The publication CyLab from the Carnegie Mellon University Security and Privacy Institute reported on a $1.2 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant awarded to a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Fordham University, and Penn State University to develop a “privacy assistant” tool. Professor Joel Reidenberg at the Center of Law and Information Policy (CLIP) at Fordham University will act as one of the principal investigators on the project.
The goal is for the privacy assistant to not only automatically read the text of privacy policies, but to also be equipped with general knowledge of common data collection and use practices, legal knowledge, and information extracted from news feeds. When possible, the privacy assistant will also analyze code such as the code of a mobile app to get a deeper look into what that app is collecting about its users and what it does with the data.