Security/privacy researcher. I’m currently a Postdoctoral Associate in computer science at Georgetown University where I work closely with Elissa Redmiles. I'm also a Fritz Fellow within Georgetown's Initiative for Technology and Society and a Massive Data Institute Fellow at the McCourt School of Public Policy. I completed my PhD in computer science with a focus on applied cryptography at Brown University where I was advised by Seny Kamara. I'm also part of the Safer Digital Intimacy research collective where we're working on a variety of research projects focused on addressing image-based sexual abuse. Feel free to send me an email (my signal username is also available upon request)---I'm always happy to connect and talk about research! google scholar | twitter | github
* Names listed alphabetically. Additional publications available here. Secure Account Recovery for a Privacy-Preserving Web Service Ryan Little, Lucy Qin, Mayank Varia USENIX Security 2024 Synq: Public Policy Analytics over Encrypted Data Zachary Espiritu, Marilyn George, Seny Kamara, Lucy Qin* IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy 2024 You Still See Me: Data Protection Supports the Architecture of ML Surveillance. Rui-Jie Yew, Lucy Qin, Suresh Venkatasubramanian NeurIPS Workshop on Regulatable ML 2023 AAAI/ACM Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society (AIES) 2024 (Best Student Paper Runner-Up) Attached to “The Algorithm”: Making Sense of Algorithmic Precarity on Instagram Yim Register, Lucy Qin, Amanda Baughan, Emma S. Spiro ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2023 A Decentralized and Encrypted National Gun Registry. [Conference Video, Seminar Video] Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz, Andrew Park, Lucy Qin* IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy 2021 From Usability to Secure Computing and Back Again. [Video, Slides] Lucy Qin, Andrei Lapets, Frederick Jansen, Peter Flockhart, Kinan Dak Albab, Ira Globus-Harris, Shannon Roberts, Mayank Varia. USENIX Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy (SOUPS) 2019 Callisto: A Cryptographic Approach to Detecting Serial Perpetrators of Sexual Misconduct. Anjana Rajan, Lucy Qin, David W. Archer, Dan Boneh, Tancrède Lepoint, Mayank Varia. ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS) 2018 Accessible Privacy-Preserving Web-Based Data Analysis for Assessing and Addressing Economic Inequalities Andrei Lapets, Frederick Jansen, Kinan Dak Albab, Rawane Issa, Lucy Qin, Mayank Varia, Azer Bestavros ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS) 2018
Toward Safer Intimate Futures: Recommendations for Tech Platforms to Reduce Image Based Sexual Abuse Lucy Qin, Vaughn Hamilton, Yigit Aydinalp, Marin Scarlett, Sharon Wang, Elissa M. Redmiles European Sex Workers Rights Alliance Report. 2023. Outside Looking In: Approaches to Content Moderation in End-to-End Encrypted Systems Seny Kamara, Mallory Knodel, Emma Llansó, Greg Nojeim, Lucy Qin*, Dhanaraj Thakur, Caitlin Vogus Center for Democracy and Technology Report. 2021.
I'm currently a member of a multi-stakeholder working group to address image-based sexual abuse. Since 2018, I've been a part of Callisto's cryptography advisory board was a contributor to the cryptographic design of their service, which has been deployed and is available to college students across the U.S. Alongside Alishah Chator and Leah Namisa Rosenbloom, I co-organize the Re-Imagining Cryptography and Privacy (ReCAP) Workshop. The workshop seeks to explore the ways in which cryptography and privacy intersect with society toward designing, creating, and sustaining technologies that explicitly benefit marginalized communities. Join our e-list if you'd like to get involved! The following are selected articles that discuss projects I have worked on, if you'd like to learn more! Wired Magazine, the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, NPR, the Boston Globe.