1. Online Privacy: an introduction

Introduction to online privacy, security threats, personal data, digital surveillance, data theft, protecting your data.

Learning Objectives: Understand what online security is, the current technological landscape, and existing vulnerabilities

Ours is a world where wholesale, global mass surveillance by both governments and corporations is a living reality.

Data is now the world’s most valuable asset; Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, AOL, Samsung and other mega corporations whose tools have become a standard part of our everyday lives all conduct programs to monitor, capture, transcribe, store, mine and sell data which they capture when we use the hardware and software products that have become indispensable to our daily lives. There is a saying that if an online product is free, then it’s you (or more specifically the data that you are generating) that is the thing being sold. Welcome, friends, to the age of surveillance capitalism. While corporations refer vaguely to ‘your data’ and the ‘data that is generated as a result of the use of our services‘ in their privacy policies and user agreements, the depth and breadth of the information gathered about each individual is staggering.

Hidden in plain sight, made to sound harmless beneath carefully crafted legal jargon and executed by powerful mega-corporations, the single greatest grab of personal, private information in history is in full swing. It is a breach of confidence on a gigantic scale that most online participants take neither the time, nor develop the expertise, to fully comprehend.

As if this weren’t alarming enough, world governments have allowed these corporations to proliferate and to outpace governments’ ability to regulate them, electing instead to participate in the capture and access of personal and private data in service of nation-state security, while ignoring the dangerous implications this policy has: corporations can weaponize people’s data and turn it against the very individuals governments are supposed to serve and protect. Edward Snowden, the former US Intelligence Community officer and whistle-blower who in 2013 revealed a public window into the National Security Agency (NSA) and its international intelligence partners' secret mass surveillance programs and capabilities, stated, “Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively are less free.”

The increasing sophistication and application of algorithms when paired with the data captured by this unprecedented monitoring presents some real concerns regarding freedom of thought, speech and movement. Our fundamental rights to privacy are under attack and have been for some time. We created this privacy training to help bring these matters into the light, and to show you simple measures you can put in place to counter some of the threats the data-surveillance complex poses to your individual freedoms. Our mission is to share knowledge with everyday people affected by the changing online landscape about:

1. What really happens to your data when you conduct yourself online.

2. How to minimize your chances of being taken advantage of without your consent by using the best privacy tools and systems presently available, tools that make it far more difficult for corporations and governments to collect, restrict, or profit from your private data.

We’ll show you how to minimize your digital footprint and take control of your data “leakage” so you can achieve a reasonable level of online privacy and security.