Course Title: Privacy in a Digital Society (Core Colloquium)

Course Number: CCOL-UH 1027

Number of credits: 4

Prerequisites, co-requisites, and crosslists:

None

Instructor Information:
Name: Prof. Christina Poepper
e-mail: christina.poepper@nyu.edu
Office number: ERB/C1 121 © blogs.microsoft.com

Class time: Tue/Thu at 2:40-3:55 pm

Office hours: Tue/Thu at 4:00-4:45 pm in ERB/C1-121 or according to arrangement

Course Description:
What is privacy, and how will our digital future change the ways we perceive and
experience it – individually, as nations, and as a global society? We leave digital
footprints on the Internet and in numerous everyday situations, with direct
consequences on our privacy. These digital footprints are desirable in some cases,
such as when we post pictures and comments in discussion forums and social
networks. In other situations, the consequences of leaking information are less
apparent, such as when we are tracked by carrying electronic devices or by the
websites we visit. Personal data is increasingly becoming the new currency used to pay
for services – consciously and unconsciously. In this colloquium, students sharpen their
understanding of privacy in the digital age, discuss historic and various national views
on privacy, form opinions on levels of desirable privacy, and develop a basic
understanding of technical means to reach privacy goals, with a focus on their
respective opportunities and limitations. Materials include general documents, such as
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, European Data Protection Directive, court
rulings, and Solove's taxonomy of privacy, along with technical and ethical discussions.

Learning Outcomes:
Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:
1. Have developed a distinctive and context-specific understanding of what privacy
means (in cultural, personal, historical contexts)
2. Interpret and understand books, articles, and technical/scientific papers on
privacy as well as on privacy-attacking & -enhancing technologies
3. Critically reflect and analyze the opportunities and limitations of digital
technology in terms of their privacy implications for individuals and the society
as a whole
4. Understand which technological means exist to support privacy and be able to
argue about their pros and cons
5. Define a theme (research question) and collect and organize information and
resources as a basis for an individual semester report
6. Express themselves in written form and orally on the topic of privacy
7. Collect diverse input from other course participants and integrate it collectively
into a common scheme and representation
Teaching and Learning Methods:
There are four main teaching and learning methods to be employed in this course:
1. Class discussions. During each class, there will be numerous questions posed by the
professor to help students engage in the topics and promote discussion.
2. Reading and writing. Each student will answer assignments on the lecture material to
answer specific questions and critically reflect the material. They will also write a
report on a selected topic for a scientific or educated lay audience in form of a
course project. The format of these pieces will help the students make connections
and understand the material deeply.
3. Collecting and presenting data. Students will learn how to collect and present data as
well as extract information from presentations they listen to.
4. Integrating data. Students will work on integrating input from several students to
represent aspects of privacy in a combined and comparing manner.

NYUAD’s core curriculum aims for students to develop four core competencies.
How the course addresses each of these competencies:
Arts, Design, and Technology
• The students reflect and analyze critically about the use and pervasiveness of
digital technologies and their impact on privacy.
Cultural Exploration and Analysis
• We take various cultural, societal, and historical viewpoints in reflecting and
thinking about privacy.
Data and Discovery
• The students are guided in developing a critical understanding towards
statistical data.
• In the last third of the semester: the students create and experiment with
representing, integrating, and combining collected data and evidence from
several participants.
Structures of Thought and Society
• We reflect on the consequences of the behavior of individuals and the society
as a whole under the fear of loosing privacy or giving up on it (with direct or
indirect consequences).

How does the course help to develop students' abilities to communicate?

There are regular in-class discussions where input by the students will be triggered and
collected, where students need to reference each other, and react on different opinions.
This will be triggered by questions of the professor, confrontation with material, and
small in-class tasks. Furthermore, the students are required to present the major
insights of their course work in form of presentations to others. The content of the
presentations and of the assignments/report will serve as input for the final group
assignment in which individual parts are to be integrated into a unified representation.

NYUAD’s core curriculum aims to address global challenges facing society. What
global challenge does your course address?
Awareness, reflection, and possible limitations of the level to which privacy of
individuals and the society is at risk due to digitization and technological advances.

