Privacy: Theory and Practice

A. Practical Aspects of Privacy

1. What kind of personal information needs protection?

2. Who has control over your personal information? What are the consequences?

3. What kind of personal info that was not readily available before is now made available or created by new technologies?

4. Can you remove info about yourself from Google?
http://www.google.com/webmasters/remove.html

5. We often sacrifice privacy in exchange of ________ (list 3 different answers).

6. Privacy Literacy Exercise: Have you tried any of these to protect your privacy?
http://www.privacyjournal.net/bio.htm

7. Is Big Brother in your shopping cart? RFID controversy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID
http://www.spychips.com/rfid_overview.html

8. Will Google become our Big Brother?
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/googles-photo-face-recognition-is-wow-marketing/?ref=technology#comment-31428

B. Theoretical Aspects of Privacy:

1. Why do we need privacy? Is privacy a human right?

2. A tale of two cities -- both full of surveillance cameras.

http://www.earthcam.com/
http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html

City No. 1: All the cameras report the urban scenes to Police Central.

City No. 2: Every citizen can call up images from any camera in town.

Which is better? Why?

C. Web cam as self expression
1996 JenniCam
http://web.archive.org/web/19980514225633/jennicam.org/gallery/index8.html

A free class offered by our library

Do you want to attend this library class on Wednesday?

Work Smarter: New Research Tools on the Web
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/services/instruction/classes/

The SPAM war

NBC Dateline show on Spammers:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17713446/

What is Spam?

What is phishing?

How serious is the problem? (Consider the Moore's law.)

What would be the consequences if we don't stop Spam?

What is the economic model behind Spam? (If it costs $200 to send 1 million messages, how many responses does the spammer need to break even?)

What is the technological principle behind Spam? How do they get our email addresses?

As a user, how should we respond to Spam?

What solutions exist?

1. Technologically: Filtering software at individual, corporate network, and ISP levels. Would this work? What are the problems associated with this solution?

Consider the positive correlation between filteration rate vs. false-positive rate

Example: Brightmail's database approach (70% vs. .0001%); Spam Assassin and Spam Killer (95% vs. 1%); SpamNet (user voting); Bayesian filter, which learns over time (99.8% vs. .05%).

Black lists vs. white lists

2. Economically: Changing the way email works, by imposing postage to email messages (real cost or computational cost) and making email traceable.
Would this work? What are the problems associated with such solutions?

3. Legally: U.S. CAN-SPAM law (effective Jan. 2004). Would it work? Why or why not? (details of the law on wiki)

Questions to think about:

1. Today's email system was designed 20 years ago for a small number of people who know each other. Unintended consequences of technology!

2. 90% of Spam is sent by fewer than 200 people. Extremely high external cost.

3. Can you solve a social problem by technology alone, law, or what else?

Music or e-book: What's a fair price?

99 cents or $9.99?

Kindle Readers Ignite Protest Over E-Book Prices:
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/04/kindle-readers.html

A lot of power, no point?

For all the reasons stated in the reading, there would be NO Powerpoint in today's class!

1. Technically

How much do you know about using Powerpoint -- how to use it effectively?

Find out more about Powerpoint at Microsoft Office site:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/FX100648971033.aspx?CTT=96&Origin=CL100626991033

B key? Rules of Seven?

2. Socially

According to Parker, 30 million PPT presentations are made each day in all kinds of occasions.

What are the pros and cons about Powerpoint -- what are the social implications?

Alienating your audience?

What is "triple delivery"? What's your view?

What's the difference between discussion and presentation?

PPT "lifts the floor" vs. "lowers the ceiling" of public speaking?

Outcome vs. Process

Look back at the pre-PPT era? What has changed?

AutoContent wizard?

Design issues.

From: The congnitive style of PPT http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint

"Alas, slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis. What is the problem with PowerPoint? And how can we improve our presentations?" (Tufte).

Think about these next time when you need to use Powerpoint.

3. Other technologies

How about Word?

How much do you know about technologies that you use every day? How much reflection? Technically, and socially. Don't take everything for granted!

