S18 Dark Data Syllabus PDF

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Dark Data Parsons School of Design PSAM 5752 - A, S18 Spring 2018: Tuesdays, 3:50 - 6:30 in 2W13 Room 1108 David Carroll d  [email protected] Melanie Crean c [email protected] Office Hours: by appt

Overview Digital networks provide for immense, unprecedented connectivity. This hyper connectedness enables not only unlimited communication and ubiquitous monitoring, but the potential to affect civic discourse and government. As whistleblowers leak and corporations begrudgingly disclose details about international monitoring infrastructures and the considerable overlaps with commercial platforms, Internet users confront startling revelations about how both state and private actors record and mine the details of our lives, and have the capacity to sway our personal opinions. Big Brother + Big Data = Dark Data. This course examines these phenomena within historical and contemporary socio-technical contexts. Paying special attention to art, design and technology that critique, mitigate, or respond to digital tracking infrastructures, the studio elective will support the practice of making new creative responses to data security and sovereignty by exploring critical artifacts, systems, strategies, and interventions. The course will begin by surveying four state defined surveillance and privacy models from the EU, US, India, and China. Unpacking their relevant values, beliefs, hopes and fears, we will question how each model asserts both the political identity of a nation state and individual citizens. We will further examine evolving concepts of surveillance, privacy, identity and economy to more deeply understand current relationships of the individual to the larger “body politic." Course work consists of weekly reading and discussion of critical texts, investigative journalism, and examples of legal and design based interventions. Over the course of the semester, the class will collaboratively produce its own publication on a collectively decided theme relating data to concepts of identity and sovereignty.

Course Work Readings & Presentations Working in pairs, students will sign up to lead discussions on 2 readings during the semester. This will include posting a short (400 - 500 word) response to Canvas the night before readings will be discussed, and initiating discussion on the readings in class. Students are encouraged to make discussions both visual and participatory. When not moderating, students will post a short weekly commentary (250 words) to Canvas, relating readings to personal experience or outside news event, and including a question for discussion.

Publication This semester we will collaborate on a digital publication to disseminate the research and discourse produced during the semester. As a hybrid between an academic journal and an artistic magazine, we aim to publish a vital and engaging series of articles and digital artifacts that explore the notion of Dark Data, surveillance, privacy, security, civics and critical responses around a core thematic. During the initial course sessions we will identify student co-editors, at least one art director, and a technical director. The faculty will serve in the role of publishers. All other class members will serve as contributors and submit articles, features, or digital artifacts for considering. During the course there will be opportunities to “pitch” ideas to fellow contributors, student editors and faculty for development. The art director(s) will produce a style guide and article template expressing the aesthetic direction of the publication as informed by our course discussions and readings. During the final weeks of the course, the technical director will deploy the publication to the web and all members will finalize their contributions. The final work should be professional-grade that we all hope becomes widely circulated and referenced as an expression of leading-edge thinking around crucial and current topics of the course.

Schedule Wk 01 Jan 23: Intro Who are we and why are we here? What is dark data? 4 models: EU, US, India, China, representing different attitudes toward culture, industry, policy 5 concepts: sovereignty, identity, surveillance, privacy, economy Publication: exploring relationship of individual to body politic through these models and themes Roles: Researcher Writers, Editorial (2), Art direction, Production Assignment: Finish readings for the class session listed in advance.

Wk 02, Jan 30: US Based on fluctuating idea of privacy, defined by corporations & products; Self-regulation, light-touch regulation, de-regulation Attention economy, structured by few platforms, “personal data industry” in pursuit of advertising profit; Mass surveillance determines increasingly accurate personality profiles, predicts & shapes behavior; “Optimised for engagement” produces social validation feedback loop, standing in for public sphere. Lecture: US originating data industry through military industrial complex Assignment ● Read Zeynep Tufecki “It’s the (Democracy Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech” via W  ired (evolving nature of structure of free speech and mechanisms of censorship, call to action) ● Read Wolfie Christl “Corporate Surveillance in Everyday Life” via CrackedLabs Suggested reading:

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Read Paul Ohm, Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization , via S  SRN, “Anonymization and Reidentification,” pp 1706-31 and” How The Failure of Anonymization Disrupts Privacy Law,” pp 1731 - 1742 James Risen “My Life as New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror” via T  he Intercept

Wk 03, Feb 06: EU Expanding regulation, Brussels as countervailing force to Silicon Valley General Data Protection Regulation enforceable May ‘18, industry preparing for day of reckoning Rights of: access, explanation (requires algorithms to be interpretable), removal EU regulates FB and Google, transnational regulation Assignment: Read “WTF is GDPR?” by Natasha Lomas via T  echCrunch Read “Capitalism vs Privacy” by Samuel Earle via J acobin Read about EU fines against Facebook via T  he Guardian Suggested Reading: Read “Cookies: More than meets the eye” by Elinor Carmi via Theory Culture & Society Read about GDPR consent UI wireframes via P  ageFair

Wk 04, Feb 13: India Aadhar biometric identifier rolling out but tremendous security flaws coming out Yet, Supreme Court ruled for rite of privacy that is one of the strictest in the world First biometric identifier, way its being commercialized, vs supreme court regulating Conflict between: Prime minister and tech industry whereas judiciary is trying to set limits Guest Skype: Anivar Aravind expert from Bangalore

