Other people's surveillance syllabi

Peter Shields' Surveillance Syllabus by Richard Smith — last modified 2004-11-30 12:44

Peter is at Bowling Green University. I received this from Torin Monahan at Arizona State. This is the description from the page: "There is no doubt our lives are now subject to ever-greater means of surveillance that take a variety of forms. Electronically-based communications and information technologies have been heavily involved in this intensification of surveillance practices and processes. These technologies enable corporate and government organizations to collect and share massive amounts of information about our everyday lives -- our tastes, our preferences, our actions and our bodies. This has led many to conclude that we now live in a "Surveillance Society" where privacy is rapidly eroding and social divisions are being reinforced. Paradoxically, at the same time as many electronically-based information and communication technologies have been involved in the intensification of surveillance practices, law enforcement and national security agencies have expressed concern that these technologies are actually undercutting their surveillance capabilities. They point out that major changes in the telecommunications sector, particularly the rapid digitization of telecommunications networks, the explosive expansion of the Internet, and the proliferation of strong private sector encryption are said to threaten law enforcement's ability to catch criminals. Without more surveillance and other regulatory responses, their argument runs, drug traffickers, terrorists, money launderers, pedophiles, as well as "digital" pirates will be able to operate with impunity and anonymity in "virtual" sanctuaries -- this will be devastating to public safety, national security, and the economy it is argued. In this course, we will critically evaluate claims about the rise of the "Surveillance Society", the dangers of "cybercrime" and "cyberterrorism", and the demands for more electronic surveillance. We will also examine the responses to the growth in electronic surveillance. This will include an assessment of whether current US and international policy and legal frameworks are up to the challenges posed by the trends outlined above."

Heather Cameron's Syllabus by Richard Smith — last modified 2004-01-24 02:03

Heather Cameron, at the ZTG in Berlin, sent me this syllabus for her course on surveillance and society. She is teaching it in 2004.

Torin Monahan's Course at Arizona by Richard Smith — last modified 2004-11-30 12:45

Torin Monahan has a great surveillance course at Arizona State University. He sent me the link to the syllabus, and a PDF version, too. Here's the introduction and a link: "How are surveillance technologies altering social life in post-9/11 worlds? This course will explore this question by mapping the complex ways that technologies and societies interact to produce security, fear, control, and/or vulnerability. Some of the areas covered include anti-terrorism legislation, close-circuit television (CCTV) in public and quasi-public spaces, biometric technologies on the border, and a host of monitoring technologies in cyberspaces, workplaces, and the home. Readings will be drawn from the social sciences, science-fiction, and popular media. Several films will be shown to facilitate critical inquiry into the shaping of popular perceptions about the future and our role in its creation. The class is designed to give students freedom to develop and express their own ideas. The course goal is for you to cultivate a technological literacy that will allow you to analyze and critique surveillance technologies as social entities."

Torin Monahan's Course outline by Richard Smith — last modified 2004-08-22 18:02

How are surveillance technologies altering social life in post-9/11 worlds? This course will explore this question by mapping the complex ways that technologies and societies interact to produce security, fear, control, and/or vulnerability. Some of the areas covered include antiterrorism legislation, close-circuit television (CCTV) in public and quasi-public spaces, biometric technologies on the border, and a host of monitoring technologies in cyberspaces, workplaces, and the home. Readings will be drawn from the social sciences, science-fiction, and popular media. Several films will be shown to facilitate critical inquiry into the shaping of popular perceptions about the future and our role in its creation. The class is designed to give students freedom to develop and express their own ideas. The course goal is for you to cultivate a technological literacy that will allow you to analyze and critique surveillance technologies as social entities.

Steven Jackson UCSD - COSF 175 - syllabus by Richard Smith — last modified 2004-08-22 19:44

Communication, Surveillance, and Control. Summer 2004. This seminar explores connections between communication, surveillance and control in contemporary information societies. The first part of the seminar introduces some of the key conceptual and political issues framing current surveillance debates. The second part traces the historical development and contemporary practice of surveillance in three key arenas: the state, the workplace, and the market. The final weeks of the seminar are dedicated to issues of special contemporary concern: televisual surveillance, privacy and surveillance online, genetic and biometric surveillance, and the crafting of ethical and political responses to surveillant practices.