NYUAD’s core curriculum aims to help students tackle complex ethical issues in
an informed and reasoned way. What ethical questions does your course address
and how will you help develop students’ abilities to understand the complexity of
these issue(s)?
We will analyze the current data privacy debate within and beyond application contexts,
the relationship to how people feel about data and current legal and technical reform
efforts.
Course Materials:
Slides on the topics of each lecture will be provided for download in NYU classes.
Required course books:
• [MaySch09] Viktor Mayer-Schöneberger: "The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital
Age", Princeton University Press, 2009, 249 pages, ISBN 978-0691-15036-9
Optional course books (required chapters will be made available)
• [DifLan07] Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau: "Privacy on the Line. The Politics of
Wiretapping and Encryption", Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2007, 494 pages,
ISBN: 978-0262-04167-6
• [Sch16] Bruce Schneier: “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your
Data and Control Your World” 1st Edition, 2016, 448 pages, ISBN-13:
978-0393352177
Required course texts (will be available on NYU classes):
• [WarBra1890] Samuel. D. Warren, Louis D. Brandeis: “The Right to Privacy”,
Harvard Law Review, Vol. IV, No. 5, Dec. 15 1890, 13 pages
• [Solove06] Daniel J. Solove: "A Taxonomy of Privacy", University of Pennsylvania,
2006, 84 pages
• [Rogawa15] Phillip Rogaway, "The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work", IACR
Distinguished Lecture, 2015, 46 pages
• [PreRRR15] Bart Preneel, Phillip Rogaway, Mark D. Ryan, and Peter Y. A. Ryan:
“Privacy and Security in an Age of Surveillance”. Dagstuhl Manifestos, 5(1), pp. 25-
37, 2015
• [EU-law14] European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights: "Handbook on
European data protection law", Council of Europe, 2014, ISBN 978-92-871-9934
• [AmiCur16] ED No. CM 16-10 (SP): US District Court. Brief of Amici Curiae iPhone
security and applied cryptography experts. March 2016, 28 pages
• [Gurses14] Seda Gurses: “Privacy and Security – Can you Engineer Privacy? The
challenges and potential approaches to applying privacy research in engineering
practice.” Viewpoint. Communication of the ACM, 57 (8), pp. 20-23
• [CCDCOE15] Emin Çalışkan, Tomáš Minárik, Anna-Maria Osula: “Technical and
Legal Overview of the Tor Anonymity Network”, NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence
Center of Excellence, 2015, 32 pages
Additional material, papers, and texts will be provided on NYU classes.

Assignments and Grades:

The assignments consist of individual short papers where students elaborate on certain
topics in the area of the course and where they have room to argue about a selected
perspective. For each assignment and the report, the work will be graded on a 1-10
point scale. All assignments and the report need to be handed in on NYUclasses as
PDF (11-pt font, 1.25 spacing, reasonable margins) and will be accessed according to
the following evaluation criteria (25% each):
• Relevant topic and title, respecting the format and page limit
• Identification of relevant references and primary sources
• Rigorous, accessible, and purpose-oriented style and well-structured body
• Originality
Assignment 1: “The role and importance of privacy” (3-4 pages, incl. references)
Write a short paper on the role and importance of privacy. Identify stakeholders and
involved parties. Describe what aspects of human life and society can be affected if
privacy is at risk. Enrich the paper with specific examples to make your points.
Dates: Hand-out: week 1, Due: end of week 2
Assignment 2: “The demise of privacy and its technological drivers” (3-4 pages, incl.
references)
Choose a specific technology and argue about how it has infringed and reshaped our
understanding of privacy issues. Write your text in form of a newspaper statement or
short article. Think about one or few central points that you would like to make and
structure your text around them.
Dates: Hand-out: week 3, Due: end of week 4

Assignment 3: “Potential responses to the demise of privacy” (3-4 pages, incl.

references)
Write a short paper on responses to protect privacy. Identify responses on an
individual level, in small communities and on the societal/governmental level.
Describe how this can improve the privacy concerns. Enrich the paper with specific
examples to make your points.
Dates: Hand-out: week 4, Due: end of week 5

Assignment 4: Approaches to defend privacy and the role of technology in achieving

and breaking privacy (3-4 pages). The goal of this assignment is to get hands-on
experience with Tor, the most widely deployed privacy-protection and anonymity
technology currently in use. A separate assignment sheet will be handed out that
defines the details this assignment. Students are expected work on all parts of the
assignment and also argue about the use and capabilities of Tor and other privacy-
enhancing technologies introduced in class. No programming skills are required.
Dates: Hand-out: week 5, Due: end of week 6

