Program

Monday July 15

9:00 – 12:05 OTRv4 Summit Room Q34. (The OTRv4 Summit is not organized by PETS.)

11:00 Registration opens (outside Q1)

From 11:30 Lunch at Syster O Bror (Drottning Kristinas väg 24)

13:00 – 18:00 Open Day for Privacy, Usability, and Transparency (PUT 2019) Room Q1.

19:00 – 21:00 Joint PUT / PETS Welcome Reception at Syster O Bror (Drottning Kristinas väg 24)

 

Tuesday, July 16

8:00 Registration (outside Q1)

8:45 Opening Remarks
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

9:00 Anonymous communications (Chair: Rob Jansen)
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

10:20 Break

10:50 PETS Keynote Address — Simson L. Garfinkel, Senior Computer Scientist for Confidentiality and Data Access, U.S. Census Bureau
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

Title: Deploying Differential Privacy for the 2020 Census of Population and Housing

Abstract:

When differential privacy was created more than a decade ago, the motivating example was statistics published by an official statistics agency. In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.

In attempting to transition differential privacy from the theory to practice, and in particular for the 2020 Census of Population and Housing, the U.S. Census Bureau has encountered many challenges unanticipated by differential privacy's creators. Many of these challenges had less to do with the mathematics of differential privacy and more to do with operational requirements that differential privacy’s creators had not discussed in their writings. These challenges included obtaining qualified personnel and a suitable computing environment, the difficulty of accounting for all uses of the confidential data, the lack of release mechanisms that align with the needs of data users, the expectation on the part of data users that they will have access to micro-data, the difficulty in setting the value of the privacy-loss parameter, ε (epsilon), and the lack of tools and trained individuals to verify the correctness of differential privacy, and push-back from same members of the data user community.

Addressing these concerns required developing a novel hierarchical algorithm that makes extensive use of a high-performance commercial optimizer; transitioning the computing environment to the cloud; educating insiders about differential privacy; engaging with academics, data users, and the general public; and redesigning both data flows inside the Census Bureau and some of the final data publications to be in line with the demands of formal privacy.

Bio:

Simson Garfinkel is the Senior Computer Scientist for Confidentiality and Data Access at the US Census Bureau. He holds seven US patents and has published more than 50 research articles in computer security and digital forensics. He is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a member of the National Association of Science Writers. His most recent book is The Computer Book, which features 250 chronologically arranged milestones in the history of computing. As a journalist, he has written about science, technology, and technology policy in the popular press since 1983, and has won several national journalism awards.

Garfinkel received three Bachelor of Science degrees from MIT in 1987, a Master's of Science in Journalism from Columbia University in 1988, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT in 2005.

12:20 Lunch at Syster O Bror (Drottning Kristinas väg 24)

Track A
Track B

13:30 Stylometry and sensors
(Chair: Rebekah Overdorf)
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

13:30 "Systems"
(Chair: Philipp Jovanovic)
Location: Q34 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

14:50 Mini-break

15:10 Social networks
(Chair: Stefanie Roos)
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

15:10 Deniability and decision tree
(Chair: Nick Hopper)
Location: Q34 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

16:30 Break

17:00 Networks
(Chair: Pedro Moreno-Sanchez)
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

17:00 Databases
(Chair: Aaron Johnson)
Location: Q34 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

18:20 End of sessions

Wednesday, July 17

8:30 Registration (outside Q1)

9:00 Tracking (Chair: Nataliia Bielova)
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

10:20 Break

10:50 Town Hall
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

12:20 Lunch at Syster O Bror (Drottning Kristinas väg 24)

Track A
Track B

13:30 Machine learning
(Chair: Matt Wright)
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

13:30 Private search
(Chair: Wouter Lueks)
Location: Q34 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

14:50 Mini-break

15:10 User studies
(Chair: Nina Taft)
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

15:10 Differential privacy
(Chair: Prateek Mittal)
Location: Q34 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

16:30 Break

17:00 Biomed
(Chair: Kévin Huguenin)
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

  • Privacy-preserving Similar Patient Queries for Combined Biomedical Data
    Ahmed Salem (CISPA, Saarland University), Pascal Berrang (CISPA, Saarland University), Mathias Humbert (Swiss Data Science Center, ETH Zurich and EPFL), and Michael Backes (CISPA Helmholtz Center i.G.)

