PETS | Marc Liberatore

Joined the PETS 2017 TPC

Wed, 24 Feb 2016 14:00:00 +0000

I’ve joined the PETS 2017 TPC. The Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium is the premier venue for novel research on the theoretical and practical aspects of privacy technologies. Please submit your work!

As of 2015, PETS has moved to an open-access journal/conference hybrid model. Articles are submitted for review to an issue of the PoPETs open-access journal, and accepted articles are made freely available online by De Gruyter: http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/popets. Since this change, we have seen an increase in the number and diversity of submissions. We believe that the major revisions model has also led to an increase in quality of the accepted publications.

The PETS event consists of presentations of articles accepted to PoPETs, as well as keynotes, associated workshops such as HotPETs, and a range of social activities.

Joined the PETS 2015 TPC

Tue, 09 Sep 2014 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve joined the PETS 2015 TPC. The Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium is the premier venue for novel research on the theoretical and practical aspects of privacy technologies. Please submit your work!

More PETS news

New this year, the proceedings of PETS is now PoPETS, a scholarly journal for timely research papers on privacy that brings journal-style reviewing to conference-style papers and seeks to combine the benefits of fast conference turnaround with consistent journal reviewing. PETS/PoPETs has been modeled on the success of other conference/journal hybrids such as JETS and PVLDB.

Authors can submit papers to one of several submission deadlines during the year. Papers are provided with major/minor revision decisions on a predictable schedule, where we endeavor to assign the same reviewers to major revisions. Authors can address the concerns of reviewers in their revision and rebut reviewer comments before a final decision on acceptance is made. Papers accepted for publication by May 15th will be presented at that year’s symposium. Note that accepted papers must be presented at PETS.

Joined the PETS 2014 TPC

Mon, 21 Oct 2013 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve joined the PETS 2014 TPC. The Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium is the premier venue for novel research on the theoretical and practical aspects of privacy technologies. Please submit your work!

If you have interesting work-in-progress, consider submitting to the associated workshop HotPETs.

One Man's PET is Another Man's Security Vulnerability

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:35:00 +0000

While reviewing for PETS this year, a thought struck me. Many privacy-enhancing technologies are, from some perspective, security vulnerabilities.

In the U.S., we have very little in the way of legal protection when it comes to personal information, and privacy-enhancing technologies can be used by savvy users to protect themselves.

Systems that are designed to prevent user and usage tracking (e.g., Tor, TrackMeNot, NoTrace) often do so by breaking a property of the system they interface with. In particular, many web sites and services implicitly or explicitly expect to be able to tie user sessions together, and to track users across sites and visits. The information a user provides the server is half of a transaction (the other half being the service provided to the user). Further, in some cases, sites’ terms of service or terms of use forbid attempts to circumvent this tracking.

Viewed from the perspective of the web service provider, privacy-enhancing technologies are exploiting a security flaw. Users should have to reveal information to receive service; privacy enhancing technologies are an attack on a vulnerability, breaking the integrity of the transaction.

In a better world, we would also use laws and policies to protect users’s privacy, especially as people (and researchers) claim their privacy is quite important to them.

Joined the PETS 2013 TPC

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve joined the PETS 2013 TPC. The Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium is the premiere venue for novel research on the theoretical and practical aspects of privacy technologies. The CFP lists suggested topics; please submit your work! Abstracts are due February 15th, 2013, and full papers four days later.

If you have interesting work-in-progress, consider submitting to the associated workshop HotPETs, which has a submission deadline of April 15th, 2013.