Transcript Presentation Materials – Rockwell, G.

Teaching
Analytics after
Snowden
Geoffrey Rockwell
U of Alberta
@GeoffRockwell
The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it
to intercept almost everything. With this
capability, the vast majority of human
communications are automatically ingested
without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails
or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use
intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords,
phone records, credit cards. I don't want to live
in a society that does these sort of things …
—Edward Snowden, June 10, 2013
https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-spying-relies-on-atts-extreme-willingness-to-help
PRISM
CSEC Slides
Network Knowledge Engine
CSEC Olympia System
Footnotes on what has come before
Outline
• Why engage big data
analytics?
• What skills and literacies
to consider?
• Ways of teaching
analytics?
• Confronting surveillance
fatigue
Why bother?
•
•
•
•
Demand for digital literacies
Changing interpretative practices
Control of code
Democratic participation
https://icrunchdatanews.com/big-data-analytics-jobs-index/
Effects of big data
• Volume, Velocity and Variety
• How do our practices change when challenged by
millions of digital books?
• Infrastructure changes
• Moretti and distant reading
• Interpreting and explaining
• Scale and completeness
• Unanticipated uses
• Code Control
Democratic Participation
The time to bring digital and media literacy into
the mainstream of American communities is
now. People need the ability to access, analyze
and engage in critical thinking about the array of
messages they receive and send in order to
make informed decisions about the everyday
issues they face regarding health, work, politics
and leisure.
Hobbs, R. (2010). Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of
Action. Report of the Aspen Institute, Washington, D.C.
http://www.knightcomm.org/digital-and-media-literacy/
Competencies we might engage
• Analyze structured and unstructured data
– Text analysis and statistics
– Visualization and story-telling
• Learn, use and interpret tools
– Adapt and build tools
• Ability to design, gather and enrich a corpus
– Manage data for long-term use
• Research histories of technology
– Critically assess claims to knowledge from data
Embedded Toys
Game of Writing
Game of Writing (Gwrit)
Comment Networks
Voyant-Tools.org
voyant-tools.org
docs.voyant-tools.org
Standard Skin
http://philosophi.ca/pmwiki.php/Main/IntroductionT
oVoyant
Scatter Skin
Embedded Hermeneutica
Intensity Experience
Wiki-scraper: Paper at CSDH
http://analytics.artsrn.ualberta.ca/wiscker/
Analyzing Terrorism
Agenda
Here is a tentative schedule for today's research
discussions. We are focused on getting the
papers/posters done:
10:00am Wikiscraper (AB, ZP)
10:15am Gamergate (AB, RC, ZP, TS, JG)
11:00 Text mining (KS, JM, RC, JG, TS)
11:30 crowdsourcing - social network of novel (AI, JG)
12:00 GWrit and TAPoR (AI, KR, OR, MM)
Rob Ford and the hairball problem
http://analytics.artsrn.ualberta.ca/viz/
#gamergate – gathering tools
Searching #gamergate corpus
http://analytics.artsrn.ualberta.ca/viz/ggwords/
doi:10.7939/DVN/10253
How to read the CSEC slides?
SIGINT Hermeneutics
Visual Programming
Orrerie
Tools Communicating Theory
• They can display their workings in a way that allows the
user to understand the principles rather than hide
them.
• They can be manipulated to aide understanding.
• They are embedded in a context (like equipment) that
draws attention to how they communicate theory
• They are supplemented by other materials like code,
documentation, and labels that encourages their use as
theoretical things.
• They are designed to resist or interrupt production use
while drawing attention to their theoretical workings.
How can we preserve software?
• Preserve metadata about software
• Create and preserve documents about
software
Reviews, Manuals, Screenshots, Design Docs, Walkthroughs
• Emulate functionality (reinvent the wheel)
• Maintain working system
• Deposit code
Snowden Archive
https://snowdenarchive.cjfe.org/
tapor.ca
methodi.ca
Methods Commons
“First one thousand words in ‘Oliver Twist’” from Mendenhall 1887
Notebook
Surveillance Fatigue
What I think the Snowden revelations have done
is certainly created the impression among the
public that the spies are scooping up everything:
everything we do, all the data, every swipe
every click, every bit of browsing history. So
they’re omnipotent, they’re omnipresent …
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/14/humanintelligence-snowden-surveillance-nsa-gchq
Video games and ethical formation
The lesson Snowden had learned from immersion in
video games, he said, was that just one person,
even the most powerless, can confront great
injustice. “The protagonist is often an ordinary
person, who finds himself faced with grave
injustices from powerful forces and has the choice
to flee in fear or to fight for his beliefs. And history
also shows that seemingly ordinary people who are
sufficiently resolute about justice can triumph over
the most formidable adversaries.”
Greenwald, No Place to Hide
Thanks
Geoffrey Rockwell
[email protected]