Privacy
April 23
A persistent fear throughout all of the Internet’s operation is the Internet’s treatment of a person’s own privacy. We have a hard enough time defining the term, much less determining what role it should play in deciding the whos, whats, and hows of Internet governance. Nevertheless, the Internet’s present evolution indicates that unless we spend time contemplating the reinforcing privacy online it way succumb to the interests of profitability, online behavior regulation, cybersecurity, and law enforcement. Today’s class will set a framework for classifying privacy issues and explore how these issues play out in online spaces.
Readings
- Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis, Blown to Bits (Chapter 2) (focus on pages 36-42: “Why We Lost Our Privacy, Or Gave it All Away”)
- Lawrence Lessig, Code 2.0 (Chapter 7) (read “Solutions” through “Rules to
Enable Choice About Privacy”)
Optional Readings
- [http://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0610105v2.pdf Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov, Robust De-anonymization of Large
Datasets (How to Break Anonymity of the Netflix Prize Dataset) (Arxiv)]
- [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.html?_r=0 Noam Cohen, It’s Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not
Even Know It (New York Times)]