Call for Papers

The annual Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) brings together privacy experts from around the world to present and discuss recent advances and new perspectives on research in privacy technologies. Papers undergo a journal-style reviewing process, and accepted papers are published in the journal Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs).

PoPETs, a scholarly, open-access journal for research papers on privacy, provides high-quality reviewing and publication while also supporting the successful PETS community event. PoPETs is published by Sciendo, part of De Gruyter, which has over 260 years of publishing history. PoPETs does not have article processing charges (APCs) or article submission charges.

Authors can submit papers to PoPETs four times a year, every three months, and are notified of the decisions about two months after submission. In addition to accept and reject decisions, papers may receive resubmit with major revisions decisions, in which case authors are invited to revise and resubmit their article to one of the following two issues. We endeavor to assign the same reviewers to revised submissions. Papers accepted for an issue in the PoPETs 2021 volume must be presented at the PETS 2021 symposium. Please view our FAQ for more information about the process.

Submission Guidelines
The submission guidelines contain important submission information for authors. Please note especially the instructions for anonymizing submissions and for ensuring ethical research. Papers must be submitted via the PETS 2021 submission server. The submission URL is: https://submit.petsymposium.org.

Important Dates for PETS 2021

All deadlines are 23:59:59 Anywhere on Earth (UTC-12)

Authors invited to resubmit with major revisions can submit the revised (full) paper two weeks after the stated deadline. Such papers must, however, be registered with an abstract by the usual deadline. All other papers than these major revision resubmissions must be submitted by the stated deadline, including papers submitted to and rejected from previous issues. To benefit from the two-week deadline extension, major revisions must be submitted to one of the two issues following the decision. Major revisions submitted to later issues are treated as new submissions, due by the regular deadline and possibly assigned to new reviewers.

Scope

Papers submitted to PETS/PoPETs should present novel practical and/or theoretical research into the design, analysis, experimentation, or fielding of privacy-enhancing technologies. Note that a paper's relevance to privacy applications is crucial for our community. PETS is open to topics from the wider area of security and privacy (cryptographic primitives, security mechanisms, differentially-private mechanisms, etc.) as long as it is clear how these serve to improve or understand privacy in technology (e.g., it includes a use case, evaluation on real data, integration with an application, etc.).

Suggested topics include but are not restricted to:

• Anonymous communication and censorship resistance
• Blockchain privacy
• Building and deploying privacy-enhancing systems
• Cloud computing and privacy
• Cryptographic tools for privacy
• Data protection technologies
• Defining and quantifying privacy
• Differential privacy and private data analysis
• Economics and game-theoretical approaches to privacy
• Forensics and privacy
• Genomic and medical privacy
• Human factors, usability, and user-centered design of privacy technologies
• Information leakage, data correlation, and abstract attacks on privacy
• Interdisciplinary research connecting privacy to economics, law, psychology, etc.
• Internet of Things privacy
• Location privacy
• Machine learning and privacy
• Measurement of privacy in real-world systems
• Mobile devices and privacy
• Policy languages and tools for privacy
• Profiling and data mining
• Social network privacy
• Surveillance
• Traffic analysis
• Transparency, robustness, and abuse in privacy systems
• Web privacy

We also solicit Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) papers on any of these topics: papers putting together existing knowledge under some common light (adversary model, requirements, functionality offered, etc.), providing novel insights, identifying research gaps or challenges to commonly held assumptions, etc. Survey papers, without such contributions, are not suitable. SoK submissions should include "SoK:" in their title and check the corresponding option in the submission form.