Report: "What does privacy mean in a specific context?” (8-10 pages, incl. references)
To answer this question, select and specify the context you are referring to
(technological perspective, national/cultural perspective, historical view, selected
group of people, etc.) and explain in detail, what privacy means in the considered
context, why it is important, how privacy can be harmed as well as defended in this
context. Consider effects of privacy actions on individuals and/or the society as a
whole. Collect empirical evidence for claims by collecting data, conducting interviews
with people, a literature research, referring to newspaper/magazine articles, pictures
and videos or films, documentaries, and cartoons etc.
Possible examples of topics include (do not limit yourself to these examples!):
• The role of privacy in China / UAE / communist countries / … (national perspective)
• Differences in privacy perspectives between the Middle East and the Western
World (regional comparison)
• Social relevance and real-world implications of mass surveillance after the
Snowden revelations (state-wide/political/societal perspective)
• Pros and cons of current privacy-enhancing technologies (technical perspective)
• Privacy aspects in journalism (interdisciplinary perspective)
Due dates:
Report outline: end of week 7 (1 page, selection of topic, report structure, references),
Report sketch: end of week 9 (3-4 pages, motivation and justification of topic, more
detailed structure and first argumentation)
Full Report: end of week 11 (8-10 pages)
Students will receive timely feedback on their draft versions from the professor in order
to be able to incorporate it in the sketch and full reports.

Student Presentation: Major insights of individual reports (5-10 minutes, exact length
to be announced once the number of participants is known)
Due: week 12

Final Group Assignment (work in small groups): Integration of class insights in a

coherent visual representation (e.g., by slides, a poster, a physical model) and a short
write-up, formulation of research questions (2 pages)
Due date: week 13/14

Grading:
The final grade will consist of the following:
Class participation: 10%
Assignments: 30% total (4 assignments, 7.5% each)
Report: 40%
Presentation: 10%
Group assignment: 10% (group work)
Class participation will be allocated due to quality (75%) and quantity (25%) of in-class
contributions: by asking questions, answering questions, commenting, involvement with
the material, and other contributions. The students will receive feedback on their class
participation performance near the midpoint of the semester for information purposes,
but only the grade of participation at the end of the semester will count towards the
grade. The following rubric will be used to assess class participation:

Level of in-class participation and engagement:

Excellent (A) Good (B) Fair (C) Poor (D)
Student brought Student often Student sometimes Student rarely
original thought and participated freely in participated in class participated in class
perspective to class class, asked without being discussions or asked
discussions. Student questions, and prompted but was questions.
was fully engaged participated in reluctant to join in Interaction with
and actively involved discussions. The discussions. The peers was minimal.
in all or most of the student was generally student was not fully The student did not
classes. The student well prepared, had familiar with the demonstrate a
was always well read the class assigned class sufficient level of
prepared, had read material and worked material and was familiarity with the
the class material in with peers reluctant to work with class material.
detail, and worked cooperatively peers.
cooperatively and
well with all the peers.

Assignments and reports must be handed in on their respective due dates (unless
explicit prior agreement was given by the professor). For late hand-ins, every
commenced day that an assignment or report is handed in late, 20% of this contribution
will be reduced.
There will be no final class or mid-term exams. Instead the assigned work will test the
students’ ability to communicate their level of understanding and their capability to
critically reflect the material discussed throughout the semester.

Course Schedule:
Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: Definitions and terminologies for privacy
Week 3: Role and importance of privacy
Week 4: Demise of privacy and its technological drivers
Week 5: Potential responses to the demise of privacy
Week 6: Approaches to defend privacy
Week 7: The role of technology in achieving privacy
Week 8: The role of technology in breaking privacy
Week 9: The role of law and jurisdiction in achieving privacy
Week 10: Cultural/Historical perspectives on privacy
Week 11: Ethics of the fight for or against privacy
Week 12: Student presentations
Week 13: Discussions about student presentations
Week 14: Integration of student results

The following semester overview and the respective reading assignments may be
subject to changes that are communicated in class.

