CPSC610: Topics in Computer Science and Law

Time: Wed, 9:25 to 11:15 a.m.
Location: AKW 100
Instructor: Joan Feigenbaum
TF: Anat Lior
Assistant: Judi Paige (AKW 507A, Judi.Paige@yale.edu, 203-436-1267)

Course Description
CPSC 610 is a graduate seminar that focuses on socio-technical problems in computing, i.e., problems that cannot be solved through technological progress alone but rather require legal, political, or cultural progress as well. Examples include but are not limited to computer security, intellectual property protection, cyber crime, cyber war, surveillance, and online privacy. The course is addressed to graduate students in Computer Science who are interested in socio-technical issues but whose undergraduate work may not have addressed them; it is designed to bring these students rapidly to the point at which they can do research on socio-technical problems. Students present and discuss papers from the literature in class, do term projects (either papers or software artifacts), and present their projects at the end of the term.

Enrollment limit
In order to ensure that there is enough time for both midterm feedback on project proposals and in-class presentation of the finished projects, enrollment is limited to fifteen. If fewer than fifteen Computer Science graduate students enroll, Yale College undergraduates will be allowed to enroll with permission of the instructor.

Prerequisites
The basics of cryptography and computer security (as covered in CPSC 467), networks (as covered in CPSC 433), and databases (as covered in CPSC 437), or permission of the instructor.

Reading list for the Fall 2019 offering of CPSC 610

• Deven R. Desai and Joshua A. Kroll, Trust but Verify: A Guide to Algorithms and the Law.   Section II is mandatory reading; the rest of the article is recommended but optional.
• L. Elisa Celis and Nisheeth K. Vishnoi, Fair Personalization.
• Cynthia Dwork, Moritz Hardt, Toniann Pitassi, Omer Reingold, and Richard Zemel, Fairness Through Awareness.
• Solon Barocas and Andrew D. Selbst, Big Data's Disparate Impact
• Kate Klonick, The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Online Speech.   Sections I, III and IV are required reading; the rest of the article is optional.
• Chao Michael Zhang and Vern Paxson, Detecting and Analyzing Automated Activity on Twitter
• Eugene Volokh, Opinion: When 'there is serious reason to doubt' rumors and allegations, is it libelous to publish them?
• Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Surveillance Intermediaries
• Stefan Savage, Lawful Device Access without Mass Surveillance Risk: A Technical Design Discussion
• Joseph Bonneau, Andrew Miller, Jeremy Clark, Arvind Narayanan, Joshua A. Kroll, and Edward W. Felten, SoK: Research Perspectives and Challenges for Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies
• Sarah Jane Hughes and Stephen T. Middlebrook, Advancing a Framework for Regulating Cryptocurrency Payments Intermediaries.   Chapters I-IV are required; within Chapter III, you may skim Part III-B.
• Oona A. Hathaway, Rebecca Crootof, Philip Levitz, Haley Nix, Aileen Nowlan, William Perdue, and Julia Spiegel, The Law of Cyber-Attack.   Sections I and II are mandatory reading. Skim Chapter III. The rest of the article is recommended but optional.
• Ralph Langner, To Kill a Centrifuge
• Nolen Scaife, Christian Peeters, and Patrick Traynor, Fear the Reaper: Characterization and Fast Detection of Card Skimmers   Watch the video of this conference presentation. A PDF of the paper is also available on the webpage, but you are not required to read it.
• Joan Feigenbaum and Daniel J. Weitzner, On the Incommensurability of Laws and Technical Mechanisms: Or, What Cryptography Can't Do.
• Lawrence Lessig, Code version 2.0   Chapters 1, 2, 7 and 8.
• Jonathan Frankle, Sunoo Park, Daniel Shaar, Shafi Goldwasser, and Daniel J. Weitzner, Practical Accountability of Secret Processes.   Read the paper, which is available in PDF form on that page. A video of the conference presentation is also available on that page, but you are not required to watch it.

Final papers
Eight of the students in CPSC 610 this semester agreed to have their final papers posted on this site.

• Jacob Bendicksen, Bitcoin as Common-Pool Resource: Applying Ostrom's IAD Framework to Cryptocurrency
• Tylar Bloch, Section 230, Online Identity, and Linkable Pseudonymity
• Sean Hackett, You Only Live Once Online (YOLOO): Privacy-Preserving Solution to Block and Ban Evasion
• Andrea de Oliveira, Facebook Advertisements and United States Presidential Campaigns
• Varsha Raghavan, Developing Proper Liability Schemes to Address Artificial Intelligence in the United States
• Daniel Urke, Reclaiming Privacy: Protecting User Data in the Digital World
• Caitlin Westerfield, Mission Inexecutable: An Analysis of the Advancements and Regressions Made by Facebook's Libra in the Quest for the Development of a Global Currency
• Huahao Zhou, Facial Recognition Technology: its Benefits, Risks, and Potential Regulations