Alessandro Acquisti, Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University

In his talk, Alessandro will try to link two streams of research he is conducting at Carnegie Mellon University: the "behavioral economics of privacy," and the study of privacy and disclosure behavior in online social networks. First, he will highlight how research in behavioral economics can help us make sense of apparent inconsistencies in privacy (and security) decision-making, and will present results from a variety of experiments in this area he conducted at Carnegie Mellon University. Then, he will discuss the technical feasibility and privacy implications of combining publicly available Web 2.0 images with off-the-shelf face recognition technology, for the purpose of large-scale, automated individual re-identification. Combined, the results highlight the behavioral, technological, and legal challenges raised by the convergence of new information technologies, and raise questions about the future of privacy in an augmented reality world.

Alessandro Acquisti is an Associate Professor at the Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University, and the co-director of CMU Center for Behavioral Decision Research (CBDR). His research focuses on the economics of privacy. His studies have spearheaded the application of behavioral economics to the analysis of privacy decision making, and the analysis of disclosure behavior and privacy trade-offs in online social networks. Alessandro has been the recipient of the PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies, the IBM Best Academic Privacy Faculty Award, the Heinz College Award for Teaching Excellence, and multiple best paper awards. He is a member of the National Academies' Committee on Public Response to Alerts and Warnings Using Social Media and Associated Privacy Considerations, and has held visiting positions at the Universities of Harvard, Rome, Paris, and Freiburg, at Microsoft Research in New England, and at Google. He holds a PhD from UC Berkeley, and Master degrees from UC Berkeley, the London School of Economics, and Trinity College Dublin.