1 Privacy and Accountability: Introduction to Workshop Themes JOAN FEIGENBAUM June 28, 2006; Cambridge MA

2 PORTIA: Privacy, Obligations, and Rights in Technologies of Information Assessment Large-ITR, five-year, multi- institutional, multi-disciplinary, multi-modal research project on sensitive information in a networked world

3 Motivation Sensitive Information: Info that can harm data subjects, data owners, or data users if it is mishandled. Not all of it is strictly “private.” There’s a lot more of it than there used to be! –Increased use of computers and networks –Increased processing power and algorithmic knowledge  Decreased storage costs “Mishandling” can be very harmful. −ID theft −Loss of employment or insurance −“You already have zero privacy. Get over it.” (Scott McNealy, 1999)

4 PORTIA Goals Produce a next generation of technology for handling sensitive information that is qualitatively better than the current generation’s. Enable handling of sensitive information over the course of its lifetime. Formulate an effective conceptual framework for policy making and philosophical inquiry into the rights and responsibilities of data subjects, data owners, and data users.

5 Academic–CS Participants Stanford Dan Boneh Hector Garcia-Molina John Mitchell Rajeev Motwani Yale Joan Feigenbaum Ravi Kannan Avi Silberschatz Univ. of NM Stevens NYU Stephanie Forrest Rebecca Wright Helen Nissenbaum (“computational immunology”) (“value-sensitive design”)

6 Research Partners J. Balkin (Yale Law School) C. Dwork (Microsoft) S. Hawala (Census Bureau) B. LaMacchia (Microsoft) K. McCurley (Google) P. Miller (Yale Medical School) J. Morris (CDT) T. Pageler (Secret Service) B. Pinkas (Hewlett Packard) M. Rotenberg (EPIC) A. Schäffer (NIH) D. Schutzer (CitiGroup) Note participation by the software industry, key user communities, advocacy organizations, and non-CS academics.

7 See PORTIA Website for: Papers, talks, and software Educational activities –Courses –Grad students and postdocs Media coverage Programs and slides from workshops Related links [ Google “PORTIA project” ]

8 “Policies” for the Handling of Sensitive Data Collection Retention, destruction Use, mining Sharing, selling Updating, cleaning, correcting De-identifying, scrubbing, re-identifying...

9 Basic Questions (1) What are the best tools for expressing and analyzing policies? How can an organization ensure that it is following its own data-management policies? How can those who transmit data to an organization ensure themselves that the organization is following its data- management policies?

10 Basic Questions (2) What recourse does one have when an organization that handles one’s data violates a policy? Are there “implicit policies” or, more generally, when should one be held accountable for actions not clearly governed by a specific policy?

11 Who is Accountable to Whom? Individuals Organizations Governments Technology vendors Network operators...

12 When is it ok NOT to be Accountable? Anonymous activity? Unobservable activity? “Pseudonymous” = Unidentifiable but accountable? Offline analogs...

13 Workshop Goals Learn more about the state of the art Formulate research-agenda items, both short- and long- term