Abstract: Behind a privacy intrusion there is often an economic trade-off. The reduction of the cost of storing and manipulating information has led organizations to capture increasing amounts of data about individual behavior. The hunger for customization and usability has led individuals to reveal more about themselves to other parties. New trade-offs have emerged in which privacy, economics, and technology are inextricably linked: individuals want to avoid the misuse of the information they pass along to others, but they also want to share enough information to achieve satisfactory interactions; organizations want to know more about the parties with which they interact, but they do not want to alienate them with policies deemed as intrusive.

Is there a combination of economic incentives and technological solutions to privacy issues that is acceptable for the individual and beneficial to society? Is there a sweet spot that satisfies the interests of all parties?

Biography: Alessandro Acquisti is an Assistant Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). His work investigates the social impact of IT, and in particular the interaction and interconnection of human and artificial agents in highly networked information economies. His current research focuses on the economics of computers and AI, the economics of privacy and information security, ecommerce, cryptography, agent-based simulations, and computational economics. His research in these areas has been disseminated through journals, books, and leading international conferences.

Prior to joining CMU Faculty, Alessandro Acquisti researched at the Xerox PARC labs in Palo Alto, CA, with Bernardo Huberman and the Internet Ecologies Group; at JP Morgan London, Emerging Markets Research, with Arnab Das; and for two years at RIACS, NASA Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, CA, with Maarten Sierhuis and Bill Clancey. At RIACS, he worked on agent-based simulations of human-robot interaction onboard the International Space Station.

In 2000 he co-founded PGuardian Technologies, Inc., a provider of Internet security and privacy services, for which he designed two currently pending patents.

More information may be found at: http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/