Bio

Latanya Sweeney is Chief Technologist for the Federal Trade Commission as of 2013. She is a Professor of Government and Technology in Residence at Harvard University, where she is Founder and Director of the Data Privacy Lab in the Institute of Qualitative Social Science (IQSS).

Prof. Sweeney is one of the world’s experts in analyzing and mitigating risks to privacy that arise from the collection of large volumes of private data, a common characteristic of virtually all contemporary information systems. She earned an ALB in Computer Science Cum Laude at Harvard University (1995), and both a SM in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (1997) and a PhD in Computer Science (2001) at MIT.

Prior to her two-year visit as an MLK Professor, Dr. Sweeney served as an Associate Professor of Computer Science, Technology and Policy in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Her host at MIT was Dr. Peter Szolovits in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Along with her research, Prof. Sweeney assisted Prof. Hal Abelson with his Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier course (6.805). She also worked on a manuscript for a forthcoming book titled Connecting Your Dots: What they will know from what you leave behind.

Publications

Books

Who Controls Your Data?. 
Sweeney, L. (This is not an edited volume.) 
Forthcoming book publication. 220 pages.Connecting Your Dots: What they know from what you leave behind. 
Sweeney, L. (This is not an edited volume.) 
Forthcoming book publication. 140 pages.

Computer Guide. 
Sweeney, L. and Barrett, S. 
Cambridge: CESS Publishing. 1983. (1425 pages) dataprivacylab.org/computerguide1983/index.html

Chapters in Books

Face De-identification. 
Gross, R., Sweeney, L., Cohn, J., de la Torre, F. and Baker, S. 
Protecting Privacy in Video Surveillance, A. Senior, editor. Springer, 2009. dataprivacylab.org/projects/facedeid/index.html.

Information Explosion. 
Sweeney, L. 
Confidentiality, Disclosure, and Data Access: Theory and Practical Applications for Statistical Agencies, L. Zayatz, P. Doyle, J. Theeuwes and J. Lane (eds), Urban Institute, Washington, DC, 2001.dataprivacylab.org/dataprivacy/projects/explosion/index.html.

Datafly: a system for providing anonymity in medical data. 
Sweeney, L. 
Database Security, XI: Status and Prospects, T. Lin and S. Qian (eds), Elsevier Science, Amsterdam, 1998. dataprivacylab.org/datafly/index.html

Video