COMP 590: Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Summer 2025 (Maymester)
Instructor: Saba Eskandarian
Contact: saba@cs.unc.edu
Class Meetings: Mon-Fri 9am-12:15pm, SN115
Office Hours: Tues/Thurs 2-3pm, FB346
Syllabus
Anonymous Feedback

Course Description

This class covers a combination of fundamental tools and recent developments in privacy-preserving technologies. The first half of the course will cover cryptographic tools that can be used to build privacy-preserving systems, and the second half will cover various privacy-preserving technologies, including both research contributions and deployed systems. Along the way we will discuss how to think about the technology we create and its impact on society.

The class is intended for undergraduate students who are interested in thinking about what technology can do to protect privacy and why modern technology so often fails to do so. Prior experience in security or privacy, while welcome, is by no means required.

Class meetings will consist of a mix of lectures and discussions, with responses to pre-discussion readings being an important component. Students will also complete a final project on a relevant topic of their choosing. See the syllabus for more details.

Note: this class is being offered as an intensive Maymester course. In addition to the daily class meetings, students will be expected to spend several hours daily on readings, responses, and other assignments.

Course Schedule

Class titles are followed by required readings for that day (if any). Note that there is an assignment due before the first day of class.

Introduction

• May 14: Introductions, How to Share a Secret, Surveillance
  
  • SuperVision: An Introduction to the Surveillance Society (only introduction required)
• May 15: Privacy and Anonymity Online
  
  • The State of Consumer Data Privacy Laws in the US
  • Guess What? HIPAA Isn't a Medical Privacy Law
• May 16: Cryptography (Part I) and Privacy
  
  • Privacy and Human Behavior in the Age of Information
  • A Contextual Approach to Privacy Online

Cryptography

• May 19: Cryptography (Part II) and Side Channel Attacks
  
  • Keeping Secrets
  • Compression and Information Leakage of Plaintext
  • Optional: How to Read a Paper
• May 20: Cryptography (Part III) and Cryptography Lab
  
  • Complete prelab prior to class. Sign up for your story time story by midnight.
• May 21: Quiz 1, Story Time, and Cybercrime (prepare story before class)
  
  • Massive Losses Define Epidemic of 'Pig Butchering'
  • The history of cryptography is full of amazing stories. Today we will each take turns telling one such story. The following books are good places to consider looking for a story. They are all available in the university libraries, and I also have copies in my office that you can use.
    • The Codebreakers, by David Kahn
    • Code Girls, by Liza Mundy
    • Crypto, by Steven Levy
    • The Code Book, by Simon Singh

Anonymous Communication

• May 22: Anonymity, Mixnets, DC-nets, and The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
  
  • Do Artifacts Have Politics?
  • The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work (Through Part 3)
• May 23: Private Messaging; Anonymity Lab
  
  • Complete prelab prior to class
• May 27: Anonymity in Practice; Multiparty Computation
  
  • Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router

Private Computation

• May 28: Differential Privacy; Looking at Other Threat Models
  
  • The Million Dollar Dissident
  • "A Stalker's Paradise": How Intimate Partner Abusers Exploit Technology
• May 29: MPC/DP Deployments and MPC Lab
  
  • Deploying MPC for Social Good (slides)
  • Differential privacy deployments from the US Census and Apple
  Project report and slides due at 11:59pm
• May 30: Quiz 2, Project Presentations