Privacy Part 1: Corporate Data Gathering

April 1

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 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, our interests may fall to the interests of profitability, online behavior regulation, and cybersecurity.

Over the next two weeks we'll look at privacy, beginning with general concepts of privacy, how data is measured and gathered on the web, and some specific legal responses to privacy concerns. Next week we'll build on these concepts with an eye toward government surveillance and law enforcement.

Our own David O'Brien will be leading the class discussion this week.

Assignments

The deadline for Assignment 3 moved from March 25th to today, April 1st. Please upload your assignment prior to class today.

Readings

Conceptualizing privacy

• Daniel Solove, Understanding Privacy (Chapter 1) (skim)

Privacy and data

• Chris Anderson, The End of Theory

• Viktor Mayer-Shoenberger, The Rise of Big Data

• Bruce Schneier, Why Anonymous Data Sometimes Isn't

• Play around with some of the websites by Latanya Sweeney

• The Data Map

• About My Ride

• About My Info

Corporate data practices

• Jeremy Singer-Vine, How Dataium Watches You

• David Veldt, LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

• Jennifer Valentino-Devires, Jeremy Singer-Vine, Ashkan Soltani, Websites Vary Prices, Deals Based on Users' Information (if this appears behind a paywal, play around with the WSJ's interactive graphics)

Optional Readings

• Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (Chapter 9)

• Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis, Blown to Bits (Chapter 2) (read pages 36-42)

• Lawrence Lessig, Code 2.0 (Chapter 7) (focus on "Privacy in Public: Data")

• danah boyd, Why Parents Help Children Violate Facebook’s 13+ Rule

• Wikipedia, Privacy Laws of the United States

• Solveig Singleton, Privacy as Censorship

• Noam Cohen, It’s Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know It (New York Times)

• Bruce Schneier, Surveillance and the Internet of Things

Class Discussion

Please remember to sign your postings by adding four tildes (~~~~) to the end of your contribution. This will automatically add your username and the date/time of your post, like so: Andy 15:12, 7 November 2013 (EST)