What is Privacy Lab?

Privacy Lab is a meetup for privacy minded people to foster communication and collaboration. It was founded in January 2015.

The goal of these events is to bring together people who work in the privacy space from different perspectives - people who may not regularly talk to each other - policy people, techies, activists, and academics at big companies, startups, universities, libraries, NGO's, foundations, civil society and more - that's one of the benefits of attending. You'll have an hour on the topic of the evening followed by an hour to talk to each other.

If you enjoy talking privacy - so much so that it's related to what you do for a living or how you volunteer your time - this is the event for you.

By attending, you'll be able to hear about what other people and organizations are working on, share what you're doing and look for new opportunities to collaborate and get involved.

Privacy Lab is all volunteer and zero budget. It rotates to different host locations with different topics and speakers. Our events are at night (usually 6-8pm), approximately monthly. Volunteer host locations are typically a mix of corporate, NGOs and local universities.

Next Privacy Lab

• Feb 19 from 5:30-8pm at Twitter HQ. A Public Conversation on #Privacy. RSVP at Evenbrite.

Future Privacy Lab(s)

• We've started planning for a privacy on community sites panel at Wikimedia - stay tuned for details!
• We're volunteer based - help us plan an upcoming Privacy Lab.

Courtesy Listings

• Platforms and Personal Risk: Protecting our Identities and Personal Assets from Stalkers, Trolls and Hackers at the WITI Reimagining Cybersecurity For All Symposium on March 6.

Format

Meetings are held monthly throughout the year. Locations rotate and new hosts are always welcome. Hosts are typically companies, NGOs and universities with space for 50-100 people and an interest in privacy topics. Larger venues typically include a guest speaker or several lightning talks, whereas smaller venues may focus on small group discussions. Topics are selected in advance and speakers are often recorded for remote and future viewing.

Typically, the first hour is devoted to speaker(s) and Q&A, while the second hour is an open format designed around informal networking and small group discussions.

Location

Privacy Lab is currently in San Francisco, California. It rotates around to several locations based on volunteers who offer to host. With more volunteers, we would love to expand to new geographies. At some locations, we are able to record the speaker for future viewing. Check Air Mozilla for previous recordings. All of the Privacy Labs that were recorded on Air Mozilla are in the Privacy Channel: https://air.mozilla.org/channels/privacy/

See below for Privacy Lab's global locations and let us know if you'd like to help start a new one.

How to Attend Privacy Lab

To attend, search for Privacy Lab in San Francisco, CA on Eventbrite and click the registration link. You can also click the link from our email invitations if you join our mailing list. Note that by registering via Eventbrite, you will be added to our distribution list, so we can send you an email reminder. You can unsubscribe at any time.

We hope to see you attend and become part of the growing community of privacy advocates in San Francisco. If you can't attend this time, we hope that you'll be able to make it to one of the future events.

Volunteer

Privacy Lab is community driven. Would you like to organize the next Privacy Lab? Do you have 20 minutes to an hour per month to help? See our "bite size" volunteer opportunities page for ideas on how you can get involved.

To organize an entire Privacy Lab, see the Process documentation and Quick Reference Organizer Checklist.

• Our volunteer organizers are: Stacy Martin, Noah Swartz, Kai Weingarten, Martin Shelton, Melanie Ensign, Alina Hua, and Brent Tuttle. Join us!
• Venue Hosts have included: EFF, DG717, GitHub, ICSI, Mozilla, StubHub, HackerOne, LinkedIn, Fenwick & West, UCB, SCU, UC Hastings and many more. Contact us if you have a space and you'd like to host a Privacy Lab!
• Our first Guest Privacy Lab Host: Vivienne Pustell (July 2016). Here's the guest host script.

Alliances

As an applicant for membership in the Electronic Frontier Alliance, we support digital freedom: free expression, security, privacy, creativity and access to knowledge.

Are the events recorded/livestreamed?

Events are currently livestreamed when the host organization has that capability or when one of our amazing volunteers is available to record/livestream with their own equipment. If you'd like to volunteer to help with livestreaming/recording, please contact us.

Mailing List

Please join our mailing list so you can mark your calendar early for our next event. https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/privacy-events

Logo

Link to Privacy Lab logo.

2020 Meeting Archive

• Jan 30 5:30-7:30pm at Uber HQ:Fireside chat with Ruby Zefo, Uber's Chief Privacy Officer.

