Assigned readings for CS199r

Note: Students may also be responsible for readings handed out in class.
If you have questions about the readings or assignment, please email cs199r-heads@eecs.harvard.edu

Unit 1: What is Privacy

For February 6, 2007

Samuel Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, 'The Right to Privacy.' Harvard Law Review, 1890.

J. J. Thomson. 'The Right to Privacy.' Philosophy and Public Affairs, 4:4 1975.

Thomas Scanlon. 'Thomason on Privacy' Philosophy and Public Affairs, 4:4 1975.)

Four short news articles:

Response Question: Identify and describe the key privacy issue(s) in one of the four news stories and propose a possible solution to address this concern. (2-3 pages)


For February 8, 2007

Privacy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006

Daniel Solove. 'A Taxonomy of Privacy'. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 154:3 2006

For February 13, 2007

Kenneth C. Laudon. 'Markets and privacy.' Communications of the ACM Sep 1996; 39, 9;

Alessandro Acquisti and Jens Grossklags. 'Privacy and Rationality in Decision Making' IEEE Security and Privacy 2005.

Lawrence Lessig. Codev2 Creative Commons 2006. Chapters 3, 5, & 7. (Note this is a pdf of an entire book [4MB]. Make sure you don't try to print all 400 pages!)

Unit 2: RFID

For February 20, 2007

Catherine Albrecht on RFID

An RFID Patent

Some news articles:

Response Question: What is the greatest danger to privacy posed by the deployment of RFID technology? What will be the greatest danger in 15 years?

For February 22, 2007

Privacy, Security, and RFID tags

Technology of RFID

Yet more news articles:

Unit 3: Public Surveillance and Data Exposure

For March 6, 2007

Thoughts on surveillance

George Orwell. 1984 Chapter 1 only.

Michel Foucault. Discipline & Punish Chapter 3, pp 200-204

Technologies of information extraction

Response question:Have changes in surveillance technology and capacity changed public behavior? Why or why not?

For March 13, 2007

J.D. Woodward, Jr., C. Horn, J. Gatune, and A. Thomas. 'Biometrics: A Look at Facial Recognition.' Rand Documented Briefing, 2003.

A.K. Jain and A. Ross. 'Multibiometric Systems.' Communications of the ACM, 47(1), Jan. 2004.

Unit 4: Data Aggregation, Data Mining and Linking infomation

For March 20, 2007

Total Information Awareness System specficiation. Read section 3; this is long but it is a DOD document so there is a low content-to-page ratio. Best read quickly and on a computer screen; there are lots of colors and it isn't clear that trees should die for this.

How to build a simple data aggregation system. Heavy on TLAs (three letter acronyms), but it shows real code for a real system.

Why we might want data aggregation in health care .

Data aggregation in the federal government.

Response question: Why does data aggregation pose a privacy challenge, given that all of the aggregated information is available anyway? If the aggregation and pattern matching is being done by automated means and humans are only involved when some warning is triggered, are there the same privacy concerns?

For March 22, 2007

TIA, take two (or more), an explanation of Total Information Awareness after four years of controversy.

Las Vegas as big brother, or how casinos keep the odds in their favor.

Optional reading: As an extra for context, the editor's introduction for the other readings. One of the co-authors should be familiar...

Unit 5: Medical Privacy

For April 10, 2007

The Hippocatic Oath

The Effects of Promoting Patient Access to Medical Records: A Review

Can Electronic Medical Record Systems Transform Health Care? Potential Health Benefits, Savings, And Costs

Security and Privacy: An Introduction to HIPAA

Response question: Electronic medical records have the potential to improve patient care and the efficiency of healthcare provision while also raising significant privacy issues. Identify one such issue and discuss how the conflicting values can be balanced.

Unit 6: Anonymity

For April 24, 2007

A panel debate concerning anonymity.

The EFF on anonymity.

Response question: Describe one scenario in which anonymity would be helpful/desireable. In the context of this scenario, describe one reason for which anonymity might be a difficult thing to achieve. Propose a way to circumvent this difficulty.

For May 1, 2007

Differential Privacy (Sections 3 and 5.1 are fairly technical, so feel free to skim them).