CS 344 - Privacy, Anonymity and Social Networks

Course Information

Lectures: Hours: T/Th, 13:30 — 14:50PM
Location: King 235
Instructor: Roberto Hoyle (rhoyle@oberlin.edu)
Office: King 223C
Office Hours: Tuesday 15:00 — 17:00
Wednesday, 14:00 — 16:00
or by appointment
Phone: 775-8424
Prerequisites: CSCI 241 or consent of the instructor. You should be comfortable with breaking down a large, complex programming assignment into manageable pieces and implement it throughout the course of the semester.

Course Description

From the Oberlin catalog course description:

In today’s networked and electronic society, personal information and social habits are increasingly available to potentially unauthorized parties. The protection of this information requires balancing social, legal, and economic pressures. This course will introduce students to current research that tackles such privacy challenges in an interdisciplinary approach. We will cover topics such as anonymizing networks, censorship-resistant publishing, location privacy, information sharing in mobile and social networks, electronic voting, and wearable computing. This seminar will be driven by student presentations of papers accompanied by in-depth interactive discussions of the material. Building on knowledge gained in class, students will work on research projects in groups and present their findings at the end of the semester.

Course Goals

My goals and objectives for students taking this course are as follows:

  1. Be comfortable reading primary literature in computer science
  2. Develop expertise in a research project
  3. Develop technical writing skills in the sciences
  4. Understand issues surrounding privacy and security as they apply to social networks and society at large