Lesson 1: Understanding the Digital Landscape

Module to explore the digital landscape, data leakage, personal identifying data (PII), data theft, data aggregation

Understanding the Digital Landscape: Intermediaries and Data Leakage

Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say. When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ - Edward Snowden

Back in the good old days, two parties (individuals, families or communities) wanting to make an exchange could do so without divulging the information of that exchange to a “trusted third party”. Communication, commerce and transactions were all completed peer to peer, directly.

Then 1989 arrived and with it the advent of the World Wide Web. Ever since, digital devices in disparate geographical locations have been sending, receiving and retrieving information from other devices connected to “the Web”. And while this has made possible previously unimaginable connections and exchanges, it’s also opened a Pandora’s box when it comes to data leakage.

With the invention and widespread adoption of the internet, corporate intermediaries have taken their place in the fabric of the every day. These “trusted third parties”, sitting between internet device users, have gained increasing access to a treasure of unimaginable value: their users’ personal, private information. Corporate intermediaries are so deeply ingrained into the DNA of the modern world wide web, it’s hard to imagine what an Internet would look like without them.

Henceforth in this training, we will refer to these present day intermediaries (think: Google, Facebook, Apple, Samsung, etc.) as Google & Co.

To illustrate just how entrenched these “Google & Co.” intermediaries are in our digital lives, consider:

• Every time we use a cell phone, tablet or computer to access the internet, we rely on an intermediary known as an internet service provider or ISP (think: AT&T, Verizon, etc.).

• We rely on email service providers and instant messaging platforms (Gmail, Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Line, etc) as intermediaries to help us communicate.

• We use web browsers and search engines (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Google, Bing and others) as intermediaries to find things online.

The first key learning objective of this course is to understand that the corporations that control the digital landscape have access to your personal information by virtue of you using their products and services.

Questions worth asking:

1. What is a digital intermediary?

2. Name everyday examples of common digital intermediaries.

3. What is data leakage?