New Ideas CityHello Museum

Panel Discussion: Full Disclosure and the Morality of Information

Part of the Conference Pass
Watch the event on the New Museum’s YouTube Channel.

Everything we do, from messaging our friends to streaming music to using public transportation, generates information. 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone, and its sheer volume means that a vast proportion of our lives exists as an invisibile online record of our identities, interests, and affiliations. Yet even after recent revelations of mass collection on the part of governments, we take surprisingly little interest in what happens to our data. This panel will comprise internationally renowned researchers, activists, and geographers whose work is organized around the practice of making visible, through art and activism, the critical importance of data and privacy to the perpetuation of democracy in the twenty-first century.

Trevor Paglen
Artist, Geographer, and Author
Trevor Paglen is credited with coining the term “Experimental Geography” to describe practices coupling experimental cultural production and art-making with ideas from critical human geography about the production of space, materialism, and praxis. Paglen’s visual work has been exhibited in museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, and Tate Modern, London.

Christopher Soghoian
Principal Technologist and Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project
Between 2009 and 2010, Christopher Soghoian was the first in-house technologist at the Federal Trade Commission’s Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, where he worked on investigations of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Netflix. Prior to joining the FTC, he co-created the Do Not Track privacy anti-tracking mechanism now adopted by all of the major web browsers. His PhD, completed at Indiana University in 2012, focused on the role that third-party service providers play in facilitating law enforcement surveillance of their customers.

Jillian C. York
Director for International Freedom of Expression, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Jillian C. York’s work focuses on free expression, particularly in the Arab world. She has written for a variety of publications, including Al Jazeera, the Atlantic, the Guardian, Foreign Policy, and CNN. York recently contributed a chapter to the volume Beyond WikiLeaks: Implications for the Future of Communications, Journalism and Society (2013).

Gabriella Coleman (moderator)
Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy, Art History and Communication Studies Department, McGill University
Trained as an anthropologist, Gabriella Coleman teaches, conducts research, and writes on computer hackers. Her work examines the ethics of online collaboration and institutions as well as the role of the law and digital media in sustaining various forms of political activism. Her new book, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, published by Verso, has been named as one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2014.