Cybersecurity for Democracy researchers Dr. Damon McCoy and Dr. Laura Edelson recently served as part of a team of experts that assisted in publishing the Facebook Papers. Compiled and released by Gizmodo, the papers released by whistleblower Frances Haugen last November, are now accessible at https://gizmodo.com/facebook-papers-how-to-read-1848702919.

The independent advisory team was employed because Gizmodo recognized a real risk of privacy violation if the papers were published. The website recognized that revealing “certain methods by which Meta tackles sensitive issues” could be problematic. Therefore, they employed a team to facilitate “the responsible disclosure of the greatest number of documents in the public interest possible.” In addition to McCoy and Edelson, the team included representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union, Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and faculty from Marquette University and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

McCoy, who is an associate professor of computer science and engineering at NYU Tandon and Edelson, who just completed her Ph.D. at Tandon in April, have previously conducted research on political advertising on Facebook. Read more about the work of Cybersecurity for Democracy here.