Room: SEH B1220/1270 Lehman Auditorium
21:00
Welcome! (coffee and chat)
21:30
Opening Remarks
22:00
Keynote: From Party App to Pentagon Sniffer: Tracing the Commercial-to-Government Data Pipeline
Byron Tau, Associated Press
Room: USC 3rd Floor - Grand Ballroom
22:00–23:20
Abstract:
This talk examines the technical and business mechanisms through which consumer applications become nodes in government surveillance networks, using the case study of X-Mode Social (formerly Drunk Mode). Through detailed analysis of SDK integration, data flows, and commercial relationships, we trace how a University of Virginia student's party safety app evolved into a collection platform for the Defense Department.
The presentation reveals the surveillance supply chain architecture: how Software Development Kits (SDKs) embedded in hundreds of consumer apps create a distributed sensing network capable of collecting location data, Bluetooth identifiers, and wireless signals from millions of devices daily. We examine the technical capabilities that transform smartphones into persistent surveillance tools, the business incentives driving app developers to integrate data collection SDKs, and the regulatory gaps that enable these arrangements.
Bio: Byron Tau is an author and
journalist. He’s currently an investigative reporter in the Washington,
D.C. bureau of the Associated Press, where he focuses on reporting stories
about national security, law enforcement, technology and government
accountability. He previously worked at The Wall Street Journal, NOTUS and
Politico. With over 15 years of experience in Washington, Byron has covered
numerous beats across all three branches of the federal government.
23:20
Break
23:35
Session A
23:35–0:35
Anonymity, Consent, and Other Noble Lies:
An Exploration of the Data Economy
Serge Egelman (UC Berkeley)
Showcasing privacy loss through Amazon purchases
and a call for radical cooperation to stop it
Dana Calacci (Penn State University), Alex Berke
(MIT)
0:35 (July 19)
2:00 (July 19)
Session B
2:00–3:10
Private computation for public policy:
prescription drug surveillance as a case study
Tomo Lazovich (School of Law, Northeastern
University), Leo Beletsky (School of Law, Northeastern University),
Glencora Borradaile (School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
Oregon State University)
PETS Community Report-Back: Facing New (and Old)
Challenges
Anna Harbluk Lorimer (University of Chicago)
3:10 (July 19)
Ice Cream!
3:40 (July 19)
Session C
3:40-4:40
Towards equitable PETs: A call to action for
representative and open datasets with a browser fingerprinting case
study
Alex Berke (MIT), Enrico Bacis (Google), Umar Syed
(Google), Robin Lassonde (Google)
Reframing AI Alignment in terms of Censorship and
Privacy
Mohamed Ahmed (Citizen Lab, University of
Toronto)
In LLMs We Trust? A Contextual Integrity
Perspective
Yan Shvartzshnaider (York University), Vasisht Duddu
(University of Waterloo)
4:40 (July 19)
Voting for Best HotPETs Talk
5:00 (July 19)
Closing Remarks and Award (Grand Ballroom)