Big Data Privacy: Advancing the State of the Art in Technology and Practice

Organized by the MIT Big Data Initiative at CSAIL and the MIT Information Policy Project

MIT Dome at night

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and MIT co-hosted a public workshop entitled “Big Data Privacy: Advancing the State of the Art in Technology and Practice” on March 3, 2014. The event was part of a series of workshops on big data and privacy organized by the MIT Big Data Initiative at CSAIL and the MIT Information Policy Project. The workshop was also the first in a series of events being held across the country in response to President Obama’s call for a review of privacy issues in the context of increased digital information and the computing power to process it.

The workshop convened key stakeholders and thought leaders from across academia, government, industry, and civil society for a thoughtful dialogue on the future role of technology in protecting and managing privacy. Concentrations included core technical challenges associated with big data applications and provide a theoretical grounding for privacy considerations in large-scale information systems. State of the art in privacy-protecting technologies and how they can be applied to a diversity of big data applications were explored.

Topics included:

  • Big Data Opportunities and Risks
  • State of the Art of Privacy Protection
  • Review of Emerging Privacy Technologies
  • Industry, Government, Academic Roundtable

The MIT Big Data Privacy Workshop Summary Report is now available for viewing or download.

Speakers included:

  • MIT President Rafael Reif
  • White House Counselor John Podesta (Keynote Speaker)
  • Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker (Keynote Speaker)
  • Cynthia Dwork, Microsoft Research
  • Shafi Goldwasser, MIT CSAIL
  • Michael Stonebraker, MIT CSAIL

The agenda page includes video clips of each speaker and selected slide presentations.

MIT would like to acknowledge the generous support of The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in making this event possible.

Sloan logo