Syllabus for Roster(s):

  • 15F MDST 4101-001 (CGAS)
In the UVaCollab course site:   15F MDST 4101 Privacy and Surveillance

Full Syllabus

MDST 4101

Privacy and Surveillance

Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan

sivav@virginia.edu

Office: 209 Wilson Hall

Office hours: Mondays, 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. 

Can we preserve dignity and privacy in the age of Facebook, Uber, and global terrorism? This seminar will consider the history and current applications of technologies and cultures of surveillance. How and why did we get to the point where almost all of our activities leave a trace? What is our level of tolerance of mass surveillance? Are we willing to let the state into our bedrooms? Are we more comfortable letting our stores and shopping services understand us? What sorts of laws and policies do we need to protect our sense of personal integrity? And is privacy worth anything these days anyway? This course will allow students to survey a broad range of approaches and issues. We will read the latest work as well as some classic contributions to the field. 

GENERAL COURSE OBJECTIVES:

This course will present you with one or more disciplined, analytical approaches to understanding the reciprocal relationship between technology and society.  It will also help you:
        1) understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and social context,
        2) recognize and analyze the role that science and engineering play in contemporary issues 
        3) deepen knowledge of social and historical context to put contemporary issues in perspective, 
        4) appreciate differing perspectives and integrate your views with those of others, and
        5) sharpen your reading, writing, speaking, and discussion skills.
By the end of the course, you should be able to analyze in depth particular examples of the interpenetration and mutual influence of technology and society. This analytical ability provides the foundation necessary for understanding the social and ethical contexts of engineering and technology—understanding crucial to STS 401-402 and to each student’s thesis project.  

Specifically, this course will guide your through the debates about the ethical, legal, technological, and commercial ramifications of the collection and distribution of personally identifying information and other similar features of human daily life.

SPECIFIC COURSE OBJECTIVES:

Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:

• Recognize surveillance in its myriad forms in your daily life.

• Define privacy.

• Engage with current policy debates about privacy and surveillance in both public and private sectors.

• Explain how the history of cinema has explored and explained both privacy and surveillance. 

• Conduct research into an issue related to privacy and surveillance.

Assignments:

• Students will compose a surveillance diary, taking account of the ways and number of times their actions were tracked and recorded by other parties (commercial, government, or personal) over the course of one week. Students will post this diary on their electronic portfolio sites. 

• Students will produce a group presentation about one of the films we will watch for the course. This presentation might include the background to the film’s production and an account of its critical or popular receptions. The presentation must focus on how the film reveals or renders issues of privacy and technology for public consumption and understanding. This presentation should be composed using PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi, Google Docs, or some other presentation software that allows for the embedding of video clips. Students should post their presentations or a video of their presentations on their electronic portfolios.

• In addition, each week for ten class sessions students will come prepared with a 200-word summary of the readings for that week. Summaries should consider the background and context as well as the content of the reading. What was the author trying to accomplish with the work? What is she arguing for? What is she arguing against? What theoretical, legal, or political traditions does she represent? What methodological tools does she employ? What historical sources informed the work? What questions did she fail to consider or answer adequately? Students must post these reading reactions on their electronic portfolio sites before class begins and must be prepared to explain them during class.

• Students will research and compose a scholarly paper that will take a position on and explore the issues relating to some significant phenomenon or debate about privacy and/or surveillance. This paper should have no fewer than 4000 words (about 16 pages at double-spacing, including references) and no more than 5,500 words (about 22 pages)and should be done in either MLA or Chicago style. Students will both post the paper on their electronic portfolios by the due date and submit a paper copy to me. Students who are not interested in earning an A or B in the course my substitute a book review for this research paper.

• Students may revise the paper significantly after meeting with me and discussion ways to improve it. 

• If students wish to raise their grade by a half-step (a B to a B+, for instance), they may form a group of four students and divide up duties to produce an optional five-to-ten-minute digital video about some issue concerning privacy and surveillance. The video should be carefully edited, should have a title, include credits, and should not violate the privacy or dignity of anyone featured in it. Consult with me by the end of September if you wish to create such a video. Labor and duties should be divided equally and should include a person in charge of camera work, another in charge of editing, another in charge of lighting and sound, and another in charge of the overall production (scheduling, assignments, communicating with me, etc.).
 

Course Requirements and Grading:
 
This course uses an unusual grading system. It's based on "contract grading" or "specifications grading" models that have been used with great success at other universities. A student can decide how many of the course objectives she wishes to master, and thus how many assignments she wishes to complete successfully.
 
