be cited as appropriate in the text of your answers.
All homework is due at the beginning of class on the due date. You will lose 10% for turning in homework late on the due date. You will lose an additional 10% for each late day after that. I reserve the right to take off additional points or refuse to accept late homework submitted after the answers have been discussed extensively in class. Reasonable extensions will be granted to students with excused absences or extenuating circumstances. Please contact me as soon as possible to arrange for an extension.
Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated. Students caught cheating or plagiarizing will receive no credit for the assignment on which cheating occurred. Additional actions -- including assigning the student a failing grade in the class or referring the case for disciplinary action -- may be taken at the discretion of the instructor. Please familiarize yourself with the CMU Policy on Academic Integrity.
A class mailing list has been setup for announcements, questions, and further discussion of topics discussed in class. Students will be expected to contribute to mailing list discussions. Students should post (non-personal) course-related questions to this mailing list rather than sending them to the instructor directly. Students are encouraged to post course-related items of interest to this mailing list.