A copy of her thesis is available upon request. Please email ngotsis@cs.princeton if you would like a copy of the thesis.

Everyone is invited to attend her talk. 

Abstract follows below:

Surveillance is a tactic of societal control: Observation of people’s behavior allows

the observer to manipulate and steer people’s future behavior in a way that serves

the observer’s interests. With new technologies come new, easier ways of surveilling

people. This dissertation concerns itself with Internet technologies in particular and

presents how Internet measurement can be used to prevent and detect Internet surveillance.

"Internet surveillance" is the observation of people’s online activities. "Internet

measurement" comprises technical means of measuring interesting characteristics of

the Internet (e.g. packet round-trip time, protocol usage, etc.) in order to gain better

understanding of the Internet and improve its performance, security, etc. So in other

words, this dissertation presents how various Internet measurement techniques can

be used for preventing and detecting the observation of people’s online activities.

In order to achieve the goal of preventing surveillance, we use Internet measurement techniques to strengthen the Tor anonymity network (a system that seeks to

thwart Internet surveillance and censorship) by exposing vulnerabilities and suggesting possible solutions. In order to achieve the goal of detecting surveillance, we develop a proof of concept system that uses Internet measurement techniques to catch

surveillants.