Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Fall Semester, 2008
MIT 6.805/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier
Class on Oct. 16
Information Transparency and Accountability
This class will investigate a new approach to privacy, that considers
how data is used as opposed to who has access to data.
Research on information accountability is an activity of the
Decentralized Information
Group at CSAIL.
Readings
Read for class
-
Naked in the Sunlight, chapter 2 of Blown to Bits, by Hal Abelson, Ken
Ledeen, and Harry Lewis. This chapter from Hal's recent book
describes for a general audience some of society's changing attitudes towards surveillance and
privacy.
-
Information Accountability
by
Danny Weitzner, Hal Abelson, Tim Berners-Lee, Joan Feigenbaum, Jim
Hendler, and Gerry Sussman, CACM, June 2008. A short
overview of the accountability approach.
-
Transparent Accountable Data Mining: New Strategies for
Privacy Protection, H. Abelson
T. Berners-Lee, C. Hanson, J, Hendler,
L. Kagal, D. McGuinness, G.J. Sussman, K. Waterman, and D. Weitzner.
MIT CSAIL Technical Report, 2006-007, January 2006. An earlier and
more detailed look at the accountability approach.
Writing assignment - NOT
There is no writing assignment for this week. However, you should be
working on your paper proposal, and looking ahead to the detailed plan that is due on October 20. To
prepare for that, you should, at a minimum, be doing the following
this week:
- Talking with the staff to get more feedback on your evolving
ideas. If you don't hear from us, then you should write to us.
- Doing research on your topic using
LexisNexis Academic Legal Reviews and other sources.
- Identifying people to interview if that's appropriate for
your topic.
- Planning an experiment if that's appropriate for your topic.