Whos Afraid of the Internet Digital Literacy Corporate

Who's Afraid of the Internet? Digital Literacy, Corporate Data. Mining, and Government Surveillance Scott Pinkelman Free Library of Philadelphia City of Philadelphia Office of Innovation and Technology pinkelmans [at] freelibrary. org

Motivation • • Patrons have legitimate fears about security and privacy Patrons often have incorrect assumptions about how privacy is violated online

Take Home Points • • The Internet is Not Magic The Internet is not “The Internet” Privacy education is an ethical and pedagogical imperative of digital literacy We need to train the trainers

What are the Problems?

“Joining the Surveillance Society” “Expanding 'digital literacy' to include privacy education requires that privacy protecting tools become easier to use. Until then, the benefits of digital inclusion are at odds with the potential harms wrought by a surveillance society” -Seeta Peña Gangadharan

Privacy is Hard • • Technically confusing No tangible outcomes Harm reduction Who is violating our privacy?

Internet Services are Numerous and Confusing • • Price: free / paid Software: Open Source / Propriety Owner / Creator: Commercial and Non-Commercial When the service is free, you are (probably) the product

Challenges for Digital Literacy Instructors • • Security / Privacy / Internet Safety Can we answer: q What is a cookie? q How is your personal information tracked? q What is an algorithm? q Who can read my emails?

What are the Solutions?

Educate about Commercial Data Tracking • • Harmful but easier to mitigate Focus on advertising and social medial Educational: Extension of Internet Safety Technical: Browser Extensions

Educate about The NSA Spying Scandal • • Less apparently harmful, harder to mitigate The issue exists Social and political There are different ideas about what to do about it

Follow Tech News • • Heartbleed SSL Bug (April 2014) Facebook privacy checkup (September 2014)

Understand Explain Internet Services • • • What is free? What is non-commercial? Acknowledge the trade off between convenience and privacy (e. g. Google services)

Provide Privacy Instruction • • • Cookie Management Chrome/Firefox/IE privacy settings Do Not Track

Offer Technical Tools for Computer Owners • HTTPS everywhere https: //www. eff. org/https-everywhere • Disconnect. me https: //disconnect. me • Ad Block Edge (Firefox) https: //addons. mozilla. org/en. US/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/ • Get Adblock (Chrome) https: //getadblock. com/

Offer Technical Tools for Computer Owners • Duck Go http: //duckgo. com • Privacy Badger https: //www. eff. org/privacybadger • Open VPN https: //openvpn. net

Resources • Teaching tools https: //webmaker. org/en-US/privacy-makes • Study on Privacy & Digital Literacy http: //www. newamerica. net/publications/policy /joining_the_surveillance_society • Technical Tools https: //pack. resetthenet. org/

Resources Teaching the NSA Scandal • http: //hivenyc. org/2013/06/13/nsasurveillance-revelations-are-a-teachablemoment/ • https: //www. eff. org/nsa-spying/how-it-works • http: //bit. ly/metadata_guide