Privacy Seminar 2022

This is the main web site for the Privacy Seminar (NWI-I00136).

Introduction

In this seminar we will explore the state of the art in privacy enhancing technologies (PET), and discuss theories (technical, legal and societal) of privacy.

Teachers

• Jaap-Henk Hoepman
• Hanna Schraffenberger

Announcements

None

Organisation

The course code is NWI-I00136.

You will do, in groups of two, a small research project on a particular topic, chosen from a list. The idea is to let you first investigate a particular practical case (what are the privacy issues from a legal and societal perspective, how are they dealt with), and then let you perform some research using particular PETs to solve the problem.

You can use the discussion list on Brightspace to find group partners if you fail to do so during the first lecture.

Working in groups means that you have to divide tasks equally, make a planning, and make sure that you stick to your part while verifying the others are making progress as planned. Cooperation is the keyword here; don't split the task in separate and totally independent parts on which each of you works completely independently. Regularly meet virtually, and discuss and review each others work. You are all responsible for the overall quality of the work and the nature of the collaboration. Should anything go wrong, contact me sooner rather than later.

You present the results in class as well as writing a student paper on the same topic.

Presence at all lectures is mandatory! (Not present without a valid reason = fail!). Valid reasons are: illness, accident, other study obligation (like exams, study trip), important family events. Invalid reasons are: holidays, trips etc, even if booked before the course started, and many many others.

The final grade = (2 * grade for paper + 1 * grade for presentation ) / 3. If the grade for the paper or presentation is below 5.5, the lowest grade is the final grade!

Background documents

• Leerdoelen en toetsing (in Dutch, but outdated for this peculiar year...).
• Presentation grading sheet
• Paper grading sheet

Prerequisites

You should have successfully completed the ‘Introduction to Cryptography’ course (NWI-IBC023).

Lectures

The first few lectures will be spent on outlining the course and the area of privacy enhancing technologies. Slides of the lectures will become available after the lecture.

Wiki

The course is supported by a wiki, to which all are invited to contribute. You can go the wiki to request an account to get edit rights.

Deadlines

The paper skeleton must be submitted on or before April 14. Deadline for the final paper is June 9. Both deadlines: 12 o'clock night.

Resources

On privacy:

• Jaap-Henk Hoepman:Privacy is Hard and Seven Other Myths: Achieving Privacy Through Design, MIT Press, 2021.
• Privacy by Design MOOC of the team at Karlstad University, Sweden.
• Jaap-Henk Hoepman and Marc van Lieshout: Privacy. Chapter of a book.
• Jeroen van den Hoven, Martijn Blaauw, Wolter Pieters, Martijn Warnier, Privacy and Information Technology, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• G. Danezis et. al., Privacy and Data Protection by Design, ENISA Report, December 2014.
• Jaap-Henk Hoepman, Privacy Design Strategies. The Little Blue Book, May, 2018.
• Bits of Freedom, Fix the system, not the symptoms, 2019.

On giving presentations:

• RU guidance for teachers

On writing papers:

• Slide deck on how to write a good research paper.
• David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing.
• Advice on Research and Writing
• Lejla Batina and Peter Schwabe: How to write a paper

The following two books on writing in English are recommended:

• Pinker, S. (2015). The sense of style: The thinking person's guide to writing in the 21st century. Penguin Books.
• Leith, S. (2017). Write to the Point: How to be Clear, Correct and Persuasive on the Page. Profile Books.

Also see the the webpage of the university-wide support for writing

See also the slides of the first two lectures (see schedule below), and the Privacy Wiki (and the pointers to further resources therein).

Schedule (spring 2022)

Lectures take place from 10:30-12:15 in HG 00.071 (until and including March 17) and Mercator 1 00.28 (from April 14 onwards).

Note: Lecture on February 3 takes place in LIN 8

Physical presence is normally speaking mandatory, but given the COVID-19 situation special rules apply. In particular, stay home if you have symptoms or tested positive.

Given the fact that this seminar is highly interactive, no live stream or other ways of participating online is offered.

Slides of presentations that are available are linked from here. The links are released after the lecture.

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Last Version - e1e3326.
(Note: changeover from CVS to dotless svn version numbers on Jan 19, 2008, and changeover to GIT versioning on May 30, 2013.)
Maintained by Jaap-Henk Hoepman
Email: jhh@cs.ru.nl