Each assignment will be graded on a pass/fail basis. A "pass" will signify that the assignment conforms to the guidelines given and that the student demonstrates that she has completed and understands the assigned readings, the content of classroom discussion, and the relationships among the ideas expressed in both.

To earn a D in the course a student must:

• Complete and post a surveillance diary.

• Complete and post all of the weekly reading reactions.

• Participate fully in the group project.

To earn a C in the course a student must:

• Do everything that would earn a student a D.

• Review a current book (in from 2,000 to 3,000 words) about privacy or surveillance in lieu of (and by the due date of) a final research paper. 

To earn a B in the course a student must:

• Do everything that would earn a student a D.

• Submit a final research paper by the due date.

To earn an A in the course a student must:

• Do everything that would earn a student a B.

• Meet with me to discuss and then significantly revise the final research paper.

To add a + to a final grade a student should form a group with three other students and produce the optional video.

 

 

Writing Assignment Standards: To complete or pass a writing assignment, the document must be posted on your electronic portfolio page by the due date. I will only grant extensions in exceptional circumstances. In general, failure to post the assignment by the due date shall be considered an expression of a decision to accept a lower course grade, according to the standards outlined above. The essay must conform to the precise specifications outlined in the question prompt I will distribute. Word count parameters must be obeyed. Spelling, grammar, and usage must be reasonably good. The essay must be well organized, with a thesis statement, an element of evidence in each paragraph, appropriate citations to work that yielded the evidence (Chicago style with footnotes or endnotes or MLA style with a "works cited" list at the end of the document), and a clear conclusion. 

 

HONOR POLICY:

I trust every student in this course to fully comply with all of the provisions of the UVA honor system. In addition to pledging that you have neither received nor given aid while producing written work for this course, your signature also affirms that you have not plagiarized from other sources and have granted appropriate credit. Your signature also indicates that you have represented your own words as your own and others’ as others’. All alleged honor violations brought to my attention will be forwarded to the Honor Committee. If, in my judgment, it is beyond a reasonable doubt that a student has committed an honor violation with regard to a given exam, that student will receive an immediate grade of 'F' for that exam, irrespective of any subsequent action taken by the Honor Committee.


COURSE MATERIALS:

Films (on reserve in Robertson Media Center):

• Antonioni, Michelangelo, Carlo Ponti, Tonino Guerra, Vanessa Redgrave, David Hemmings, Sarah Miles, Carlo Di Palma, Assheton Gorton, Herbie Hancock, Jocelyn Rickards, Peter Brunette, Turner Entertainment Co., Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer., and Warner Home Video (Firm). Blow-Up. Burbank, CA: Distributed by Warner Home Video,, 2004. videorecording.

• Coppola, Francis Ford, Gene Hackman, Directors Company., and Paramount Pictures. The Conversation. Hollywood, Calif.: Paramount Pictures,, 2000. videorecording.

Henckel von Donnersmarck, Florian, Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, Sony Pictures Classics (Firm), Buena Vista International Film Productions., Bayerischer Rundfunk Arte., and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (Firm). Das Leben Der Anderen the Lives of Others. Culver City, Calif.: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment,, 2007. videorecording.

• Scott, Tony, Will Smith, Gene Hackman, and Regina King. Enemy of the State. [s.n.]: Touchstone Home Video,, 1999. videorecording.

• Spielberg, Steven, Janusz Kaminski, Michael Kahn, John Williams, Deborah l Scott, Gerald R. Molen, Bonnie Curtis, Walter F. Parkes, Jan de Bont, Scott Frank, Jon Cohen, Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Max von Sydow, Lois Smith, Peter Stormare, Tim Blake Nelson, Steve Harris, Kathryn Morris, Alex McDowell, Philip K. Dick, Dreamworks Pictures., Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation., Blue Tulip (Firm), DreamWorks Home Entertainment (Firm), and Deborah L. Scott. Minority Report. [Ca.]: DreamWorks Home Entertainment : Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.,, 2002. videorecording.

Books:

Fidler, David P, and Sumit Ganguly. The Snowden Reader. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2015.


Goldfarb, Ronald L. After Snowden: Privacy, Secrecy, and Security in the Information Age. St. Martin’s Press, 2015.


Howard, Philip N. Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us up. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=972459.


