3.15: new jobs; the taking economy; risky research

updates and ideas from the D&S community and beyond

New Listen Episode:
Amanda Lenhart, Alice Marwick, and Zara Rahman on Online Harassment, Risky Research, and Activism

Around the Institute

We’re Hiring! Communications Manager & Research Project Lead: Media Manipulation

Data & Society seeks a Communications Manager (apply by: March 31) to manage the day-to-day priorities of the communications team and implement processes for our internal and external relations projects; and a Research Project Lead: Media Manipulation (apply by: April 3) to manage our research and intervention efforts on a project focused on the role of technology in the manipulation of institutions and information intermediaries.

The Taking Economy: Uber, Information, and Power

“Much activity is hidden away from view, but preliminary evidence suggests that sharing economy firms may already be leveraging their access to information about users and their control over the user experience to mislead, coerce, or otherwise disadvantage sharing economy participants.” — Ryan Calo and Alex Rosenblat

BONUS: TIME features the concept further in “The Latest Victim of Uber’s Disruption May Be Itself”.

Privacy, Poverty and Big Data: A Matrix of Vulnerabilities for Poor Americans

Mary Madden, Michele E. Gilman, Karen EC Levy, and Alice E. Marwick examine how poor Americans are impacted by privacy violations and discuss how to protect digital privacy for the vulnerable.

The fine print: seeing beyond the hype in technology for human rights

“Overall, it is essential for human rights workers to stay critical and see past the hype. Though a certain tool might seem like the easiest option now, what about in two years’ or five years’ time? What will you want to do with the data, and who owns it?” — Zara Rahman

Around the Around

The Heartbreaking Digital Search for Migrants Who Go Missing Crossing the US-Mexico Border

“I Have A Name/Yo tengo Nombre is a database that…can help families figure out if their loved ones were victims of crime in Central America, whether they were kidnapped in the south of Mexico, detained in the north, or were able to reach safety.” —Mercedes Matz

Facebook says police can’t use its data for ‘surveillance’

“It was unclear how Facebook would decide which emergencies and public events would warrant monitoring citizens’ data and which would constitute unreasonable ‘surveillance.’ ‘Surveillance’ was also not defined in the blog post, a potential gray area that outsiders can exploit.” —Elizabeth Dwoskin

The Truth About the WikiLeaks C.I.A. Cache

“If anything in the WikiLeaks revelations is a bombshell, it is just how strong these encrypted apps appear to be. Since it doesn’t have a means of easy mass surveillance of such apps, the C.I.A. seems to have had to turn its attention to the harder and often high-risk task of breaking into individual devices one by one.” —Zeynep Tufekci