Lab 10: Privacy

The goal of this lab assignment to allow you to explore the issue of privacy as it relates to cloud computing and online advertising.

For this assignment, you are do some background research and exploration on the issue of privacy and then record a reflection in the form of an audio or video podcast in groups of 2 or 3 students. Submit this reflection by noon, Thursday, April 18.

Activity 1: Background

To help you develop a better understanding of the issue of privacy, you are to read some of the articles below:

Privacy

  1. Welcome to the Age of Privacy Nihilism

  2. The Convenience-Surveillance Tradeoff

  3. How Companies Learn Your Secrets

Cloud Computing

  1. Update: What Jennifer Lawrence can teach you about cloud security

  2. Amazon Workers Are Listening to What You Tell Alexa

  3. Does Google meet its users’ expectations around consumer privacy? This news industry research says no

Surveillance Capitalism

  1. What Is “Surveillance Capitalism?” And How Did It Hijack the Internet?

  2. Warning! Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’

  3. Surveillance Kills Freedom By Killing Experimentation

Note, if you come across other interesting articles, please feel free to share with the class via the Slack channel.

Activity 2: Exploration

After doing some reading, you are to use the following resources to do some exploration on your data and your web browser:

  1. 6 links that will show you what Google knows about you

  2. Facebook Showed Me My Data Is Everywhere And I Have Absolutely No Control Over It

  3. Your Social Media Fingerprint

  4. Panopticlick

  5. Apply Magic Sauce

The purpose of this exploration is for you to discover what cloud service providers know about you (or think they know about you).

For some explanation of these tools, you can refer to the Privacy Paradox podcast by Note To Self, where they discuss the issue of privacy in a cloud computing world.

Activity 3: Podcast

Finally, after doing some background research, and exploration, you are to discuss the following questions in groups of 2 or 3 students and record your reflections in an audio or video podcast:

  1. Explain why we are currently living in a Privacy Paradox. What exactly do people mean by surveillance capitalism and what does it have to do with cloud computing and online advertising?

  2. Describe the exploration you did and what you learned about privacy. What did you learn about yourself? What was surprising or interesting or possibly frightening?

  3. Finally, discuss the trade-offs between privacy and living in our connected world. Can there ever be a balance? Do you want one? Is privacy something worth fighting for or protecting? Or is it a relic of a by-gone era?

The podcast should be about 10 to 15 minutes long (about 5 minutes per group member).

Note, the discussion should be unscripted and done in a round-robin, panel style with back and forth discussion.

Feel free to upload your podcast to YouTube, SoundCloud, or simply Google Drive.

Submission

Once you have your podcast uploaded, please submit it using the following form:

Submit Lab Podcast