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CS Colloquium: Katrina Ligett
Thu, Jan 17, 2013 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Katrina Ligett, Caltech
Talk Title: CS Colloquium: Katrina Ligett
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: In this talk, we consider the problem of estimating a potentially
sensitive (individually stigmatizing) statistic on a population. In our model, individuals are concerned about their privacy, and
experience some cost as a function of their privacy loss.
Nevertheless, they would be willing to participate in the survey if they were compensated for their privacy cost. These cost functions are not publicly known, however, nor do we make Bayesian assumptions about their form or distribution. Individuals are rational and will misreport their costs for privacy if doing so is in their best interest. Ghosh and Roth recently showed in this setting, when costs for privacy loss may be correlated with private types, if individuals value differential privacy, no individually rational direct revelation mechanism can compute any non-trivial estimate of the population statistic. In this paper, we circumvent this impossibility result by proposing a modified notion of how individuals experience cost as a function of their privacy loss, and by giving a mechanism which does not operate by direct revelation. Instead, our mechanism has the ability to randomly approach individuals from a population and offer them a take-it-or-leave-it offer. This is intended to model the abilities of a surveyor who may stand on a street corner and approach passers-by.
Joint work with Aaron Roth.
Biography: Katrina Ligett has been an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Economics at the California Institute of Technology since 2011. Prior to joining Caltech, she was a postdoctoral scholar at Cornell University, and she received her PhD in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in 2009. Katrina's research interests are in algorithms, particularly online algorithms, algorithmic game theory, and data privacy. Her research has been supported by an AT&T Labs Graduate Research Fellowship, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a Computing Innovation Fellows Postdoctoral Fellowship, and an NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Host: Shaddin Dughmi
More Information: LIGETT_BUYINGPRIVACY.pdf
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
