Privacy Seminar: Organisation

Overview

In the Privacy Seminar you collaborate in a group, studying a particular privacy-related topic. You then give a student lecture and write a student paper about this topic. Both determine your final grade. Presence is mandatory.

Prerequisites

You should have successfully completed the ‘Introduction to Cryptography’ course (NWI-IBC023) and ‘Law, Privacy and Identity’ (NWI-IBC047).

Course outline

The first few weeks will be used to explain the course, discuss some privacy basics, and to form the groups. The remaining lecture slots will be used for the student lectures. Slides of the lectures will become available after the lecture.

Working in groups

We expect to form between 10-11 groups with 3 (or 2) members each (depending on the number of students enrolled). Each group will do a small research project, each on a particular topic, chosen from a list. You can use the discussion list on Brightspace to find group partners if you fail to do so during the first lecture.

The idea is to let you first investigate a particular practical case (what are the privacy issues from a legal and societal perspective, how are they dealt with), and then let you perform some research using particular PETs to solve the problem.

Working in groups means that you have to divide tasks equally, make a planning, and make sure that you stick to your part while verifying the others are making progress as planned. Cooperation is the keyword here; don’t split the task in separate and totally independent parts on which each of you works completely independently. Regularly meet (possibly virtually), and discuss and review each others work. You are all responsible for the overall quality of the work and the nature of the collaboration. Should anything go wrong, contact me sooner rather than later.

Tasks

You present the results in class as well as writing a student paper on the same topic. Follow the links for much more detailed information about both tasks.

Background documents

• Leerdoelen en toetsing (TBD)
• Presentation grading sheet
• Paper grading sheet

Wiki

The course is supported by a wiki, to which all are invited to contribute. You can go the wiki to request an account to get edit rights.

Presence and grading

Presence at all lectures is mandatory! (Not present without a valid reason = fail!). Valid reasons are: illness, accident, other study obligation (like exams, study trip), important family events. Invalid reasons are: holidays, trips etc, even if booked before the course started, and many many others.

The final grade = (2 * grade for paper + 1 * grade for presentation ) / 3. If the grade for the paper or presentation is below 5.5, the lowest grade is the final grade!

Resources

On privacy:

• Jaap-Henk Hoepman: Privacy is Hard and Seven Other Myths: Achieving Privacy Through Design, MIT Press, 2021.
• Carissa Véliz: Privacy is Power. Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data, Penguin Random House, 2020.
• Privacy by Design MOOC of the team at Karlstad University, Sweden.
• Jaap-Henk Hoepman and Marc van Lieshout: Privacy. Chapter of a book.
• Jeroen van den Hoven, Martijn Blaauw, Wolter Pieters, Martijn Warnier, Privacy and Information Technology, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• G. Danezis et. al., Privacy and Data Protection by Design, ENISA Report, December 2014.
• Jaap-Henk Hoepman, Privacy Design Strategies. The Little Blue Book, May, 2018.
• Bits of Freedom, Fix the system, not the symptoms, 2019.

On giving presentations:

• RU guidance for teachers

On writing papers:

• Slide deck on how to write a good research paper.
• David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing.
• Advice on Research and Writing
• Lejla Batina and Peter Schwabe: How to write a paper

The following two books on writing in English are recommended:

• Pinker, S. (2015). The sense of style: The thinking person's guide to writing in the 21st century. Penguin Books.
• Leith, S. (2017). Write to the Point: How to be Clear, Correct and Persuasive on the Page. Profile Books.

Also see the the webpage of the university-wide support for writing

See also the slides of the first two lectures (see schedule below), and the Privacy Wiki (and the pointers to further resources therein).