83 - Privacy is Power

Philosophical Disquisitions

Are you being watched, tracked and traced every minute of the day? Probably. The digital world thrives on surveillance. What should we do about this? My guest today is Carissa Véliz. Carissa is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute of Ethics in AI at Oxford University. She is also a Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College Oxford. She works on privacy, technology, moral and political philosophy and public policy. She has also been a guest on this podcast on two previous occasions. Today, we’ll be talking about her recently published book Privacy is Power.

You can download the episode here or listen below. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify and other podcasting services (the RSS feed is here).

Show Notes

Topics discussed in this show include:

• The most surprising examples of digital surveillance
• The nature of privacy
• Is privacy dead?
• Privacy as an intrinsic and instrumental value
• The relationship between privacy and autonomy
• Does surveillance help with security and health?
• The problem with mass surveillance
• The phenomenon of toxic data
• How surveillance undermines democracy and freedom
• Are we willing to trade privacy for convenient services?
• And much more

Relevant Links

• Carissa's Webpage
• Privacy is Power by Carissa
• Summary of Privacy is Power in Aeon
• Review of Privacy is Power in The Guardian
• Carissa's Twitter feed (a treasure trove of links about privacy and surveillance)
• Views on Privacy: A Survey by Sian Brooke and Carissa Véliz
• Data, Privacy and the Individual by Carissa Véliz

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