Module 01 / 14 · Phase 1 — Foundations
1. What privacy is, and why it's contested
This week in the arc
Coming from
The start. Most of us arrive sure we already know what privacy is.
Going to
Week 2 — the ethical frameworks you’ll use as working tools for the rest of the term.
Core
Privacy feels obvious. It is not. Ask ten people what it is and you’ll get answers that quietly contradict each other — a right to be left alone, control over your information, a kind of dignity, a private space no one may enter. This course begins by taking that easy sense of knowing and complicating it, because everything we do afterward 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. Tonight we work with real, current cases and see how quickly ordinary intuitions about privacy come apart when pressed. Come ready to say what you actually think, and to have it tested.
Cases — tagged by category, name the kind before you react
A genetic-testing company files for bankruptcy, and a court treats the DNA of ~15 million customers as an asset to be sold. Your genome is also your relatives’ — and your children’s.
A company scrapes billions of public photos into a facial-recognition tool sold to police. Every image was already public — you posted it. Is that a violation?
Reading
Discussion
- What's something you'd never share online — and something you hand over without a second thought? What makes the difference?
- When something goes wrong with your data, whose fault is it: yours, the company's, or the government's?
- What would you trade your privacy for — convenience, safety, money, connection, nothing?