Instructors: Salil Vadhan, James Honaker, and Priyanka Nanayakkara
Teaching Fellows: Zachary Ratliff, Christian Aagnes, Sahil Kuchlous, Jason Tang, Yanis Vandecasteele, and Henry Wu
Regular meeting time: Mondays & Wednesdays 11:15-12:30, starting 1/25
Location: 2.112 in 114 Western Ave, Allston, MA (in the building next to the SEC)
| Date | Title | Slides/Notes | Advance Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday (1/27) | Course Overview | ||
| Attacks on Privacy | |||
| Wednesday (1/29) | Re-identification Attacks | Hands-On Differential Privacy, Chapter 11 | |
| Problem Set 1 (due Fri 2/7) | pdf, tex | ||
| Monday (2/3) | Reconstruction Attacks | pdf1, ipynb, pdf2 | Tanner, Narayanan-Shmatikov, Castro-Cavoukian |
| Wednesday (2/5) | Membership Inference Attacks | Ruggles-van Riper, Jessica Hullman blog post, Smith-Ullman | |
| Problem Set 2 (due Fri 2/14) | pdf, tex | ||
| DP Foundations | |||
| Monday (2/10) | DP Foundations: Definitions, Basic Mechanisms | pdf1, ipynb class example, ipynb w/ in-class updates, pdf2 | P3G Consortium et al., Hands-On Differential Privacy, Chapter 2 (up to pg. 35) |
| Wednesday (2/12) | DP Foundations: Properties of DP Mechanisms | pdf, ipynb class example | Hands-on Differential Privacy Ch. 2, pg 35-52 |
| Problem Set 3 (due Fri 2/21) | pdf, tex | ||
| Monday (2/17) No Class - President’s Day | |||
| Wednesday (2/19) | Composition | Hands-On Differential Privacy, Ch. 3 (pg.53-75) | |
| Problem Set 4 (due Fri 2/28) | pdf, tex | ||
| Monday (2/24) | Practicum on Gaussian mechanism and composition | pdf nb1 nb2 nb3 | Publishing Wikimedia Usage Data Hands-On Differential Privacy, Ch. 3 (pg. 75-84), Ch. 4 (pp.85-92) |
| Wednesday (2/26) | Communicating Differential Privacy | Reading 1, Reading 2, Hands-On Differential Privacy, Ch. 5 (pg. 112-115, pg. 120-126) on Privacy Loss Random Variable, Approximate DP, Advanced Composition, and the Gaussian Mechanism | |
| Problem Set 5 (due Fri 3/7) | pdf, tex | ||
| Monday (3/3) | Contextual Integrity | Helen Nissenbaum, “Privacy in Context” Chapter 7 | |
| Implementing Centralized DP | |||
| Wednesday (3/5) | Beyond Noise Addition & Synthetic Data | Hands-On Differential Privacy, Ch 4. (pg. 94-101 on exponential mechanism), JASON report (Sections 2.0-2.2, 3, and 5.0 (stopping before 5.1)). | |
| Problem Set 6 (due Fri 3/14) | pdf, tex | ||
| Monday (3/10) | Statistical Releases: the Opportunity Atlas | pdf nb1 nb2 nb3 | Opportunity Atlas; Chetty-Friedman JPC (Sec 3) |
| Wednesday (3/12) | Attacks on Utility | Alabama Sues to Stop Redistricting Delay, Debate over Census Privacy | |
| Problem Set 7 (due Fri 3/28) | pdf, tex | ||
| Monday (3/17) No Class - Spring Break | |||
| Wednesday (3/19) No Class - Spring Break | |||
| Monday (3/24) | Machine Learning with DP | pdf nb1 dpsgd nb2 opacus | |
| Wednesday (3/26) | Machine Learning with DP | Hands-On Differential Privacy, Ch. 9 (skipping section on PATE) |