10.3 Data Policies and Privacy

CSP Conceptual Framework

• • 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.

Overview

Students learn that the apps, websites, and other computing innovations they use every day require a lot of data to run, much of which they might consider being private or personal. In the warm-up students discuss which of a list of possible information types they consider private. Then students read the data policies from a website or service they use or know about. This investigation focuses on the kinds of data that are being collected, the way it's being used, and any potential privacy concerns that arise. A brief second activity reveals that even data that may not seem private, like a birthdate or zipcode, can be combined to uniquely identify them. To conclude the lesson students prepare for a discussion in the following class about the pros and cons of sharing all this data by journaling about their current thoughts on whether the harms of giving up this privacy are outweighed by the benefits of the technology they power.

Purpose

This lesson is closely tied with the one that follows. In today's lesson students focus primarily on understanding the kinds of data that are collected by modern apps, websites, and computing innovations, and the ways that this may sometimes lead to sharing private information. In the following lesson students will specifically discuss the pros and cons of sharing that information.