Lecture | Topic Class Activities Weakly Readings (due be-

Date (2019) fore the lecture) / Material
1| Introduction to privacy Introduction to the class Media Input (in class): The
Aug 27 and the topic of privacy entire history of you, Black
Mirror, Part of third episode
2| Definitions for privacy Slide-based presentations [DifLan07] Introduction
Aug 29 & discussion of material [Sch16] Introduction &
Chapters 1-3
 3| Terminologies for Slide-based presentations [Solove06]
Sep 3 privacy & discussion of material
4| Importance of privacy Slide-based presentations [MaySch09] Chapter 1
Sep 5 & discussion of material [DifLan07] Chapters 4 + 6
Hand-In Assignment 1 [Sch16] Chapter 10
5| The demise of privacy Slide-based presentations [MaySch09] Chapters 2 + 3
Sep 10 & discussion of material
6| Technological drivers Slide-based presentations [DifLan07] Chapter 7
Sep 12 for the demise of & discussion of material
privacy
7| Responses to the Slide-based presentations [MaySch09] Chapter 5
Sep 17 demise of privacy I & discussion of material
8| Responses to the Slide-based presentations [PreRRR15]
Sep 19 demise of privacy II & discussion of material
Hand-In Assignment 2
9| Approaches to defend Slide-based presentations [MaySch09] Chapter 6
Sep 24 privacy I & discussion of material
10 | Approaches to defend Slide-based presentations [Rogawa15]
Sep 26 privacy II & discussion of material
Hand-In Assignment 3
11 | The anonymity network Slide-based presentations [CCDCOE15]
Oct 1 Tor & discussion of material (readings/news articles given in
class)
12 | Privacy-enhancing Slide-based presentations [Gurses14]
Oct 3 technologies I & discussion of material
Hand-In Assignment 4
13 | Privacy-enhancing Slide-based presentations (specific readings given in
Oct 8 technologies II & discussion of material class)
14 | The role of privacy Slide-based presentations (specific readings given in
Oct 10 & discussion of material class)
Hand-In Report Outline

Fall Break (Oct 15-21)

15 | The role of technology Slide-based presentations Cross Device Tracking
Oct 24 in breaking privacy & discussion of material (readings given in class)
16 | Writing Center Workshop (TBC) (readings given in class)
Oct 29
17 | The role of law and Slide-based presentations [DifLan07] Chapter 5
Oct 31 jurisdiction in achieving & discussion of material [EU-law14] Chapter 1
privacy I [Rotenb]
[WarBra1890]
18 | The role of law and Slide-based presentations [EU-law14] Chapters 3-5
Nov 5 jurisdiction in achieving & discussion of material [AmiCur16]
privacy II Hand-In Report Sketch
19 | Historical perspectives Slide-based presentations [WarBra1890]
Nov 7 on privacy I & discussion of material Selected chapters of Miller,
Historical perspectives Slide-based presentations Arthur R.: The assault on
20 |
on privacy II privacy: computers, data
Nov 12 & discussion of material
banks, and dossiers, Ann
Arbor: Uni. Michigan Press,
1971
 21 | Ethical & cultural per- Slide-based presentations (specific readings given in
Nov 14 spectives in the fight & discussion of material class)
for / against privacy II
22 | Ethical & cultural per- Slide-based presentations (specific readings given in
Nov 19 spectives in the fight & discussion in class class)
for / against privacy II Hand-In Full Report

23 | Student presentations Presentations, Feedback -

Nov 21
24 | Student presentations Presentation, Feedback -
Nov 26
25 | Discussion of privacy Discussion on student -
Nov 28 topics broad into the presentations
class by the students
26 | Combination/ In-class group work -
Dec 5 Integration of privacy
perspectives I
27 | Combination/ In-class group work -
Dec 10 Integration of privacy Hand-In Final Group
perspectives II Work
28 | Summing Up, Summary of course -
Dec 12 Evaluation, Spare contents

Other important information:

• Attendance at all classes is very important. There is no textbook that we will closely
followed throughout the course, so it will be difficult to catch up.
• Please ask for help if you need it. Do not hesitate! The professor is available for
office hours and also by appointment.
• Make use of sources at the Writing Center. The Writing Center is available for
writing support. All students in core courses are strongly encouraged to go to the
Writing Center, located in the ARC, Campus Center 2 East. Writing Fellows in the
ARC work with students in dedicated sessions. They will point out patterns of error
and help students figure out what they need to do in order to improve. Anyone can
schedule an appointments by going to: https://nyuad.mywconline.com.
• Preparing for the lectures is crucial. The material provided before the lectures needs
to be read carefully in order to be able to participate in class discussions.

Plagiarism statement:
NYU Abu Dhabi expects its students to adhere to the highest possible standards of
scholarship and academic conduct. Students should be aware that engaging in
behaviors that violate the standards of academic integrity will be subject to review and
may face the imposition of penalties in accordance with the procedures set out in the
NYUAD policy. Full details at: https://students.nyuad.nyu.edu/campus-life/student-
policies/community-standards-policies/academic-integrity/

Disclaimer:
This syllabus is subject to modification and refinement during the semester. The
expected changes and modifications relate to the topics, schedule, and materials
covered and will be discussed with the students – for major changes, the modified
syllabus will be shared with all students. No changes are expected regarding the
assessments and grading policy.