The notion of personal privacy in a digital society may be out of date. While many of us say we still want it, we willingly share our data – and dislike paying to protect it. Governments and online businesses covet our personal information. Meanwhile, almost nobody reads the terms and conditions; we merely trust that if something were awry, someone else would have noticed by now.

But what should we be concerned about … and what can we do about it? Why is privacy even important if, as they say, you have nothing to hide?

Hear from computing and information systems researcher Vanessa Teague (University of Melbourne), tech security strategist Rachael Falk (auDA) and employment and industrial relations lawyer Josh Bornstein (Maurice Blackburn). They’ll talk about open data, de-identification, cryptography, social media – and how to defend our rights to both privacy and free speech in our personal and professional lives. #modernconfidential

 

You can also watch the live-stream of this event – and add your thoughts below.

Modern Confidential: Digital Privacy Online Watch

Live-stream this event from 6.15pm AEST, Tuesday 2 May

Share your thoughts on privacy, free speech and cybersecurity

More to say? Talk it out with the Wheeler Centre community.

All messages as part of this discussion and any opinions, advice, statements, or other information contained in any messages or transmitted by any third party are the responsibility of the author of that message and not the Wheeler Centre.

It has to be said: the cat pictures might not be enough. The internet definitively sucks sometimes. It’s a willing and fertile host to our most objectionable prejudice, anger and desire; an open marketplace for exploitation, child porn and illicit drugs and weapons. It provides a container for our greed, impatience and emotional evasiveness, and its liberating potential often feels like a false promise buried in a much larger mountain of disconnection, voyeurism and social media-fuelled narcissism.

Even the feelgood and useful bits are compromised – our tracked behaviour is sold to advertisers, while security agencies like the NSA have been found to spy extensively on … well, almost everybody.

Cory Doctorow

In that light, is it blind and foolish to defend the internet – or does idealism provide a corrective vision? What gives this incredible technological structure its potency? What does the internet offer in terms of political freedom and social mobility, privacy and big data, and broadcasting and publishing and political change – and what does it cost us?

Blogger, science fiction author, Electronic Frontier Foundation special advisor and Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow speaks with multitalented and beloved broadcaster, writer and director Alan Brough about whether we should really destroy the internet – or whether it instead needs our protection.

Your tweets:

‘We have yet to articulate a coherent way of thinking about security and the internet.’ @doctorow #askinterrobang pic.twitter.com/0gaaUEKlRQ

— The Wheeler Centre (@wheelercentre) November 28, 2015

Lack of disclosure with digital security leads to failure. ‘This is how every alchemist ends up drinking mercury.’ @doctorow #askinterrobang

— The Interrobang (@askinterrobang) November 28, 2015

.@doctorow is talking about very surprising ways in which industries co-opt governments to protect their IP, and generate $. #askinterrobang

— The Interrobang (@askinterrobang) November 28, 2015

Computers in everything: digital locks for protectionist practices, anti-circumvention rules feed the beast. Ergh @doctorow #askinterrobang

— Kate B. (@eyeofbast) November 28, 2015

"We haven't reached peak surveillance. There's plenty of ways the internet could be creepier. Like wifi Barbie." @doctorow #askinterrobang

— steph harmon (@stephharmon) November 28, 2015

Mass surveillance operates on the principle that watching another…