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Award Abstract # 1956435
SaTC: Frontiers: Collaborative: Protecting Personal Data Flow on the Internet

NSF Org: CNS
Division Of Computer and Network Systems
Recipient: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Initial Amendment Date: June 8, 2020
Latest Amendment Date: July 24, 2024
Award Number: 1956435
Award Instrument: Continuing Grant
Program Manager: Phillip Regalia
pregalia@nsf.gov
 (703)292-2981
CNS
 Division Of Computer and Network Systems
CSE
 Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Start Date: October 1, 2020
End Date: September 30, 2026 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $2,549,999.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $2,549,999.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2020 = $971,104.00
FY 2022 = $509,462.00

FY 2023 = $525,419.00

FY 2024 = $544,014.00
History of Investigator:
  • Konstantinos Psounis (Principal Investigator)
    kpsounis@usc.edu
  • Amir Avestimehr (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Aleksandra Korolova (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Muhammad Naveed (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of Southern California
3720 S FLOWER ST FL 3
LOS ANGELES
CA  US  90033
(213)740-7762
Sponsor Congressional District: 34
Primary Place of Performance: University of Southern California
3720 S. Flower St.
Los Angeles
CA  US  90089-0001
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
37
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): G88KLJR3KYT5
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): Secure &Trustworthy Cyberspace
Primary Program Source: 01002223DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01002324DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01002425DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 8087, 025Z
Program Element Code(s): 806000
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.070

ABSTRACT

Personal data collection typically starts on user devices, with the data then shared with service providers and trackers, obtained by malicious actors, and/or used for surveillance. The services enabled by this data come at the expense of privacy, security, transparency, and fairness, for individuals and society as a whole. Increased public awareness has led to landmark legislation on data protection, such as the EU?s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Policymakers need to be further informed by technology, however, to formulate relevant and enforceable policies, and end-users still need tools to protect themselves. This project seeks to protect personal information, by improving the transparency and control of data flow on the Internet, using a multidisciplinary approach that combines methodologies from computer science (theory, network measurement, security) with policy and economics, and crosses multiple application domains (web, mobile, and Internet-of-Things).

Conceptual frameworks are developed for personal information flow on the Internet, as well as systems for monitoring and mediation. Existing systems are improved for measuring the tracking and discrimination of personal information, and for explicitly controlling privacy-utility tradeoffs. To provide long-term privacy-by-design alternatives, the project pursues verifiable IoT architectures seeking to decentralize the advertising ecosystem and eliminate intermediaries. The project likewise leverages technology to inform policy specification and to provide tools to audit and enforce policies. The broader impacts of the project include: (1) informing policymakers, nonprofit advocates, and industry players through interactions with relevant stakeholders; (2) training next-generation graduate and undergraduate students jointly in technology and policy; and (3) broadening participation of women, underrepresented minorities, and community college students.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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(Showing: 1 - 10 of 14)
Zhang, Jiang and Psounis, Konstantinos and Haroon, Muhammad and Shafiq, Zubair "HARPO: Learning to Subvert Online Behavioral Advertising" NDSS , 2022 https://doi.org/10.14722/ndss.2022.23062 Citation Details
Shen, Zeyu and Gelauff, Lodewijk and Goel, Ashish and Korolova, Aleksandra and Munagala, Kamesh "Robust Allocations with Diversity Constraints" Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems , 2021 Citation Details
Sapiezynski, Piotr and Kaplan, Levi and Mislove, Alan and Korolova, Aleksandra "On the Use of Proxies in Political Ad Targeting" Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction , v.8 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1145/3686917 Citation Details
Nagaraj Rao, Varun and Korolova, Aleksandra "Discrimination through Image Selection by Job Advertisers on Facebook" FAccT '23: Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1145/3593013.3594115 Citation Details
Luu, Michael and Ferland, Matthew and Nagaraj Rao, Varun and Arora, Arushi and Huynh, Randy and Reiber, Frederick and Wong-Ma, Jennifer and Shindler, Michael "What is an Algorithms Course?: Survey Results of Introductory Undergraduate Algorithms Courses in the U.S." SIGCSE 2023: Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education , v.1 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1145/3545945.3569820 Citation Details
J. Zhang, H. Askari "A Utility-Preserving Obfuscation Approach for YouTube Recommendations" PETS , 2023 Citation Details
Juarez, Marc and Korolova, Aleksandra "You Cant Fix What You Cant Measure: Privately Measuring Demographic Performance Disparities in Federated Learning" Proceedings of Machine Learning Research , v.1 , 2022 Citation Details
Imana, Basileal and Korolova, Aleksandra and Heidemann, John "Having your Privacy Cake and Eating it Too: Platform-supported Auditing of Social Media Algorithms for Public Interest" Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction , v.7 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1145/3579610 Citation Details
Imana, Basileal and Korolova, Aleksandra and Heidemann, John "Auditing for Racial Discrimination in the Delivery of Education Ads" , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1145/3630106.3659041 Citation Details
Imana, Basileal and Korolova, Aleksandra and Heidemann, John "Auditing for Discrimination in Algorithms Delivering Job Ads" Proceedings of the Web Conference (WWW) , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1145/3442381.3450077 Citation Details
Ali, Muhammad and Sapiezynski, Piotr and Korolova, Aleksandra and Mislove, Alan and Rieke, Aaron "Ad Delivery Algorithms: The Hidden Arbiters of Political Messaging" Proceedings of the 14th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1145/3437963.3441801 Citation Details
(Showing: 1 - 10 of 14)

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