SIS Seminar Series: "Computational Privacy: Two Fundamental Problems." Guest Speaker Dr. R. Shokri

Join us for a McGill School of Information Studies (SIS) Seminar Series talk on the challenges of computational privacy in the age of big data with guest speaker Dr. Reza Shokri, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Information Security, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich.

ABSTRACT
Today, data is the fuel of e-business. An increasing amount of data is being produced about individuals in their everyday interactions with various technologies. New services are being introduced and new businesses flourish by mining the rich flow of individuals' information over the Internet. Exciting services however come at a cost of users' privacy, as their data might be used in contexts other than what the users agree with. Moreover, this bait is very attractive to governments and security agencies.

In this talk, I will present two main challenges of computational privacy in the age of big data: consistent quantification and protection of privacy. I present a new privacy metric and a quantification framework to effectively quantify privacy. I will also introduce a new methodology to design optimal user-centric privacy protection mechanisms that find the right balance between privacy and data utility. In the end, I will present these solutions in the context of location-based services, as well as the technical methods to quantify and protect location privacy.

BIO

Reza Shokri is a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute of Information Security, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich. Prior to this, he was a research assistant in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at EPFL, where he received his PhD in March 2013. His research focuses on quantitative analysis of privacy and design of privacy-preserving schemes, for location-based services, recommender systems, web, and genomics. His work on quantifying location privacy was recognized as a runner-up for the annual Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET Award) 2012. More information: http://www.shokri.org

Everyone welcome. Please arrive early to secure a seat.