Nissenbaum, Helen Fay. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Stanford, Calif. : Stanford Law Books, 2010. http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/u5097307.


Ronson, Jon. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, n.d. http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/u6545412.


Wacks, Raymond. Privacy a Very Short Introduction. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=472401.

 

 

SCHEDULE:

(“Read” indicates what you must have read by class time that day. Readings marked by * are available on Collab.) :

August 31 — Introduction. View two segments of Frontline, "United States of Secrets."

Sept. 7 – Read: Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, Chs. 1, 2, 4, 6, 11, 15.

First reading reaction due.

See Blow-Up outside class. 

Surveillance diary due.

Sept. 14 – Second reading reaction due.

Read Wacks, Privacy: A Very Short Introduction.

See Minority Report outside class. 

Sept. 21 -- Third reading reaction due.

Read Igo, "Beginnings of the End of Privacy.*

Pasquale, "The Algorithmic Self."*

 

Sept. 28 – Fourth reading reaction due.

Read Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Part Three, "Discipline."*

Vaidhyanathan, "The Rise of the Cryptopticon"*

 

Oct. 5 -- No class: Reading days. 

Oct.12 -- First group presentation on Blow-Up

Fifth reading reaction due

Read Nissenbaum, Privacy in Context.

See The Lives of Others outside class.

Oct. 19 – Sixth reading reaction due.

Read Read Howard, Pax Technica, Introduction, Ch. 5, 6, 7.

Second group presentation on Minority Report.

Oct. 26 -- Seventh reading reaction due

Read Fidler, The Snowden Reader, Chs. TBA

 

Nov. 2 – See The Conversation outside class.

Eighth reading reaction due.

Read Goldfarb, After Snowden, Chs. TBA

Third group presentation on The Lives of Others. 

 

Nov. 9 -- Fourth group presentation on The Conversation.

Read boyd and Crawford, "Critical Questions for Big Data."*

Ninth reading reaction due.
 

Nov. 16 – See Enemy of the State outside of class.

Read Newman, "What the Right to be Forgotten Means in the Digital Age."*

Read Levine, "Behind the European Privacy Ruling That’s Confounding Silicon Valley"

Fifth group presentation on Enemy of the State.

Tenth reading reaction due.

 

Nov. 23 – No Class

 

Nov. 30  -- Meetings with Siva about final papers. 

 

Dec. 7 -- Final paper submission in class (on paper).  Optional digital video due and video presentations. Set up meetings with Siva about revisions.

 

Dec. 16 – Final paper revisions due via collab Drop Box by 11:55 p.m.

 

Course Description (for SIS)

MDST 4101

Privacy and Surveillance

Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan

Can we preserve dignity and privacy in the age of Facebook, Uber, and global terrorism? This seminar will consider the history and current applications of technologies and cultures of surveillance. How and why did we get to the point where almost all of our activities leave a trace? What is our level of tolerance of mass surveillance? Are we willing to let the state into our bedrooms? Are we more comfortable letting our stores and shopping services understand us? What sorts of laws and policies do we need to protect our sense of personal integrity? And is privacy worth anything these days anyway? This course will allow students to survey a broad range of approaches and issues. We will read the latest work as well as some classic contributions to the field. 

GENERAL COURSE OBJECTIVES:

This course will present you with one or more disciplined, analytical approaches to understanding the reciprocal relationship between technology and society.  It will also help you:
        1) understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and social context,
        2) recognize and analyze the role that science and engineering play in contemporary issues 
        3) deepen knowledge of social and historical context to put contemporary issues in perspective, 
        4) appreciate differing perspectives and integrate your views with those of others, and
        5) sharpen your reading, writing, speaking, and discussion skills.
By the end of the course, you should be able to analyze in depth particular examples of the interpenetration and mutual influence of technology and society. This analytical ability provides the foundation necessary for understanding the social and ethical contexts of engineering and technology—understanding crucial to STS 401-402 and to each student’s thesis project.  

Specifically, this course will guide your through the debates about the ethical, legal, technological, and commercial ramifications of the collection and distribution of personally identifying information and other similar features of human daily life.

SPECIFIC COURSE OBJECTIVES:

Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:

• Recognize surveillance in its myriad forms in your daily life.

• Define privacy.

• Engage with current policy debates about privacy and surveillance in both public and private sectors.

• Explain how the history of cinema has explored and explained both privacy and surveillance. 

• Conduct research into an issue related to privacy and surveillance.