2019 Meeting Archive

• Jan 23 - 6-8pm at UC Hastings - Data Privacy Compliance Under the Law - Panel Discussion
• Feb 27 - 6-8pm, at Google SF office - Advanced Tracking Techniques with Bill Budington from EFF
• Apr 24 - 6-8pm at Slack - Privacy and Location Data with Naomi Shiffman
• May 30, 6-8pm at the Blum Center (Room B100) at UC Berkeley, Privacy Authors Panel Link to recording.
• Aug 13, 6-8pm at Uber, Stakeholder Feedback for the NIST Privacy Framework. Session was recorded.
• Nov 13, 9-10:30am at Goodwin Law Offices in San Francisco, CCPA Panel.
• Dec 20, 10:30am-11:45am, CCPA panel at Santa Clara University.

2018 Meeting Archive

• January 24 - 6-8pm at GitHub in San Francisco - Student Privacy Panel.
• February 27 - Employee/Applicant Data: The Interplay of Privacy and Diversity Efforts, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA
• March 20, 6-8pm at Fenwick & West, San Francisco - Privacy in M&A. Recorded.
• April 24, 4-6pm at LinkedIn, San Francisco - Building a Privacy Culture
• May 22, 6-8pm at HackerOne in San Francisco - Privacy for Safety
• June 27, 6-8pm at TrustArc, San Franicsco - Social Engineering Workshop
• July 31, 6-8pm at Uber (555 Market Street, San Francisco, CA). Privacy by Design panel
• August 29, 6-8pm, EFF at 815 Eddy Street, San Francisco, Decentralized Self-Sovereign Identity
• Sept 27, 6-8pm, DLA Piper Offices, San Francisco, The Interplay Between Privacy and D&I Efforts
• Oct - no meeting for IAPP PSR attendance in Austin
• Nov - Tues, Nov 13, 6-8pm at ICSI in Berkeley, Kids Mobile App Privacy with Serge Engelman
• Dec - Thurs, December 13, 2018 6-8pm, Energy Data Privacy: How Climate Changes Everything, with Daniel Roesler.

2017 Meeting Archive

• December 12 (Tuesday), 6-8pm at Uber, 555 Market St., San Francisco. Marcel van der Heijden - Pseudonymization vs Anonymization: What’s the difference and why does it matter?. Recording will be on AirMozilla.
• November 13, 6-8pm at Lyft, 185 Berry St., San Francisco. Jay Freeman from Saurik will talk about Orchid. Recording will be on AirMozilla.
• October 24, 6-8pm at Cloudflare, San Francisco. Denise Schoeneich - GDPR is Coming: Is Your Organization PbD Ready?.
• Sept 28, 6-8pm at EFF, 815 Eddy Street, San Francisco, CA, Uber's Differential Privacy Tool. White paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.09479
• August 23, 6-8pm at Sheppard Mullin Law Firm, 4 Embarcadero Ctr Ste 1700, San Francisco, CA 94111, Distributed Data Sharing and Privacy with Karissa McKelvey from Code for Science and Society.
• July 2017 - California State Privacy Legislation with Joanne McNabb and Jeremy Gullila July 20th at EFF (not recorded).
• June 2017- Selling Your Attention: The Web and Advertising - Air Mozilla (livestreamed/recorded from Mozilla in Toronto).
• May 2017 - Privacy on the Blockchain with Zcash, Tuesday, May 23, 5:30-7:30pm, Mozilla SF Office.
• April 2017 - Artificial Intelligence and Privacy, April 27, 6-8pm, at Bonsai in Berkeley. Speaker Peter Eckersley.
• March 2017 - Pocketblock with Justin Troutman, March 22, 5:30-7:30pm at EFF
• February 2017 - Cyber Futures: What Will Cybersecurity Look Like in 2020 and Beyond?, Feb 21, 5:30-7:30pm at UC Berkeley with speakers from the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity.
• January 2017 - Mozilla SF Office - Ask the EFF - Privacy State of the Union for 2017

