Michael Zimmer is a privacy and data ethics scholar. He currently is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Marquette University and Director of the Center for Data, Ethics, and Society. Previously, he was on the faculty at the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and director of the Center for Information Policy Research."About the Director", Center for Information Policy Research Zimmer is on the advisory board of the Future of Privacy Forum,FPF Advisory Board and was on the executive committee of the Association of Internet Researchers from 2009-2016.New Executive Committee He was the Microsoft Resident Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School from 2007-2008.
Zimmer has criticized the research ethics of a Harvard-sponsored research project that harvested the Facebook profiles of an entire cohort of undergraduate students."Harvard Researchers Accused of Breaching Students' Privacy". Chronicle of Higher Education, July 10, 2011. He has appeared on the National Public Radio shows Science FridayOnline Privacy , May 21st, 2010 and Morning Edition.Groups Complain To FTC About Facebook Changes, January 4, 2010Biography Zimmer appeared in the "Is My Cellphone Spying On Me?" commentary accompanying the DVD release of Eagle Eye
On October 25, 2013, Zimmer announced "The Zuckerberg Files", a digital archive of all the public utterances of Facebook's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg."‘The Zuckerberg Files’: New Scholarly Archive Scrutinizes Facebook CEO". Chronicle of Higher Education, October 25, 2013."Privacy Advocate Creates “Zuckerberg Files” Archive". The Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2013. Zimmer published a critique of Zuckerberg in The Washington Post to commemorate Facebook's 10th anniversary."Mark Zuckerberg’s theory of privacy". The Washington Post, February 4, 2014. In 2021, Zimmer was named among experts advising Gizmodo regarding the release of The Facebook Papers
Selected publications Internet Research Ethics for the Social Age: New Challenges, Cases, and Contexts, Peter Lang, 2017
References
External links Personal homepage Marquette University profile “But the data is already public”: on the ethics of research in Facebook, Ethics and Information Technology, 2010 The Zuckerberg Files