About PAL
As information technologies increasingly expand the ability for organizations to store, process, and exploit personal data, privacy is at the center of discussion and controversy among multiple stakeholders including IT professionals, business leaders, privacy activists, and government regulators. Public opinion polls have repeatedly shown privacy to be of utmost concern in diverse organizational and societal contexts and it is argued that information privacy continues to be eroded as a result of technology innovations. Researchers at the Privacy Assurance Laboratory (PAL) aims to bring together the inter-disciplinary research on a diverse set of topics related to understanding and assuring information privacy. PAL research seeks to better understand the dynamic and dialectic nature of information privacy through a combination of theoretical, technical and empirical research efforts. Moreover, the interplay between social and technological issues associated with the privacy assurance will be the subject of a number of educational initiatives for Penn State's new major in Security and Risk Analysis.
News and Events
April 2009: Dr. Heng Xu and IST Ph.D. student Pan Shi teamed to have their paper published in the Best Paper Proceedings (top 10% papers) at the 2009 Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, Aug 7-11.
February 2009: Dr. Heng Xu and IST Ph.D. student Pan Shi teamed to earn the Best Paper Award at the recent 2009 iConference in University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
October 2008: Dr. Heng Xu (PI), Dr. Sencun Zhu (Co-PI) and Dr. Daniel Perkins (Co-PI) have been awarded $12,094 by the Children, Youth and Family Consortium of Penn State to fund their research project on Protecting Children’s Online Privacy.
People
Faculty
John Bagby
John M. Carroll
Chao-Hsien Chu
Peng Liu
Mary Beth Rosson
Anna C. Squicciarini
Heng Xu, Director
Xiaolong (Luke) Zhang
Sencun Zhu
Students
Ying Chen, CSE PhD student
Patrick Lunney, IST Undergraduate student
Terence Ryan Melonas, IST Undergraduate student
Pan Shi, IST PhD student
James Smith, IST Undergraduate student
Peijian Song, Visiting PhD student (Fudan University, China)
Alumni
Nazneen Irani, MSc graduate, now at Deloitte
Research Grants
Xu, H. (PI), Zhu, S. (Co-PI), and Perkins, D. (Co-PI) "Protecting Children's Online Privacy: a Value Sensitive Design Investigation," Children, Youth and Family Consortium, Penn State University (total: $12,094.00), 2008-2009.
Xu, H. (PI), Rosson, M. B. (Co-PI), and Carroll, J. M. (Co-PI) "Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Supplement for the CT-ER Project on Privacy Assurance in Location-Based Services," National Science Foundation (total: $6,000.00), 2008-2009.
Xu, H. (PI), Rosson, M. B. (Co-PI), and Carroll, J. M. (Co-PI) "CT-ER: Privacy Assurance in Location-Based Services: Integrating Economic Exchange and Social Justice Perspectives," National Science Foundation (total: $168,777.00), 2007-2009.
Chu, C. H. (PI), Liu, P. (Co-PI), and Xu, H. (Co-PI) "IA Scholarship and Capacity Building Program (Privacy Assurance Lab)," DoD Information Assurance Scholarship Program (total: $175,576.00), 2007-2008.
Current Projects and Publications
Conceptual Underpinnings of Information Privacy publications»
Privacy as Design publications»
Privacy Concerns Pertaining to Location-Based Services (LBS) publications»
Web 2.0 Privacy publications»
Privacy Protection for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Data publications»
Privacy and Wireless Advertising Messages (WAM) publications»
Resources
Conferences:
- Access Privacy Conference
- Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS: Privacy and Security Track)
- Computers, Freedom and Privacy (CFP)
- International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS: Privacy and Security Track)
- Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS)
- Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS)
- Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies: (PET)
Research:
- IEEE Security & Privacy
- Privacy Journal
- CMU Usable Privacy and Security Lab
- Information Privacy in Ubiquitous Computing
- Privacy and Identity Management for Europe
- The Surveillance Project
Professional Organization:
- Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
- Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
- Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR)
- International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP)
- Privacy International (PI)
- Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC)
Join Us!
For Penn State students or faculty members doing privacy related
research: if you would like to be included on PAL web site, please
contact Dr. Heng Xu.
For current and prospective Penn State students: if you are
interested in one of the following research areas, please send your
resume to Dr. Heng Xu:
1. Development and evaluation of privacy enhancing technologies.
Privacy Assurance Lab is looking for students to work on
research projects with us (for independent study or thesis credit or
pay). We are particularly interested in students who have solid
experiences in Windows programming as well as students with experience
conducting user studies.
2. Usable IT Security Management. We are looking for one
PhD student with the background in IST, management and organization,
MIS, or marketing.
3. Social, psychological and cultural views of information
privacy. We are looking for one PhD student with the
background in IST, psychology, communication or MIS.
Download the PAL brochure (Adobe Reader required).