10.4 The value of Privacy

CSP Conceptual Framework

• • IOC-1 - While computing innovations are typically designed to achieve a specific purpose, they may have unintended consequences.

    • IOC-1.A - Explain how an effect of a computing innovation can be both beneficial and harmful.

    • IOC-1.B - Explain how a computing innovation can have an impact beyond its intended purpose.

    • IOC-1.F - Explain how the use of computing could raise legal and ethical concerns.IOC-2 - The use of computing innovations may involve risks to your personal safety and identity.

  • IOC-2 - The use of computing innovations may involve risks to your personal safety and identity.

    • IOC-2.A - Describe the risks to privacy from collecting and storing personal data on a computer system.

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards (2017)

IC - Impacts of Computing

• 2-IC-23 - Describe tradeoffs between allowing information to be public and keeping information private and secure.

• 3A-IC-29 - Explain the privacy concerns related to the collection and generation of data through automated processes that may not be evident to users.

• 3A-IC-30 - Evaluate the social and economic implications of privacy in the context of safety, law, or ethics.

• 3B-IC-28 - Debate laws and regulations that impact the development and use of any software.

Overview

Students develop their own opinions on the privacy tradeoffs inherent in many modern computing innovations. At the beginning of the lesson, students watch a video on facial recognition technology that presents the tradeoffs between convenience and privacy and asks them to determine whether they think the tradeoff is worth it. Students respond to two videos that look at different tradeoffs between privacy, security, and convenience. Students then evaluate the website or app they investigated in the previous lesson to determine if they think the benefits of the service outweigh the privacy risks. At the end of the class, students discuss whether they generally think convenience outweighs privacy concerns.

Purpose

The previous lesson exposed students too much of the data that is collected by the services they use, but it didn't ask them to reflect on their own opinions of those practices. This lesson now asks students to form opinions of their own about how a digital world in which more and more important innovations seem to come at the cost of their personal privacy.