Trevor Darrell: 6.892 MIT Vision Interface Seminar by Richard Smith — last modified 2004-08-22 19:52

The internet will soon have eyes -- computer vision systems that can detect, track and recognize people and other objects. These systems will enable new perceptual interfaces between man and machine, including smart videoconferencing, expressive avatars, and rooms that recognize users and their gestures. They will allow the widespread tracking of people in outdoor spaces, with clear implications to notions of community, public safety, and privacy. This class will survey the algorithms and techniques involved in vision-based perception of people, and discuss the privacy, freedom and safety implications of this new technology. We will discuss the questions of whether these goals must be mutually exclusive and under what conditions this technology empowers or constrains the individual user. Topics:  Face Detection, Face Recognition, Appearance and Morphable models, Head Pose Estimation, Eye Gaze Tracking, Expression Recognition and FACS, Hand Tracking, Condensation (particle filter) Trackers, Gesture Recognition, Kinematic Pose Estimation, Dynamic Body Tracking,  Outdoor Visual Surveillance, Indoor Tracking for Smart Environments, Activity Description and Detection, Biometric Security issues,  Surveillance Privacy issues. Qualifies as a subject in the Artificial Intelligence Engineering Concentration.

Phillip F. Smith - Covert Surveillance by Richard Smith — last modified 2004-08-22 19:48

This course includes surveillance operations, unlawful surveillance operations, the plain view doctrine, expectation of privacy, enhanced view of homes, curtilage, open fields, workplace, public areas, liability of surveillance, and private sector surveillance.

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun - IN THE PUBLIC'S EYE: PUBLICITY AND SURVEILLANCE by Richard Smith — last modified 2004-08-22 19:52

Investigates the converging technologies and practices of publicity and surveillance.  We consider phenomena from the paparazzi to digital surveillance, from the commodification of privacy to reality television in order to analyze this convergence's impact on theories of the public sphere.  Readings will be theoretical and historical.   Enrollment limited to 20.  Written permission required. Class hours include viewing time.

Alex Havalais' Surveillance Course by Richard Smith — last modified 2004-08-23 22:00

The advent of networked computing and information technologies has provided new opportunities to observe from a distance. This seminar draws together graduate students who are interested in how new communications and surveillance technologies affect privacy and social interaction more generally. Why are some forms of communication private? How do these new technologies affect social technologies of privacy and intrusion that have existed in the past? How will the police, journalists, and citizens employ these technologies? The readings that are discussed will examine legal and policy protections of privacy, how the advent of new technologies has affected social structures, and how surveillance is related to control. Students are expected to help to lead the seminar, contribute to an accompanying web site, and to complete a substantial research project during the course of the semester. Though privacy generally provides a broad range of topics that may be of interest, our focus will be on surveillance: including dataveillance and the accumulation of dossiers, but also including new imaging and monitoring technologies presently in use and imagined. In this, it represents a counterpoint to the "Virtual Publics" seminar offered last year. The seminar is split into three main components, and a significant amount of space has been left to take the course in the directions that most interest the participants. This flexibility is built into a structure that requires three major elements: leading a meeting, creating an accompanying web resource, and completing a substantial research project.

Peter Shield's newest course outline - electronic surveillance by Richard Smith — last modified 2004-08-24 13:16

In western societies, everyday life is being monitored as never before in their history. Information-communication technologies are heavily involved in this intensification of surveillance practices and processes. These technologies enable organizations and agencies to collect and share massive amounts of information about our everyday lives; our tastes, our preferences, our actions and our bodies. Drawing on various theoretical and policy discourses, the course examines a number of questions: What factors are driving the intensification of electronic surveillance? What are the socio-political and cultural implications of this intensification? Is the growth of electronic surveillance being resisted and if so in what ways? Are current national and international policy approaches up to the challenges posed by the intensification of surveillance? The course also examines these questions by exploring particular modes and contexts of surveillance: the proliferation of network surveillance as a response to the wars on drugs and terrorism, the rise of so-called “digital piracy,” and the commercial impulse to constitute online audiences; the explosion of DNA screening and biometric monitoring (e.g., face recognition technology); and the construction of surveillance-intensive “smart borders” in North America. The broad course objective is to foster a critical understanding of the social implications of electronic surveillance by introducing students to a rich domain of theoretical and policy inquiry that raises fundamental questions about the relation of electronic surveillance to the changing nature of contemporary society, industrial process and cultural experience.

Simon Cole's UC Irvine Surveillance Course by Richard Smith — last modified 2004-11-30 12:42

This course will explore the accelerating development and deployment of surveillance technologies in contemporary society. We will discuss technologies including, but not limited to, surveillance cameras, eavesdropping devices, computer surveillance, government and corporate databases, remote sensing, and biometrics. Our focus will be on the social and legal impact of surveillance technologies, in such areas as crime control, privacy, trust, community, democracy, and the war on terror. The course will introduce a variety of theoretical perspectives on surveillance, and will ask whether surveillance poses a threat to liberty and privacy or in fact protects it. The course will conclude with a discussion of whether our view of surveillance should change in light of the events of September 11, 2001.