Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively.
Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as closed-circuit television (CCTV), or interception of electronically transmitted information like Internet traffic. It can also include simple technical methods, such as human intelligence gathering and postal interception.
Computer and network surveillance is the monitoring of computer activity and data stored locally on a computer or data being transferred over computer networks such as the Internet. This monitoring is often carried out covertly and may be completed by governments, corporations, criminal organizations, or individuals. It may or may not be legal and may or may not require authorization from a court or other independent government agencies. Computer and network surveillance programs are widespread today and almost all Internet traffic can be monitored.
Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizations, such as organizations like the NSA, but it may also be carried out by corporations. Depending on each nation's laws and judicial systems, the legality of and the permission required to engage in mass surveillance varies. It is the single most indicative distinguishing trait of totalitarian regimes. It is also often distinguished from targeted surveillance.
A facial recognition system is a technology potentially capable of matching a human face from a digital image or a video frame against a database of faces. Such a system is typically employed to authenticate users through ID verification services, and works by pinpointing and measuring facial features from a given image.
Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) is a Washington, D.C.–based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation that advocates for digital rights and freedom of expression. CDT seeks to promote legislation that enables individuals to use the internet for purposes of well-intent, while at the same time reducing its potential for harm. It advocates for transparency, accountability, and limiting the collection of personal information.
Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storage, re-purposing, provision to third parties, and display of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. Privacy concerns have been articulated from the beginnings of large-scale computer sharing and especially relate to mass surveillance.
A privacy policy is a statement or legal document that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses, and manages a customer or client's data. Personal information can be anything that can be used to identify an individual, not limited to the person's name, address, date of birth, marital status, contact information, ID issue, and expiry date, financial records, credit information, medical history, where one travels, and intentions to acquire goods and services. In the case of a business, it is often a statement that declares a party's policy on how it collects, stores, and releases personal information it collects. It informs the client what specific information is collected, and whether it is kept confidential, shared with partners, or sold to other firms or enterprises. Privacy policies typically represent a broader, more generalized treatment, as opposed to data use statements, which tend to be more detailed and specific.
Ann Cavoukian is the former Information and Privacy Commissioner for the Canadian province of Ontario. Her concept of privacy by design, which takes privacy into account throughout the system engineering process, was expanded on, as part of a joint Canadian-Dutch team, both before and during her tenure as commissioner of Ontario.
Simson L. Garfinkel is the chief scientist of BasisTech in Somerville, Massachusetts. He was previously a program scientist at AI2050, part of Schmidt Futures. He has held several roles across government, including a Senior Data Scientist at the Department of Homeland Security, the US Census Bureau's Senior Computer Scientist for Confidentiality and Data Access and a computer scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. From 2006 to 2015, he was an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. In addition to his research, Garfinkel is a journalist, an entrepreneur and an inventor; his work is generally concerned with computer security, privacy and information technology.
Lorrie Faith Cranor is an American academic who is the FORE Systems Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and is the director of the Carnegie Mellon Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory. She has served as Chief Technologist of the Federal Trade Commission, and she was formerly a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation Board of Directors. Previously she was a researcher at AT&T Labs-Research and taught in the Stern School of Business at New York University. She has authored over 110 research papers on online privacy, phishing and semantic attacks, spam, electronic voting, anonymous publishing, usable access control, and other topics.
Cubit, often stylized CUBIT, is a computer user interface system for multi-touch devices, designed by Stefan Hechenberger and Addie Wagenknecht for Nortd Labs. It was developed to "demystify multitouch" technology by using an open-source model for software and hardware. It is a direct competitor of Microsoft Surface.
The term digital citizen is used with different meanings. According to the definition provided by Karen Mossberger, one of the authors of Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation, digital citizens are "those who use the internet regularly and effectively." In this sense, a digital citizen is a person using information technology (IT) in order to engage in society, politics, and government.
Jillian C. York is an American free-expression activist and author. She serves as Director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and a founding member of Deep Lab. She is the author of Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism and Morocco - Culture Smart!: the essential guide to customs & culture.
Nortd Labs a.k.a. NOR_/D is an international research and development collaborative dedicated to the merging of open source art, architecture, software and system design. NORTD Labs is also a studio of creative thought that engages science, art and design.
Claire L. Evans is an American singer, writer and artist based in Los Angeles, California. She is the lead singer of the pop duo YACHT.
Lindsay Howard is an American curator, writer, and new media scholar based in New York City whose work explores how the internet is shaping art and culture.
Addie Wagenknecht is an American artist and researcher living in New York City and Liechtenstein. Her work deals primarily with pop culture, feminist theory, new media and open source software and hardware. She frequently works in collectives, which have included Nortd Labs, F.A.T. lab, and Deep Lab. She has received fellowships and residencies from Eyebeam, Mozilla, The Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University and CERN.
Sidewalk Toronto is a cancelled urban development project proposed by Sidewalk Labs at Quayside, a waterfront area in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This project was first initiated by Waterfront Toronto in 2017 by issuing the request for proposal (RFP) on development of the Quayside area. Sidewalk Labs, which is a subsidiary of Google, won the bid in 2017. The Master Innovation Development Plan (MIDP) was created in 2019 through conversations with over 21,000 Toronto residents and aimed to be an innovative reinvention of Toronto's neglected eastern downtown waterfront.
Digital self-determination is a multidisciplinary concept derived from the legal concept of self-determination and applied to the digital sphere, to address the unique challenges to individual and collective agency and autonomy arising with increasing digitalization of many aspects of society and daily life.
