8-533 / 8-733 / 19-608 / 95-818: Privacy Policy, Law, and Technology

Homework 5 - due October 27, 2015

Don't forget to properly cite all sources (including assigned readings) and include a bibliography with all homework assignments.

Reading assignment: October 15-October 27 readings

1. [20 points] 12-unit students: Read and write a summary of one optional reading paper. After each summary (in a separate paragraph) provide a "highlight" for that chapter. This can be something new you learned that you found particularly interesting, a point you would like to discuss further in class, a question the chapter did not fully answer, something you found confusing, a point you disagree with, or anything else you found noteworthy.

2. [30 points] Based on your smartphone or other mobile device that can collect your location, do the following. If you do not have a device that can collect location information, find a friend or family member that does.

  1. Identify the operating system and make of your device
  2. Describe how your device provides notice about location collection.
  3. Describe how the device provides choice about whether the location is collected.
  4. Describe why or why not notice and choice is effective on your device.
  5. Describe how your own benefits or risks from location tracking match or differ from those described in the reading by Tsai et. al

3. [35 points] Pick a social networking service or other online service with which you are familiar that raises privacy concerns. Write a one-page essay that uses concepts from the assigned readings (and optionally other sources) to discuss the types of privacy harm that may be caused by this service, as well as the reasons that the service may be popular despite these potential harms.

4. [35 points] The Usable Privacy Policy Project has developed a system for annotating privacy policies in order to put them into a machine-readable format for analysis and processing. You will be emailed a link to the system and assigned one policy to annotate. Your job is to follow the instructions and annotate that policy. This activity will probably take about 60-90 minutes. In class on October 27 you will meet in small groups with the other students assigned to the same policy and you will compare and discuss your annotations. We need you to complete your annotations by October 22 so that we can prepare the tables to allow you to do the comparison in class.