What is CETA? ​
At Cornell Tech, we have built a first-of-its-kind clinic to help survivors navigate technology abuse: the Clinic to End Tech Abuse (CETA). CETA’s mission is to work with IPV survivors and service providers to discover how technology is used to facilitate harm and help survivors stay safe. Our frontline service provides personalized assistance to survivors referred to CETA by partner organizations, and our complementary research, education, and advocacy activities work in concert to help create a world in which technology empowers survivors.
Our Team
CETA’s work is powered by a lean team of professional staff who coordinate a diverse cohort of volunteer technologists. CETA volunteers donate their time and are trained by CETA to help survivors mitigate tech abuse. Volunteers include academic researchers and industry professionals with backgrounds in computer science, IT, law, social work, and more.
​
CETA’s leadership team consists of academic experts who run CETA alongside other full-time roles. CETA is led by co-founders and Cornell Tech professors Dr. Nicola Dell and Dr. Tom Ristenpart. Dr. Dell is an expert in community-engaged research and human-computer interaction (HCI). Dr. Ristenpart is a leading expert in computer security, privacy, and technology abuse. CETA’s Legislative & Policy Director is Dr. Thomas Kadri, assistant professor at the University of Georgia School of Law.
Why do we need CETA? ​
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive societal problem, affecting roughly a third of all women and a quarter of all men. Our research shows that technology plays a growing and damaging role in IPV: abusers break into victim devices and accounts, track and monitor victim location and activities, install spyware on victim devices, and post sensitive and harassing information online. Attacks are often complex and multi-faceted, with new threats constantly arising via emerging technologies (e.g., airtags, smarthomes). Unfortunately, the current status quo is that technology usually empowers abusers, not survivors.​​​​
CETA's History
CETA evolved out of award-winning research by Cornell Tech professors Nicola Dell and Thomas Ristenpart, particularly our investigations in partnership with the New York City (NYC) Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence (ENDGBV). Based on formative basic research into the nature of tech abuse in IPV, we went on to study how to perform a new kind of interventional approach that we called clinical computer security. In a field study in 2018, we showed how effective this can be in helping survivors with tech abuse. Based on this research, we launched CETA and have been operating it since.
​