2016 Meeting Archive

• November 14, 2016, 6-8pm, Santa Clara University, the Williman room in the Benson (student center) building. Privacy Around the World will feature a number of speakers with expertise in a variety of countries and regions. Livestream and recording on Air Mozilla and Passcode.
  • October 20 2016 at StubHub. Topic will be Cyber Security. Air Mozilla link Passcode link
• September 21 2016 at UC Hastings. Topic will be EU Privacy - GDPR, Privacy Shield, Brexit, ePrivacy and More. Passcode livestream. Air Mozilla link.
• August 30, 2016 at ICSI in Berkeley. Topic is 'Tools to Teach Privacy' Speakers will include Erin Berman and her web team from the San Jose Public Library's Knight Foundation funded Virtual Privacy Lab project, Dr. Gerald Friedland and Julia Bernd from ICSI's Teaching Privacy Project. Air Mozilla link. Passcode livestream link.
• July 27, 2016, Student Privacy with three speakers. 6pm-8pm PT at GitHub. Passcode Livestream, Air Mozilla recording.
• June 21, 2016, 6pm-8pm PT at ICSI Berkeley. The topic is mobile privacy, including two university projects - ICSI Haystack and ReCon. Livestreamed for remote attendees is here. Note that Livestream is about 45 minutes, starting about 6:15pm PT. It covers just the speakers and Q&A.
• May 24, 2016, 5:30-7:30pm at Mozilla. The topic is knowledge-sharing around community practices for privacy. Because of the content, the format will be a participatory workshop - a departure from our usual format.
• April 27, 2016, 6-8pm, DG717 Coworking Space and Incubation Space - 717 Market Street #100, San Francisco, CA 94103. Encryption vs. the FBI: Riana Pfefferkorn, Cryptography Fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, talks about the current legal battle over encryption. Air Mozilla recording is here.
• March 24, 2016, 6-8pm @ Github, 88 Colin P Kelly Jr St San Francisco, CA. We will gather an impressive lineup of experts for a round of ignite-style, lightning talks on Privacy and the Internet of Things. Speakers include: Craig Spiezle, Matt Cagle, and Alan Karp. The speakers will be recorded by both GitHub and Air Mozilla.
• February 22, 2016, 5:30-7:30pm @ EFF, 815 Eddy Street San Francisco, CA 94109. Speaker is Dave Huseby from Mozilla. Topic is Privacy From Web Tracking: A guide to how to anonymize user actions on the web. Dave will talk about his work integrating privacy protecting features from the Tor Browser into Mozilla's Firefox as well as ways in which we can shape the web to protect user's anonymity. Recorded version is available here.
• January 28, 2016, 6-8pm @ Mozilla, 2 Harrison Street San Francisco, CA. Eight ignite-style lightning talks on the topic of Privacy for Startups. Recording is here.

2015 Meeting Archive

• January 2015 Guest speaker, Cooper Quintin from EFF presented "A State of the Union for Privacy and Consumer Protection and Wishlist for 2015" The event was held at Mozilla's San Francisco office.
• February 2015 This event focused on people and organizations who do active development on privacy tools and platforms. It was held at the SF Nonprofit Tech Center.
• March 2015 @rippleLabs
• April 2015 @ Mozilla San Francisco - Guest speaker Melanie Ensign - How Security/Crypto Experts Can Communicate to Non-Technical Audiences
  • May 2015 @ UCB May 26th 5:30-7:30 lightning talks
• June 30, 2015 2:30-3:30pm @ Library Freedom Project Digital Rights Unconference, Noisebridge Hackerspace, San Francisco, CA
• July 21, 2015 2015 4-6pm @ Mozilla. Topic is Backdoors and Crypto Wars with guest speakers from Mozilla, CDT and EFF. Also available on Air Mozilla.
• August 27, 2015 4-6pm @ Thoughtworks, 814 Mission St, 5th Floor, San Francisco, 94103
• Monday, Sept 21, 2015 6pm @ EFF, 815 Eddy Street, San Francisco. Combined with TA3M, with Guest Speaker Liz Henry.
• Oct 27, 2015, 5-7pm @ Mozilla, 2 Harrison Street, San Francisco. Guest Speaker, Violet Blue, author of "The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy" Air Mozilla link
• November 19, 2015, 5-7pm @ Mozilla, 2 Harrison Street, San Francisco. Mozilla and Disconnect will provide an overview of and invite feedback on Firefox's newly launched Tracking Protection feature.
• December 17, 2015 6pm @ EFF, 815 Eddy Street, San Francisco. Speaker April King (Mozilla) and the EFF will be discussing Let's Encrypt, the free and open certificate authority.
• December 17, 2015, 6-8pm @ EFF, 815 Eddy Street San Francisco, CA 94109. Speaker April King (Mozilla) and the EFF will be discussing Let's Encrypt, the free and open certificate authority.

Contact

Have questions about Privacy Lab - Privacy Tech Meet-Up? Contact Noah Swartz, Stacy Martin, or Kai Weingarten.

Code of Conduct

These Privacy Lab events are dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of event participants in any form. Event participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the event at the discretion of the conference organizers.

Harassment includes verbal comments that reinforce social structures of domination related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religion, deliberate intimidation, stalking, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention. Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from the event. If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact a member of event staff immediately.

Event staff will be happy to help participants contact venue security or local law enforcement, provide escorts, or otherwise assist those experiencing harassment to feel safe for the duration of the event. We value your attendance.

We expect participants to follow these rules at all conference venues and conference-related social events.

In the event of a breach of these rules or if you have any questions, concerns, or requests please contact Noah Swartz (swartzcr at gmail dot com)