  • Systematizing Genome Privacy Research: A Privacy-Enhancing Technologies Perspective
    Alexandros Mittos (University College London), Bradley Malin (Vanderbilt University), and Emiliano De Cristofaro (University College London)

  • My Genome Belongs to Me: Controlling Third Party Computation on Genomic Data
    Dominic Deuber (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Christoph Egger (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Katharina Fech (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Giulio Malavolta (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Dominique Schröder (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Sri Aravinda Krishnan Thyagarajan (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Florian Battke (CeGaT GmbH), Claudia Durand (CeGaT GmbH), and Christoph Egger (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)

17:00 Statistics
(Chair: Ian Goldberg)
Location: Q34 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

18:00 End of sessions

From 18:30 Visit of the Moderna Museet – 20:00 PETS Banquet at Moderna Museet on Skeppsholmen, Exercisplan 4 (directions)
We will visit the Moderna Museet, one of Europe's leading museums of modern and contemporary art. The banquet will be in the museum's restaurant at 20:00 and will begin with a welcome drink at 19:45. The Museum will exclusively open for us at 18:30, so you have a chance to drop in anytime between 18:30 and 20:00 to have a look at the exhibitions. There will also be three guides around for guiding through the exhibitions.

Thursday, July 18

8:30 Registration (outside Q1)

9:00 Mixed (Chair: Amir Houmansadr)
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

10:20 Break

10:50 Traffic analysis (Chair: Claudia Diaz)
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

12:20 Lunch at Syster O Bror (Drottning Kristinas väg 24)

13:30 Mobile (Chair: Zubair Shafiq)
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

15:10 Break

15:40 Video Session
Location: Q1

16:00 Rump Session (Chair: Roger Dingledine)
Location: Q1

17:30 Closing and Awards
Location: Q1 [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

19:00 Caspar Bowden PET Award Reception at Syster O Bror (Drottning Kristinas väg 24)

 

Friday, July 19 — HotPETs

8:30 Registration (outside Q1)

All HotPETs sessions will be held in Q1. [Livestream; Instructions for remote questions]

9:15 Opening Remarks

9:25 Session A: "Thank you for sharing" – Assessing leaks and censorship (Chair: Cecylia Bocovich)

10:45 Break

11:15 HotPETs Keynote — Lina Dencik (Chair: Carmela Troncoso)

The politics of data-driven governance [slides]

Abstract: The use of data and algorithmic processes for decision-making is now a growing part of social life. Digitally monitoring, tracking, profiling and predicting human behaviour and social activities is what underpins the information order now frequently described as surveillance capitalism. Increasingly, it is also what helps determine decisions that are central to our ability to participate in society, such as welfare, education, crime, work, and if we can cross borders. How should we understand what is at stake with such developments? Often, we are dealt a simple binary that suggests that the issue is one of increased (state-)security and efficiency on the one hand and concerns with privacy and protection of personal data on the other. Recently, we have also seen a growing focus on questions of bias, discrimination and ‘fairness’ enter this debate. In this presentation, I take stock of these concerns and present on-going research from the ERC-funded project DATAJUSTICE drawing on pertinent developments across work, law enforcement and border control that highlight the implementation of data processes in practice. I will make the case that we need to understand data systems as part of broader societal transformations, placing much greater emphasis on why these technologies are developed and implemented in the first place and how data practices relate to other social practices, rather than only focusing on the data system itself. In so doing, I will outline a more comprehensive engagement with data politics that considers how algorithmic processes relate to wider interests, power relations, and particular agendas. I will end by considering what this means for addressing challenges and advancing social justice in an age of datafication.

Bio:

Dr Lina Dencik is Reader at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University, UK and is Co-Founder of the Data Justice Lab. She has published widely on digital media, resistance and the politics of data and is currently Principal Investigator of the DATAJUSTICE project funded by an ERC Starting Grant. Her publications include Critical Perspectives on Social Media and Protest (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2015), Worker Resistance and Media (Peter Lang, 2015), and Digital Citizenship in a Datafied Society (Polity, 2018).

12:30 Lunch at Syster O Bror (Drottning Kristinas väg 24)

13:40 Session B: Anonymity is better together (Chair: Pedro Moreno-Sanchez)

14:30 Mini break

14:50 Session C: Choose your own enhancement (Chair: Tariq Elahi)

15:15 Ice Cream Break

16:15 Session D: Risk or reward? (Chair: Roger Dingledine)

17:05 Closing remarks and Best talk award

Saturday, July 20

PETS Hike

This year, the PETS hike will be a tour to Stockholm's archipelago, more precisely to the nature reserve Gålö. The tour includes a transfer with a chartered bus, a hike along the shoreline, and a visit to the beach. There will be the option to swim if the weather is good. Food and refreshments (for a picnic during the hike) and lunch after the hike will be provided. For the hike, sport or hiking shoes are much recommended, as the path along the shoreline is partly rocky and uneven.

We plan to leave with 2 buses from the KTH campus (Malvinas väg 10) on Saturday at 9:15. The buses will also stop at City Terminalen (Central Bus station) to pick up further passengers at 9:30.

During the hike, luggage can be left in one of the buses.

The buses will return to Stockholm's central station by 17:30, which means that it will be possible to reach Stockholm Arlanda airport by around 18:00. The buses will then continue back to the KTH campus.

Note that you must register for the hike separately!