Assignment, reading: Read “Aadhar isn’t progress — it’s dystopian and dangerous” by Baker and Gadgil via Mozilla Read “India’s National ID Program May Be Turning The Country Into A Surveillance State” by Pranav Dixit via BuzzFeed

Wk 05, Feb 20: China Chinese notion of social harmony & economics Social Credit score, gamification of data profile, ranked and made public China most advanced in terms of surveillance tech Independent from industrial and policy standpoint, has its own internet, its own Silicon Valley Publication: Art Directors show work, discussion of potential curatorial voice Assignment: Read: T  welve Days in Xinjiang, How China's Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life , Dec 2017

Read “Beijing bets on facial recognition in a big drive for total surveillance” via W  aPo

Wk 06, Feb 27: Sovereignty (algorithms in society) Nation states, individuals, data sovereignty Legal, conceptual Community to Nation state to … some layer of the stack? Publication: pitch potential contributions: articles, graphics & info viz, video journalism, editorial overview Assignment View: Benjamin Bratton, The Stack We Have and the Stack to Come, Designing Sovereignty and the Geopolitics of Computation (50 min), Oct 2014, h  ttps://vimeo.com/117036240 Read: Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction , intro Suggested: Benjamin Bratton, The Stack, On Software and Sovereignty, 2015 (html)

Wk 07, Mar 06: Identity Data driven analytics: psychometrics Personal Identifying information, decoupling & recoupling Publication: Students write & post on Canvas a short paragraph summarizing the concept for their publication contribution Assignment: Read: Kate Crawford’s O  ur Metrics, Ourselves: A hundred years of self-tracking from the weight scale to the wearable device; From European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2015, Vol 18 Wolfie Christl and Sarah Speikerman, Networks of Control, Facultas, 2016, c h 1-2, Suggested: Read “The 98 personal data points that Facebook uses to target you for ads” via WaPo Read: Give Robots “personhood” Status, EU Committee Argues, via The Guardian, Jan ‘17

Wk 08, Mar 13: Midterms Researchers drafts of pieces Editors draft of intro Editors draft of style template

SPRING BREAK

Wk 09, Mar 27: Privacy Historical dev from community to nation state with “individuals” in urban centers & press

Assignment: Read: Greg Ferenstein, Birth and Death of Privacy: 3,000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images, Nov 2015, via medium Reading: #DigitalDeceipt: Technologies Behind Precision Propaganda on the Internet: via S  horenstein Center at Harvard and New America Foundation Read: Jill Lepore, T  he Prism; Privacy in the age of publicity, 2014

Wk 10, Apr 03: Surveillance Intrusive looking, authority first backed by religion then state Reading: Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 1975, ch 3, P  anopticism Reading: Trevor Paglen, Operational Images, 2014, e  -flux Suggested  er Spiegel, Dec 14 2012 Read: Nicola Abé, The Woes of an American Drone Operator, D Read, Frank Pasquale’s B  lack Box Society intro

Wk 11, Apr 10: Economy Markets, exchange values Where national models overlap Trade is cultural force in its own right Decentralized crypto-currency, politically idealized tech, gets centralized by market, blockable protocols, can be undermined politically and shut down Assignment: Reading: Trebor Scholz, Ours to Hack or To Own, Rise of Platform Cooperativism, 2016, s elections Read: Selections on crypto-currency Suggested: Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1723

Wk 12, Apr 17: Rough Draft Wk 13, Apr 24: Editorial, Publication strategy ; Cathy O’Neill speaks at Starr Conference rm at 6pm Wk 14, May 01: Editorial, publication strategy Wk 15, May 08: Final

Final Grade Calculation

30% 20% 50% 100%

Class participation, reading presentations Mid-term drafts, pinup Final production work for publication TOTAL

Resources The university provides many resources to help students achieve academic and artistic excellence. These resources include: ● ● ●

The University (and associated) Libraries: http://library.newschool.edu The University Learning Center: http://www.newschool.edu/learning-center University Disabilities Service: www.newschool.edu/student-disability-services/

In keeping with the university’s policy of providing equal access for students with disabilities, any student with a disability who needs academic accommodations is welcome to meet with me privately. All conversations will be kept confidential. Students requesting any accommodations will also need to contact Student Disability Service (SDS). SDS will conduct an intake and, if appropriate, the Director will provide an academic accommodation notification letter for you to bring to me. At that point, I will review the letter with you and discuss these accommodations in relation to this course. Making Center The Making Center is a constellation of shops, labs, and open workspaces that are situated across the New School to help students express their ideas in a variety of materials and methods. We have resources to help support woodworking, metalworking, ceramics and pottery work, photography and film, textiles, printmaking, 3D printing, manual and CNC machining, and more. A staff of technicians and student workers provide expertise and maintain the different shops and labs. Safety is a primary concern, so each area has policies for access, training, and etiquette that students and faculty should be familiar with. Many areas require specific orientations or trainings before access is granted. Detailed information about the resources available, as well as schedules, trainings, and policies can be found at resources.parsons.edu.

Grading Standards Undergraduate A student’s final grades and GPA are calculated using a 4.0 scale. Please note that while both are listed here, the 4.0 scale does not align mathematically with the numeric scale based on percentages of 100 points.

A [4.0; 95 – 100%] Work of exceptional quality, which often goes beyond the stated goals of the course A- [3.7; 90 –...