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Title: The Surveillance State

Subtitle: Big Data, Freedom, and You

Author: The Great Courses

Narrator: Professor Paul Rosenzweig

Format: Original Recording

Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-04-16

Publisher: The Great Courses

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 507 votes

Genres: Science & Technology, Technology

Publisher's Summary:

A man shoots down a drone that is flying over his private property. A retail store uses predictive data analytics to send pregnancy-related advertising to a teenager who has not told her parents about her condition. A police officer places a GPS device on a suspected criminal's car to follow him and build a case against him.

The news is full of such stories, 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.

Taught by Professor Rosenzweig, JD, esteemed legal expert and professorial lecturer at The George Washington University School of Law, these 24 revealing lectures tackle the tough questions about surveillance and data in the 21st century. With Professor Rosenzweig's guidance, you'll scrutinize our system of oversight for intelligence agencies, and you'll consider the ways in which the information that is collected impacts (or potentially impacts) our civil liberties.

This is your reliable source for all the facts you need to make your own reasonable choices - and take a first step toward an empowered future.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

Members Reviews:

Nine tenths of the way to an idea.

This course is indispensable to anyone who has a phone or uses the internet. We need to understand the ways in which the government and private companies are tracking us and to appreciate what that may mean for our future. We must also understand the competing, equally legitimate, goals at play. Any effective solution for protecting our online privacy requires a full appreciation of its implications for security. This issue is so important to modern democracies, this course should be required reading.

Except that Rosenzweig falls just short of making useful conclusions. Rosenzweig argues towards the middle of the course that government should adopt the principle that they can use private data as long as it doesn't do harm. He could have spent the rest of the course explaining exactly what he means by that. My ability to trust the government with such powerful data would rest, in fact, on my confidence that it is possible to make such a distinction and the government is capable of making it. I would like to know much more about this principle to not cause harm and whether there is any potential practical application of it. The course fell short of answering that question.

The course also highlighted to me how inappropriate the term "privacy" is to what is at stake. "Privacy" implies the ability to act without the discomfort of others watching.