Statement on ischool responses to the challenges of NSA mass state surveillance

Transcription

1 Statement on ischool responses to the challenges of NSA mass state surveillance April 7, 2015 We members of the ischool community/iconference 2015 attendees recognize that: 1. Widespread mass suspicion-less surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA), and its partners in Five Eyes countries, has been revealed in documents handed to journalists by Edward Snowden in June 2013 and subsequently published by news media. 2. These revelations raise serious legal and constitutional issues, challenging many assumptions about the appropriate role of secret security agencies in a democratic information society and sparking on-going public controversy. 3. An informed public debate about the complex issues around state surveillance in an information society is urgent, calling on those with relevant expertise and a mandate for intellectual leadership in the public interest to engage actively in this debate. 4. NSA surveillance activities involve issues and areas of competence that ischools specialize in, including privacy, freedom of expression, big data, digital curation and preservation; information retrieval; knowledge infrastructures; data, text and knowledge mining; computational social science and information policy. 5. ischools claim to be Leading and Promoting the Information Field, [i], 6. "ischools have the opportunity and obligation to cultivate the next... generation of professionals who can help define, build, manage, and preserve the necessary data infrastructure. [ii] 7. As members of the ischools, we have the responsibility to engage with and nurture an inclusive debate on the ethical and public policy aspects of widespread mass surveillance. Having deliberated openly during and around the iconference 2015, March 24-27, we hereby endorse the following proposed actions by ischoolers in response to the challenges posed by mass state surveillance: Statement on ischool responses to the challenges of NSA mass state surveillance 1

2 Actions Teaching T-1) Develop curriculum that addresses issues of mass state surveillance, preparing students to understand better the surveillance they are exposed to and how to exercise more effectively their democratic informational rights. T-2) Invite NSA and other government officials as guest course speakers to address issues of mass state surveillance and respond to student questions. T-3) Invite NSA whistleblower(s) (e.g. Edward Snowden, Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe, Thomas Drake) or a journalist who has covered the NSA disclosures as a guest course speaker to address issues of mass state surveillance and respond to student questions.[iii] T-4) Base student assignments and research projects on the complete collection of published leaked NSA documents contained in the Snowden Surveillance Archive.[iv] T-5) Create, bundle and disseminate the Oscar winning Citizenfour documentary with learning materials suited to various audiences, possibly aided by foundation funding. T-6) Invite NSA whistleblower(s) (e.g. Edward Snowden, Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe, Thomas Drake) or a journalist who has covered the NSA disclosures as a keynote speaker to the next iconference. T-7) Develop ischool courses dealing with the legal and policy aspects of state surveillance, privacy, especially post-9/11. Research R-1) Conduct research that renders more transparent and democratically accountable hidden state surveillance techniques, legal authorities and interpretations, practices, programs,...[v] R-2) Research and develop reliable and easy to use measures for secure data storage and communications, such as end-to-end encryption. R-3) Study the NSA s surveillance programs, drawing on the complete collection of published leaked NSA documents contained in the Snowden Surveillance Archive.[vi] R-4) Study public attitudes to mass state surveillance and prospects for change. R-5) Adopt action research approaches around mass state surveillance that pursue academic and advocacy outcomes. Statement on ischool responses to the challenges of NSA mass state surveillance 2

3 ischool infrastructures, policies and practices I-1) Promote understanding and effective use of reliable and easy to use measures for secure data storage and communications, such as end-to-end encryption. I-2) Avoid outsourcing of campus and other e-communications services to companies partnered with the NSA in its PRISM surveillance program (e.g. Microsoft and Google).[viii] I-3) Keep and other cloud services hosted on campus.[ix] I-4) Host on campus a mirror site for the Snowden Surveillance Archive.[vii] I-5) Develop a statement of values or code of ethics for the ischool community that would address issues of state surveillance, privacy, Public information and engagement activities P-1) Convene a teach-in or public forum on the outsourcing of and other e- communications services.[x] P-2) Convene a public showing of Citizenfour, the Oscar award winning documentary, followed by expert commentary and discussion.[xi] P-3) Convene a public discussion or debate inviting members of the intelligence, civil liberties and other relevant communities to participate.[xii] P-4) Nominate Edward Snowden for an honorary degree.[xiii] P-5) Develop a public statement or resolution for adoption by icaucus members[xiv] along the lines of the RESOLUTION ON THE NEED FOR REFORMS FOR THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY TO SUPPORT PRIVACY, OPEN GOVERNMENT, GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY adopted by the Council of the American Library Association in July 2013.[xv] P-6) Develop an inventory of easy, sharable actions that concerned individuals can take to resist and reform mass state surveillance. P-7) Develop a clearinghouse of relevant initiatives. Statement on ischool responses to the challenges of NSA mass state surveillance 3

4 Endorsed by: Nicole Alemanne Independent scholar Jose Angeles Trident U Christoph Becker U Toronto Sandra Braman U Wisconsin Andrew Clement U Toronto Anthony Cocciolo Pratt Institute Chris Csula Pratt Institute Irene Fadeev Pratt Institute Helmut Hauptmeier U Siegen Jenna Jacobson U Toronto Alfred Kobsa UC Irvine Gabby Resch U Toronto Sharika Sharma Syracuse U Martin Sheldon UC Irvine Laura Spears Florida State U Andrea Tapia Penn State U Andrea Thomer UIUC Yang Wang Syracuse U Colin Williams Long Beach CC Volker Wulf U Siegen Feifei Zhang Syracuse U All were participants in the After Snowden: An ischool response to the challenges of (NSA) mass state surveillance (#NSAiSchool) Session for Interaction and Engagement (SIE2) at the iconference 2015, March [xvi] Institutions mentioned are for affiliation purposes only. Contact: Andrew Clement, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto andrew.clement@utoronto.ca This Statement on ischool responses to the challenges of NSA mass state surveillance is in the public domain and can be found at: Follow #NSAiSchool on Twitter for news and updates. Statement on ischool responses to the challenges of NSA mass state surveillance 4

5 NOTES [i] [ii] Tony Hey, Microsoft USA, Beyond Open Access, to Open Data, Keynote abstract, for iconference 2014, Berlin, March 5, [iii] See #AskSnowden event held at Ryerson University, March 4, and student organized video chat with Snowden at Toronto s Upper Canada College s World Affairs Conference Jan [iv] See: [v] See the IXmaps ( ) and New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting research projects ( ) [vi] See: [vii] See: [viii] See: [ix] See: The University of British Columbia s EduCloud Server Service [x] See ecommunications Outsourcing project, University of Toronto, [xi] See Citizenfour film screening by the Surveillance Studies Centre, Queens University, January 26, 2015, [xii] See the Munk Debate on State Surveillance, May 2, 2014, [xiii] Humanities Faculty at Rostock University, Germany, decided to award Edward Snowden an honorary doctorate degree. See: Snowden has also been inaugurated as the rector of the University of Glasgow. [xiv] [xv] See the RESOLUTION ON THE NEED FOR REFORMS FOR THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY TO SUPPORT PRIVACY, OPEN GOVERNMENT, GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY adopted by the Council of the American Library Association Tuesday, July 2, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois Source: UTION%20ON%20THE%20NEED%20FOR%20REFORMS%20FOR%20THE%20INTELLIGEN CE%20COMMUNITY%20TO%20SUPPORT%20PRIVACY%2C%20OPEN%20GOVERNMENT %2C%20GOVERNMENT%20TRANSPARENCY%2C%20AND%20ACCOUNTABILITY.pdf [xvi] Statement on ischool responses to the challenges of NSA mass state surveillance 5