Course Number: 95-818
Privacy Policy Law and Technology
Units: 12
Privacy issues have been getting increasing attention from law makers, regulators, and the media. As a result, businesses are under pressure to draft privacy policies and post them on their web sites, chief privacy officers are becoming essential members of many enterprises, and companies are taking pro-active steps to avoid the potential reputation damage of a privacy mistake. As new technologies are developed, they increasingly raise privacy concerns -- the World Wide Web, wireless location-based services, and RFID chips are just a few examples. In addition, the recent focus on national security and fighting terrorism has brought with it new concerns about governmental intrusions on personal privacy. This course provides an in-depth look into privacy, privacy laws, and privacy-related technologies and self-regulatory efforts. Students will study privacy from philosophical, historical, legal, policy, and technical perspectives and learn how to engineer systems for privacy.
This course is intended primarily for graduate students and advanced undergraduate students (juniors and seniors) with some technical background. Programming skills are not required. Graduate students enrolled in this course will have extra reading and presentation assignments and will be expected to do a project suitable for publication. This course will include a lot of reading, writing, and class discussion. Students will be able to tailor their assignments to their skills and interests, focusing more on programming or writing papers as they see fit. A large emphasis will be placed on research and communication skills, which will be taught throughout the course.