Lessons from Google’s Approach to Internet Security, Privacy and Encryption

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About this Event

26 Mar 2010 @ 12:45

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About the Speaker:

Dr. Alma Whitten joined Google in 2003 and is currently Head of Google’s Applied Security engineering team, and their engineering lead on privacy. Dr Whitten’s work at Google revolves primarily in the realm of security and protection of Google’s log data. Alma was awarded a PhD and an M.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Connecticut. Dr Whitten’s doctoral research focussed on creating a methodology for designing computer security that is manageable by ordinary computer users. As well as her presentation today, Dr Whitten has delivered several presentations in her capacity as Google privacy spokesperson. Topics of discussion have included: ‘Are IP addresses personal?’, and ‘HTTPS security for web applications’. Prior to today’s IIEA event, Dr Whitten recently delivered a privacy presentation at the first ever ‘Google Brussels Tech Talk’ for policy makers on January 28th of this year. The title of that presentation was ‘An engineer’s vision for Internet Privacy’.

About the Presentation:

Policy makers across the digital spectrum are increasingly beginning to discuss the concept of ‘privacy by design’. Privacy by design seeks to address the pertinent question of whether privacy represents an impediment to innovation in technology, or is innovation in technology the means for users to protect their privacy online? Dr. Whitten, in today’s presentation to the IIEA, discussed some of these issues.

Conscious of their important role as information custodian and data steward, Dr Whitten emphasised how Google has always sought to make user control of their privacy preferences a cornerstone of Google’s product development. Dr Whitten also outlined some of the key developments that have emerged from Google’s 2009 Privacy Initiatives Program. Developments cited by Alma included: Google’s Privacy Dashboard which offers a user-centralised view of data associated with their account; being able to control the ads users see with Google internet-based advertising; the Google Privacy Center; and also the Data Liberation Front. Central to the Data Liberation Front is a team of Google engineers whose goal is to make the user the full controller of any data they store in Google products.

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