Call for Papers

14th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2014)
Amsterdam, Netherlands
July 16 – 18, 2014

The Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) aims to advance the state of the art and foster a world-wide community of researchers and practitioners to discuss innovation and new perspectives.

PETS seeks paper submissions for its 14th event to be held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, July 16-18, 2014. Papers should present novel practical and/or theoretical research into the design, analysis, experimentation, or fielding of privacy-enhancing technologies. While PETS has traditionally been home to research on anonymity systems and privacy-oriented cryptography, we strongly encourage submissions in a number of both well-established and some emerging privacy-related topics. Some suggested topics are listed below.

PETS website: http://petsymposium.org/2014

Important Dates (all deadlines are firm):

Abstract registration deadline:February 10, 2014, 23:59 GMT
Paper submission deadline:February 13, 2014, 23:59 GMT
Author notification:April 13, 2014
Camera-ready deadline for proceedings:May 4, 2014
Symposium:July 16-18, 2014

Suggested Topics include but are not restricted to:

General Chair (gc14@petsymposium.org):
Hinde ten Berge, Free Knowledge Institute
Program Co-Chairs (pets2014-chairs@petsymposium.org):
Emiliano De Cristofaro, University College London
Steven Murdoch, University of Cambridge
Program Committee:
Alessandro Acquisti, Carnegie Mellon University
Erman Ayday, EPFL
Kelly Caine, Clemson University
Jan Camenisch, IBM Research - Zurich
Srdjan Capkun, ETH Zurich
Claude Castelluccia, INRIA Rhone-Alpes
Kostas Chatzikokolakis, Lix Ecole Polytechnique
Graham Cormode, University of Warwick
Roberto Di Pietro, Universita' di Roma Tre
Claudia Diaz, KU Leuven
Cynthia Dwork, Microsoft Research
Zekeriya Erkin, TU Delft
Paul Francis, MPI-SWS
Paolo Gasti, New York Institute of Technology
Ian Goldberg, University of Waterloo
Rachel Greenstadt, Drexel University
Amir Herzberg, Bar Ilan University
Nick Hopper, University of Minnesota
Amir Houmansadr, UT Austin
Rob Jansen, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Mohamed-Ali (Dali) Kaafar, NICTA & INRIA Rhone-Alpes
Apu Kapadia, Indiana University Bloomington
Stefan Katzenbeisser, TU Darmstadt
Negar Kiyavash, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Markulf Kohlweiss, Microsoft Research
Adam Lee, University of Pittsburgh
Brian Levine, University of Massachussets, Amherst
Marc Liberatore, University of Massachussets, Amherst
Ben Livshits, Microsoft Research
Nick Mathewson, The Tor Project
Prateek Mittal, Princeton University
Arvind Narayanan, Princeton University
Claudio Orlandi, Aarhus University
Micah Sherr, Georgetown University
Reza Shokri, ETH Zurich
Radu Sion, Stony Brook University
Paul Syverson, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Gene Tsudik, UC Irvine
Eugene Vasserman, Kansas State University
Matthew Wright, UT Arlington
Publicity Chair: (ctroncoso@gradiant.org)
Carmela Troncoso, Gradiant
HotPETs Chairs (hotpets14@petsymposium.org):
Kelly Caine, Clemson University
Prateek Mittal, Princeton University
Reza Shokri, ETH Zurich

Submission Guidelines
Papers to be submitted to the PET Symposium must be at most 20 pages (including the bibliography), plus optional appendices of at most 10 pages. PC members are not required to read the appendices, which will not be included in the final proceedings and should only be used to support evidence of paper's technical validity, e.g., for detailed security proofs. Papers must conform to the Springer LNCS style (in which the text area per page is a little smaller than 5" x 7 3/4"). Follow the "Information for Authors" at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.
All papers must be anonymized and follow the basic principles of ethical research (more information below).

Submitted papers must not substantially overlap with papers that have been published or that are simultaneously submitted to a journal or a venue with proceedings. Papers not following the submission guidelines will be rejected without consideration of their merits.

Submission
Papers will need to be submitted via the PETS 2014 EasyChair submission server at: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=pets2014.

Anonymization of Submissions
All submitted papers will be judged based on their quality and relevance through double-blind reviewing, where the identities of the authors are withheld from the reviewers. As an author, you are required to make a good-faith effort to preserve the anonymity of your submission, while at the same time allowing the reader to fully grasp the context of related past work, including your own. It is recognized that, at times, information regarding the identities of authors may become public outside the submission process (e.g., if a pre-print is published as a technical report) – the PC will ignore this external information. In summary, please take the following steps when preparing your submission:

  • Remove the names and affiliations of authors from the title page.
  • Remove acknowledgment of identifying names and funding sources.
  • Use care in referring to your own related work. Do not omit references to provide anonymity, as this leaves the reviewer unable to grasp the context. Instead, reference your past work in the third person, just as you would any other piece of related work by another author.

Conflicts (NEW THIS YEAR!)
Easychair does not provide a way for authors to declare their conflicts with PC members. And, since submissions are anonymous, it is also hard for PC members to effectively declare conflicts with authors. Therefore, between February 10 (abstract registration deadline) and February 13 (paper submission deadline), authors of submitted papers will be asked to declare their conflicts. Details as to how to do so will be provided via email between February 10-13. Authors should respond regardless of whether or not they have a conflict, otherwise they risk to have their paper rejected without any review.

Ethics
Papers describing experiments with users or user data (e.g. network traffic), should follow the basic principles of ethical research, e.g., beneficence (maximizing the benefits to an individual or to society while minimizing harm to the individual), minimal risk (appropriateness of the risk versus benefit ratio), voluntary consent, respect for privacy, and limited deception. Authors may be asked to include explanation of how ethical principles were followed in their final papers should questions arise during the review process.

Papers may include a brief discussion of ethical considerations, e.g., whether data was anonymized and stored in encrypted form, but should not reveal information that might de-anonymize the submission, e.g., mentioning that an IRB (or similar body) was consulted, as many researchers do not have access to an IRB.

Copyright
Proceedings will be published by Springer and made available at the symposium. By submitting a paper, you agree that if it is accepted, you will sign a paper distribution agreement allowing for publication, and also that an author of the paper will register for the symposium and present the paper there. Our current working agreement with Springer is that authors will retain copyright on their own works while assigning an exclusive 3-year distribution license to Springer. Authors may still post their papers on their own Web sites.

Best Student Paper Award
The Andreas Pftzmann PETS 2014 Best Student Paper Award will be selected at PETS 2014. Papers written solely or primarily by a student who is presenting the work at PETS 2014 are eligible for the award.

HotPETs
As with the last several years, part of the symposium will be devoted to HotPETs — the hottest, most exciting research ideas still in a formative state. See the HotPETs CFP for more information.