Data Confidentiality Workshop
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WORKSHOP ON DATA CONFIDENTIALITY

September 6-7, 2007 in Arlington, VA

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My research focuses on the economics of privacy - that is, the application of economic methodologies to the study of the incentives and the trade-offs associated with the protection and the revelation of personal information. Behind a privacy concern there is often an economic trade-off. The reduction of the cost of storing and manipulating information has led organizations to capture increasing amounts of data about individual behavior. The hunger for customization and usability has led individuals to reveal more about themselves to other parties. New trade-offs have emerged in which economics and technology are inextricably linked: individuals want to avoid the misuse of the information they pass along to others, but they also want to share enough information to achieve satisfactory interactions; organizations want to know more about the parties with which they interact, but they do not want to alienate them with policies deemed as intrusive. Is there a combination of economic incentives and technological solutions to privacy issues that is acceptable for the individual and beneficial to society? Is there a sweet spot that satisfies the interests of all parties? The explicit application of economic reasoning to the study of these privacy-related trade-offs started in the late 1970s, progressed in the 1990s, and flourished in the early 2000s with a plethora of formal micro-economic models. In my research, I study some of the most interesting features, paradoxes, and open questions in this area. For instance, I study the dichotomy between individual stated privacy attitudes and actual behavior: individuals often claim to be highly concerned about their personal privacy, but few adopt technologies to protect it, and many release personal information in exchange for small rewards. I often apply lessons from the research on behavioral economics to understand the individual decision making process with respect to privacy.

Alessandro Acquisti

Carnegie Mellon University

http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/

Biographical Data

Alessandro Acquisti is an Assistant Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, and a member of Carnegie Mellon Cylab. His work investigates the economic and social impact of IT, and in particular the interaction and interconnection of human and artificial agents in highly networked information economies. His current research focuses primarily on the economics of privacy and information security, but also on the economics of computers and AI, agents economics, computational economics, ecommerce, cryptography, anonymity, and electronic voting. His research in these areas has been disseminated through journals (including Marketing Science, IEEE Security & Privacy, and Rivista di Politica Economica); edited books ("Digital Privacy: Theory, Technologies, and Practices.'' Auerbach, 2007); book chapters; and leading international conferences. Prior to joining CMU Faculty, Alessandro Acquisti researched at the Xerox PARC labs in Palo Alto, CA, with Bernardo Huberman and the Internet Ecologies Group (as intern), and for two years at RIACS, NASA Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, CA, with Maarten Sierhuis and Bill Clancey (as visiting student). At RIACS, he worked on agent-based simulations of human-robot interaction onboard the International Space Station. In 2000 he co-founded PGuardian Technologies, Inc., a provider of Internet security and privacy services, for which he designed two currently pending patents. Alessandro has received national and international awards, including the 2005 PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies and the 2005 IBM Best Academic Privacy Faculty Award. He is and has been member of the program committees of various international conferences and workshops, including ACM EC, PET, WEIS, ETRICS, WPES, LOCA, QoP, and the Ubicomp Privacy Workshop at Ubicomp. In 2007 he chaired the DIMACS Workshop on Information Security Economics and the WEIS Workshop on the Economics of Information Security. In the past, he has been a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. Alessandro Acquisti has lived and studied in Rome (Laurea, Economics, University of Rome), Dublin (M.Litt., Economics, Trinity College), London (M.Sc., Econometrics and Mathematical Economics, LSE), and in the San Francisco bay area, where he worked with John Chuang, Doug Tygar, and Hal Varian and received a Master and a Ph.D. in Information Management and Systems from the University of California at Berkeley.