4. Powerpoint + YouTube?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/04/introducing-slideshare-power-point-youtube/

http://www.slideshare.net/

A great place to find a PPT example
a) with appropriate design (define it)
b) that communicates effectively
c) that is used in interesting, non-business, non-academic ways
d) that you may want to share with your friends

http://www.slideshare.net/leebryant/the-twentieth-century-was-wrong (author's account)

http://www.slideshare.net/ictguy/introduction-to-blogging (jokes of the day)

Obama Speech on Education

Cellphone pricing comparison

We talked about how pricing affects cellphone-related behavior greatly. Here is a NYT article on traditional vs. pre-paid plans:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/technology/21prepaid.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=cell%20phone%20pre-paid&st=cse

"Low-Tech Fixes for High-Tech Problems" in NYT

A follow-up reading for "when technology fails," in NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/technology/personaltech/19basics.html?pagewanted=1&8dpc&_r=1

Information-processing in the digital age

1. In the following typology, where are the authors, and where are you?

	Critical	Not Critical
Tech-savvy
Not Tech-savvy

2. Regarding disallowing students to use Google, why not ask them to use both (online and offline sources)?

3. Regarding whether Google is making us stupid, a recent article How Google is making us smarter provides the counter-argument:

The ominous warnings feed on a popular misconception of how the mind works. We tend to think of the mind as separated from the world; we imagine information trickling into our senses and reaching our isolated minds, which then turn that information into a detailed picture of reality. The Internet and iPhones seem to be crashing the gate of the mind, taking over its natural work and leaving it to wither away to a mental stump. As plausible as this picture may seem, it does a bad job of explaining a lot of recent scientific research. In fact, the mind appears to be adapted for reaching out from our heads and making the world, including our machines, an extension of itself.

But this author also made lots of assumptions about how our mind works. Let's move toward a more techie direction by asking the following questions about these tools:

1. I suppose you use Google, Wikipedia, or dictionary.com a lot. But what's the easiest way to access these search engines/services?

2. What are the most effective search strategies?



3. How much do you know about these sources of information when they literally shape your worldview?

The latest version of a Google bomb story in NYTimes.com

4. Are you in control?


Then comes the question about reading. The NYT article "R U Really Reading" raised some more questions. But which ones do you think are really important?

1. Kids don't read as much in print any more.

2. The Internet is not an effective learning tool.

“Learning is not to be found on a printout,” David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, said in a commencement address at Boston College in May. “It’s not on call at the touch of the finger. Learning is acquired mainly from books, and most readily from great books.”

3. What is reading after all?

Some literacy experts say that reading itself should be redefined. Interpreting videos or pictures, they say, may be as important a skill as analyzing a novel or a poem.

4. How about this:

Some simply argue that reading on the Internet is not something that needs to be tested — or taught.

“Nobody has taught a single kid to text message,” said Carol Jago of the National Council of Teachers of English and a member of the testing guidelines committee. “Kids are smart. When they want to do something, schools don’t have to get involved.”

5. I like this one:

“I think they need it all.”

Let's blog! - Guidelines for Online Assignments

Online assignments account for 30% of your grade in this class. Here are the guidelines:

1. Respond to readings BEFORE class:
Starting today, you are expected to post response to assigned readings at least once a week (the more the better). Please label your posts using both "readings" and "your screen name."

Please respond to assigned readings by posting a message on this blog by 5 pm, the day before class. The purpose is to make sure you read the readings as well as to provoke analytical/critical/creative thinking on issues to be discussed in class.

You should first read through the assigned readings. Then provide your own thoughts about the reading(s), share examples relevant to the topic -- if you find an online example, that's great, please include the link in your posting. If the reading is from the textbook, you may use the questions in the beginning of each article to organize your thoughts.

Although your insight will receive the most attention, the quality of writing and the way you present it online also are important. It doesn't have to be long, and feel free to come up with an interesting title for your post.

2. Share Information Technology News:
Once every two weeks, please provide a link to a news story on information technology published during the past 7 days. Explain briefly why you think this story is of significance. Due: The first Monday of Week 3, 5, 7, 9, etc. Please label your posts "news" and "your screen name."

3. Other exercises:
From time to time, the instructor may call for items relevant to the topic being covered during the semester.