LFI Course Materials 4/Week four

Week 4: Privacy rights, ethics, and philosophy

• Real time lecture: August 13th 9 - 11 Pacific/12 - 2 Eastern on Zoom https://zoom.us/j/9129428892

Overview

This week we'll talk with Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Project at the Massachusetts ACLU, about the philosophical idea of privacy and our privacy rights. We'll discuss how marginalized people and political dissidents have historically experienced the loss of privacy, some of the privacy issues that have been raised in years since the Snowden revelations, how privacy is coming up both in responses to the pandemic and in demands to defund the police, and how the private sector works with the state to create new surveillance infrastructures that threaten all of our rights.

Readings

• Privacy for Whom (book review of two excellent books) https://thenewinquiry.com/privacy-for-whom/
• The ACLU’s resources on internet privacy (read through some of the subtopics, reports, blogs, and so on) https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/internet-privacy
• Coronavirus and escalating surveillance: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/technology/coronavirus-surveillance-tracking-privacy.html
• We saw NSO's Covid-19 software in action, and privacy experts are worried https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/epg9jm/nso-covid-19-surveillance-tech-software-tracking-infected-privacy-experts-worried
• Privacy experts say responsible coronavirus surveillance is possible: https://theintercept.com/2020/04/02/coronavirus-covid-19-surveillance-privacy/
• The expansion of mass surveillance to stop coronavirus should worry us all: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/18/mass-surveillance-coronavirus-technology-expansion
• Police surveilled George Floyd protests with the help of Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr https://theintercept.com/2020/07/09/twitter-dataminr-police-spy-surveillance-black-lives-matter-protests/
• The FBI used its most advanced spy plane to watch Black Lives Matter protests: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/fbi-surveillance-plane-black-lives-matter-dc
• US watched George Floyd protests in 15 cities using aerial surveillance: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/us/politics/george-floyd-protests-surveillance.html

Guest lecturer

Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Project at the ACLU of Massachusetts

Discussion

• How does the state work with the private sector to create surveillance norms and infrastructure?
• Do our privacy rights have any meaning in 2020?
• How might the pandemic create new surveillance infrastructures that can be misused later?

Tasks

• Lecture, readings, discussion forum
• Decide what form final projects will take