The Great Courses (Privacy, Surveillance, Free Speech, Big Data... and You)

In these days of Big Brother and Big Data it is essential that we understand our rights to privacy, free speech, and free thought. The following programs from The Great Courses will provide you with an understanding of the threats we face, and provide you with some ideas on how to address these issues. While these courses are not free, I believe that they are worth the investment in your education and perhaps in your right to privacy and freedom.


Privacy, Property, and Free Speech: Law and the Constitution

Dizzying new technologies are putting unprecedented stress on America’s core constitutional values, as protections for privacy, property, and free speech are shrinking due to the wonders of modern life - from the Internet to digital imaging to artificial intelligence. It’s not hard to envision a day when websites such as Facebook, Google Maps, and Yahoo! introduce a feature that allows real-time tracking of anyone you want, based on face-recognition software and ubiquitous live video feeds.

Does this scenario sound like an unconstitutional invasion of privacy? In fact, ubiquitous surveillance may be perfectly legal, according to Supreme Court rulings that give corporations broad leeway to gather information. The Court has even come close to saying that we surrender all privacy when we step out in public.

Although the courts have struggled to balance the interests of individuals, businesses, and law enforcement, the proliferation of intrusive new technologies puts many of our presumed freedoms in legal limbo. Today, it’s easy to think that we have far more privacy and other personal rights than we in fact do. Only by educating ourselves about the current state of the law and the risks posed by our own inventions can we develop an informed opinion about where to draw hard lines, how to promote changes in the system, and what we can do to protect ourselves.


The Surveillance State: Big Data, Freedom, and You

A police officer places a GPS device on a suspected drug dealer’s car to trace his whereabouts and build a case against him. A popular retail store uses predictive analytics to send pregnancy-related advertising to a teenager who has yet to tell her parents about her condition. A Kentucky man shoots down a neighbor’s drone that is flying over his private property.

The news is full of stories like these, in which new technologies lead to dilemmas that could not have been imagined just a few decades ago. The 21st century has seen remarkable technological advances, with many wonderful benefits. But with these advances come new questions about privacy, security, civil liberties, and more. Big Data is here, which means that government and private industries are collecting massive amounts of information about each of us - information that may be used in marketing, to help solve criminal investigations, and to promote the interests of national security. Pandora’s Box has been opened, but in many ways the government is behind the times, relying on legislation from the 1970s to inform its stance on regulating the collection and use of this information. Our society now faces a host of critical questions, including:

• Where is the line between promoting national security and defending personal liberty?
• What information may the government collect about you from your Internet service provider?
• When it comes to search and seizure, is a cell phone any different from a diary?
• How will we respond to future technologies such as quantum computers and artificial intelligence?

Thinking about Cyber-Security: From Cyber Crime to Cyber Warfare

Cyberspace is the 21st century's greatest engine of change. And it's everywhere. Telecommunications, commercial and financial systems, government operations, food production - virtually every aspect of global civilization now depends on interconnected cyber systems to operate; systems that have helped advance medicine, streamline everyday commerce, and so much more. Which makes keeping these systems safe from threat one of the most pressing problems we face.

Thinking about Cybersecurity is laid out in a clear, systematic fashion so that you never feel overwhelmed by a topic that can seem mindboggling. Professor Rosenzweig starts by giving you a solid foundation of how the Internet and cyberspace are built, why cyber systems work the way they do, and how technical experts and scientists have attempted to "map" them out.

From there, you'll take a comprehensive look at the different types of viruses and vulnerabilities infecting the cyber domain and interfering with both technology and the real aspects of life that technology supports. You'll explore an entire cyber arsenal of threats both large and small, including:

• spiders, automated programs that crawl around the Internet and harvest personal data;
• keystroke loggers, programs that actually capture the keystrokes entered on a computer's keyboard; and
• advanced persistent threats, which intrude into computer systems for long periods of time and make computers vulnerable to continuous monitoring.

And those are only a few. Using case studies drawn straight from contemporary headlines, Professor Rosenzweig gives you a solid grasp of who in cyberspace is using these and other weapons - individual hackers, "hacktivists," crime syndicates, and, increasingly, large nations - and what their motivations are for doing so.