General Chair (gc21@petsymposium.org)

Matthew Wright, Rochester Institute of Technology

Program Chairs/Co-Editors-in-Chief (pets21-chairs@petsymposium.org)

Aaron Johnson, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

Florian Kerschbaum, University of Waterloo

Program Committee/Editorial Board:

Ruba Abu-Salma, University College London / Inria

Yasemin Acar, Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy

Gergely Acs, Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Mário Alvim, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Sebastian Angel, University of Pennsylvania

Frederik Armknecht, Universität Mannheim

Erman Ayday, Bilkent University

Saikrishna Badrinarayanan, Visa Research

Diogo Barradas, Universidade de Lisboa

Muhammad Ahmad Bashir, International Computer Science Institute

Sonia Ben Mokhtar, CNRS

Zinaida Benenson, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

Alastair Beresford, University of Cambridge

Pascal Berrang, University of Birmingham

Gergely Biczok, Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Nataliia Bielova, Inria

Igor Bilogrevic, Google

Bogdan Carbunar, Florida International University

Melissa Chase, Microsoft Research

Giovanni Cherubin, EPFL

Sherman Chow, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Omar Chowdhury, University of Iowa

Chris Clifton, Purdue University

Camille Cobb, Carnegie Mellon University

Anupam Das, North Carolina State University

Lucas Davi, Universität Duisburg Essen

Martin Degeling, Ruhr-University Bochum

Damien Desfontaines, ETH Zurich / Google

Roger Dingledine, The Tor Project

Josep Domingo-Ferrer, Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Markus Dürmuth, Ruhr Uni­ver­si­ty Bo­chum

Tariq Elahi, University of Edinburgh

David Evans, University of Virginia

Kassem Fawaz, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Ellis Fenske, U.S. Naval Academy

Julien Freudiger, Apple

Alisa Frik, International Computer Science Institute

Sébastien Gambs, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

Chaya Ganesh, Indian Institute of Science

Simson Garfinkel, U.S. Census Bureau

Paolo Gasti, New York Institute of Technology

Gennie Gebhart, EFF

Neil Gong, Duke University

Sergey Gorbunov, University of Waterloo

Adam Groce, Reed College

Thomas Gross, Newcastle University

Paul Grubbs, University of Michigan

Florian Hahn, University of Twente

Jamie Hayes, University College London

Xi He, University of Waterloo

Ryan Henry, University of Calgary

Jaap-Henk Hoepman, Radboud University

Yuan Hong, Illinois Institute of Technology

Mathias Humbert, armasuisse W+T

Muhammad Ikram, Macquarie University

Rob Jansen, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

Philipp Jovanovic, University College London

Marc Juarez, University of Southern California

Dali Kaafar, Macquarie University, Sydney

Ghassan Karame, NEC Laboratories

Marcel Keller, CSIRO's Data61

Katharina Kohls, Radboud University

Markulf Kohlweiss, University of Edinburgh

Christiane Kuhn, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Peeter Laud, Cybernetica

Arnaud Legout, Inria

Wouter Lueks, EPFL

Piotr Mardziel, Carnegie Mellon University

Shrirang Mare, Western Washington University

Athina Markopolou, University of California, Irvine

Abigail Marsh, Macalester College

Atefeh Mashatan, Ryerson University

Fabio Massacci, University of Trento / Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Travis Mayberry, U.S. Naval Academy

Michelle Mazurek, University of Maryland

Sebastian Meiser, Visa Research

Luca Melis, Amazon

Alan Mislove, Northeastern University

Prateek Mittal, Princeton University

Aziz Mohaisen, University of Central Florida

Esfandiar Mohammadi, University of Lübeck

Meisam Mohammady, CSIRO Data 61

Veelasha Moonsamy, Ruhr University Bochum

Pedro Moreno-Sanchez, IMDEA Software Institute

Steven Murdoch, University College London

Sashank Narain, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Milad Nasr, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Kartik Nayak, Duke University

Rishab Nithyanand, University of Iowa

Melek Önen, EURECOM

Rebekah Overdorf, EPFL

Simon Oya, University of Waterloo

Omkant Pandey, Stony Brook University

Stefano Paraboschi, Università degli Studi di Bergamo

Balazs Pejo, Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Fabian Prasser, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin / Berlin Institute of Health

