David Sidi

I am a Visiting Assistant Professor working as a resident fellow at the Yale Information Society Project. (That's me on the left).

david sidi

UA NetID: dsidi
Email: For Arizona-related mail: my netid followed by '@arizona.edu'
For Yale-related mail remove every 'x' from the following: david.sidixxxx@yale.edu (GPG KEY)
Yale Page: Information Society Project
Projects Page: Privacy Working Group

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
-- Calvin Coolidge

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
-- Pudd'nhead Wilson (Following the Equator)

This semester I am actively working on projects related to digital public infrastructure for self-hosted services, beneficial bots, and anonymous communications systems designed for quantum networks.

I have previously advised student projects on automatic filtering of video content for the presence of minors (we presented on a development of this work at AAAI 2019, see below), and on the security properties of the Katzenpost mixnet.

I try to always have interesting opportunities to offer graduate and undergraduate students who want to work on privacy enhancing technologies. If you are interested, please contact me.

Invited talk at UMass Amherst Computer Science (May 2023).
Panel with critical infrastructure lab (Summer 2023) - Moderating a panel with Don Towsley, Norbert Lütkenhaus, and L. Jean Camp. (delayed)
Internet Governance in the Quantum Age (Q-IG) (video) (Nov 2022) - Panel participant on the broader security and privacy questions arising from quantum key distribution.
Presentation to NTIA (April 2023) - 'Quantum Networks in the Near Term.'
Hackers on Planet Earth 2022 (A New HOPE) (July 2022) - Solo talk on measurement botnets: "Botnets are the Best Way to Measure User-Hostile Behavior on the Internet" (Update: video now up---see link)
Symposium on the Law & Economics of Privacy & Data Security (June 2022) - Panel participant on measuring the effects of dark patterns.
Symposium on Statistical Challenges in Electronic Commerce Research (June 2022) - "Human + Machine: Combining a Botnet and Human Judgment for Easy, Repeatable Web Measurement Studies." (Update: Wonderful, thoughtful people involved, but required acceptance of a troubling privacy policy to participate meant I could not go).
CODE@MIT 2021 (Nov 2021) - Presenting a measurement botnet for empirical studies on the web, allowing a nice combination of automated and manual interaction not possible with other approaches.
Governance and Emerging Technologies 2021 (Oct 2021) - Presenting on some beneficial bots I've created, and on the evolving landscape more generally, including uses of bots that are beneficial to consumer privacy, to public interest research, for auditing web services at scale, for enabling new forms of speech, for managing personal data flows, for improving interoperability between platforms, and for reducing unwanted user tracking.
RightsCon 2021 (June 2021) - "Mixnets for Anonymous Communication on Quantum Networks: Near-Future Promise and Peril in Colombia" will be a strategy session at the upcoming RightsCon.
IEEE ISTAS 2020 (November 2020) - Presenting on the design of a post-quantum packet format for mix networks.
Center for Quantum Networks (Fall 2020- ) - Part of a team focused on connecting technical and social dimensions of quantum networks. My narrower focus is on privacy and anonymity.
CUES Spanning Boundaries Challenge (Fall 2020- Spring 2021) - Part of a team developing two campuswide events and three integrated courses relating privacy and socially-aware quantitative intuition. See the first event site (on distributing vaccine) here, and the second event site (on database privacy risk) here new.
Interview on privacy and the pandemic (Summer 2020) - Interviewed on COVID-19 and privacy for SBS news and the iBytes newsletter.
Privacy and Statistical Databases (PSD 2020) (September 2020) - Estimating plausible deniability with simulated attack on released data.
Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE 2020) (July 2020) - Hackers and the Arms Race for Privacy. (Update: Video now up)
Security and Human Behavior (SHB 2019) (June 2019)
AAAI 2019 Privacy-Enhancing Artificial Intelligence and Language Technologies (March 2019) - Poster: Secure Anonymous Reporting of Age Complaints in Video with Automated Verification
Security and Human Behavior (SHB 2018) (May 2018) - Presented on a notice infrastructure to combat automated shoulder surfing threats.
Third Annual Digital Information Policy Scholars Conference (April 2018) - Did not attend due to illness
Interviewed on blockchain technologies, the hope and the hype (February 2018)
Quick Talk for "Love your Data Week" on how good companies become honeypots. (Title: "Sinon's Reflections on Trusting Trust") (February 2018)
Moderated Data Privacy Day Panel Discussion (January 2018)
Talk at Research Roundtable at George Mason (December 2017)
Lightning talk at TPRC (September 2017)
Lightning talk at AMCIS (August 2017)
Demo at SOUPS (July 2017)
Quick Talk at the IT Summit on campus on Oct 18 2016

Quick talk on why privacy protections improve data quality.
Moderating discussion with Emma Llansó Oct. 27th 2016
Technical paper at AAAI 2016 (now on arXiv)
Here's my abstract from the 2014 meeting of the Joint Mathematics Meeting.