CS 5/692, Winter 2020

January 6 / Week 1

Introductory Session

I would like for our industry to be more like librarians. Librarians have a sense of who they are as a profession. They have a central ethical code around patron privacy. The current Librarian of Congress fought John Ashcroft and was ridiculed by him for the idea that people have a right to read what they want to read without it being reported to the FBI. When you go to library school, you absorb this. If you violate it, you’re shunned by your profession. And no one’s bringing in Ukrainian librarians to circumvent it—it’s not like they’re going to offshore library science to get around patron privacy.

You see this in other fields. Doctors say do no harm. Journalists—in theory, at least—are trying to speak truth to power. But we in the tech industry don’t have anything like that. We need some kind of professional identity about who we are and why we do what we do. It can’t just be about “moving fast and breaking things” or not being evil. We need an organization that takes collective action on behalf of its employees and ensures their voice is heard in major decisions affecting the lives of millions of people. Decisions that determine how data is collected, how it’s stored, and what rights people have to it.

— from an interview with Maciej Cegłowski by Ben Tarnoff (full citation below)

Overview of course, foundational concepts, etc.

Readings

Useful resources:

Office of Research Integrity

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Deadly Deception

unit index