Tobias Pulls, Karlstad University

Abbas Razaghpanah, International Computer Science Institute

Joel Reardon, University of Calgary

Elissa Redmiles, Microsoft Research

Alfredo Rial, University of Luxembourg

Daniel Roche, U.S. Naval Academy

Florentin Rochet, Université catholique de Louvain

Andy Rupp, University of Luxembourg

Nitesh Saxena, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Florian Schaub, University of Michigan

Dominique Schröder, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Wendy Seltzer, W3C

Zubair Shafiq, University of Iowa

Mahmood Sharif, Tel Aviv University and VMware

Rachee Singh, Microsoft Research

Radu Sion, Stony Brook University

David Marco Sommer, ETH Zurich

Jessica Staddon, Google

Theresa Stadler, EPFL

Yixin Sun, University Of Virginia

Daniel Takabi, Georgia State University

Sai Teja Peddinti, Google

Shruti Tople, Microsoft Research Cambridge

Florian Tramer, Stanford University

Carmela Troncoso, EPFL

Narseo Vallina, IMDEA Networks Institute

Eugene Vasserman, Kansas State University

Daniel Votipka, Tufts University

Sameer Wagh, University of California, Berkeley

Tao Wang, Simon Fraser University

Tianhao Wang, Purdue University

Christo Wilson, Northeastern University

Jason Xue, The University of Adelaide

Attila Yavuz, University of South Florida

Arkady Yerukhimovich, George Washington University

Moti Yung, Google

Fan Zhang, Duke University

Yang Zhang, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security

Yupeng Zhang, Texas A&M University

Yongjun Zhao, Nanyang Technological University

Internet Arrangements Chairs (arrangements21@petsymposium.org)

Peizhao Hu, Rochester Institute of Technology

Sumita Mishra, Rochester Institute of Technology

Hanif Rahbari, Rochester Institute of Technology

Publicity/Web Chairs (publicity21@petsymposium.org)

Rebekah Overdorf, EPFL

Kat Hanna, The Tor Project

Publication Chairs (publication21@petsymposium.org)

Tobias Pulls, Karlstad University

Anselme Tueno, SAP SE

Artifact Chairs (artifact-pets@petsymposium.org)

Cecylia Bocovich, The Tor Project

Video Chairs (video21@petsymposium.org)

Jeremy Clark, Concordia University

Benjamin Zhao, University of New South Wales / CSIRO Data61

HotPETs Chairs (hotpets21@petsymposium.org)

Michael Veale, University College London

Ryan Henry, University of Calgary

PET Award Chairs (award-chairs21@petsymposium.org)

Simone Fischer-Hübner, Karlstad University

Panos Papadimitratos, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Sponsorship Chairs (sponsorship@petsymposium.org)

Steven Murdoch, University College London

Susan McGregor, Columbia University

Infrastructure Chairs

Roger Dingledine, The Tor Project

Ian Goldberg, University of Waterloo

Stipend Chairs (pets2021-stipend@petsymposium.org)

Roger Dingledine, The Tor Project

Damon McCoy, New York University

Andrei Serjantov

Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies
You are invited to submit nominations for the 2021 Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies. The Caspar Bowden PET award is presented annually to researchers who have made an outstanding contribution to the theory, design, implementation, or deployment of privacy enhancing technologies. It is awarded at PETS and carries a cash prize as well as a physical award statue.

Any paper by any author written in the area of privacy enhancing technologies is eligible for nomination. However, the paper must have appeared in a refereed journal, conference, or workshop with proceedings published in the period from April 1, 2019 until March 30, 2021.

Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper Award
A winner of the Andreas Pfitzmann PETS 2021 Best Student Paper Award will be selected at PETS 2021. Papers written solely or primarily by a student who is presenting the work at PETS 2021 are eligible for the award.

HotPETs
As usual, part of the symposium will be devoted to HotPETs — the "hottest," most exciting research ideas still in a formative state. Further information will be published on the PETS website in early 2021.