Syllabus

Data Ethics, Privacy and Humans

Willamette University · Graduate Seminar · Fall 2026
Meets: Thursdays, 6:00–9:50 PM

Instructor

Steven Cox
Email: scox2@willamette.edu
Office hours: one hour before each class session (5:00–6:00 PM). I am here before every class and can meet either face to face or online — email to arrange.

Course Description

Privacy feels obvious. It is not. Ask ten people what it is and you will get answers that quietly contradict each other — a right to be left alone, control over your information, a kind of dignity, a space no one may enter. This seminar takes that easy sense of knowing and complicates it, because everything that follows depends on privacy being a live, contested question rather than a settled one.

Our subject is the human being — the person on the receiving end — not the compliance checkbox or the policy memo. We work from real, current cases (facial-recognition scraping, the sale of genetic data in bankruptcy, algorithmic decision-making, data brokers, national-scale surveillance) and build a shared vocabulary for reasoning well under moral uncertainty. You will be asked to say what you actually think, and to have it tested.

What This Course Is (and Is Not)

• Case-driven, not doctrine-driven. Ethical frameworks are tools, not scripture.
• Centered on the human being, not the regulation.
• Graded on the quality of your reasoning under disagreement — not on reaching a “correct” verdict.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the term you will be able to:

1. Analyze a data-ethics case through four ethical lenses — consequences, duty and rights, virtue, and justice — and show where they agree and where they pull apart.
2. Locate where in the data lifecycle a harm actually occurs (collection, storage, processing, analysis, use, retention, disclosure).
3. Argue and defend a position under genuine moral disagreement, and name what siding with one lens costs.
4. Distinguish “public” from “fair to use,” and “I agreed” from meaningful consent.
5. Read and apply foundational privacy scholarship (Warren & Brandeis, Solove, Nissenbaum, Cohen, and their critics) to problems those authors never saw.
6. Write a clear, honest case analysis that reasons well without pretending to certainty.

The Analytic Framework

From Week 2 on, every case is run through the same working instruments:

• Four ethical lenses — Consequences · Duty & Rights · Virtue · Justice. Run all four; the disagreement between them is the payload, not a failure.
• Data lifecycle locator — collected → stored → processed → analyzed → used → retained → disclosed. Find where the harm lives before you judge it.
• Synthesis — Converge / Diverge / Question. You do not have to reach a verdict.

A one-page case-analysis worksheet is provided and used all term.

Session Format

Each session runs 6:00–9:50 PM in three working blocks:

• 6:00–7:30 — block 1
• 7:30–8:00 — break
• 8:00–8:50 — block 2
• 8:50–9:00 — break
• 9:00–9:50 — block 3

Most sessions open with a short discussion (about 10 minutes) of current events in privacy and data ethics — the field moves fast, and part of the work is learning to read it as it happens.

Schedule — 14 Modules across 6 Phases

Phase 1 — Foundations

01 — What privacy is, and why it’s contested

02 — Ethical frameworks as tools, not doctrines

Phase 2 — Architecture: law, technology, and the human cost

03 — Consent, collection, and the limits of agreement

04 — Privacy-enhancing technology and its human limits

05 — Data brokers and the invisible profile

Phase 3 — Surveillance, power, and asymmetry

06 — When innocence stops protecting you

07 — The consent you can’t afford to refuse

08 — The end of withholding

Phase 4 — Automated judgment and the human on the other end

09 — When the machine decides

10 — The nudge that knew you first

11 — The right to an answer

Phase 5 — Resistance, rights, and the future of the self

12 — The right to be forgotten, and its limits

13 — The self that arrives first

Phase 6 — Final Project

14 — Arguing the human cost

Readings

There is no textbook. Readings are posted on the course site and mix foundational scholarship with current reporting. Each week’s reading is provided one week in advance, so you always have a full week to prepare. Each reading carries a note scoping what to read closely versus optional depth, and is tiered required or recommended. Come with the facts; we build the theory together.

Assessment

This course grades the wrestle — the honesty and rigor of your reasoning when the lenses disagree — not the verdict you land on. Proposed components (percentages adjustable):

• Participation & preparation — 25%. Come ready to argue from the cases; engage others’ positions in good faith.
• Case analyses (written) — 45%. Several short analyses across the term, each running a case through the four lenses, the lifecycle, and Converge / Diverge / Question. You are graded on where you find the real disagreement and what you decide it costs.
• Final Project — 30%. Module 14, “Arguing the human cost”: a sustained written and oral argument on a case of your choice.

Grade scale. Final grades are assigned A, B, C, or F.

Grading policy. Assignments will be given one week in advance at minimum. Exceptions to a due date are at the discretion of the instructor.

Policies

Use of AI. AI tools are permitted for research and drafting, provided you (1) disclose where and how you used them, and (2) verify every factual claim against a primary source — AI-generated summaries are starting points, not authorities. What is graded is your moral reasoning: the analysis, the judgment, the wrestle. Submitting AI-generated reasoning as your own defeats the entire purpose of the course.

Participation & attendance. This is a discussion seminar; your presence is the course. Notify me in advance if you must miss a session and we will arrange to keep you current.

Sensitive material. We discuss real cases involving surveillance, discrimination, and harm to real people. Engage seriously and treat one another’s views and disclosures with respect.

Academic integrity. All work follows Willamette University’s academic-integrity standards.

Accessibility & accommodations. Willamette is committed to equal access. Students seeking accommodations should contact Accessible Education Services and me early in the term.