Digital Civil Liberties Seminar

3 units

Enrollment limit: 16. Drop deadline: 11:59 pm the day after the first class meeting. This readings seminar will focus on emerging issues of civil liberties in cyberspace, with special attention paid to freedom of speech and privacy in the age of artificial intelligence. We will explore the potential and dangers of the Internet revolution in communications, and how it is affected by the activities of users, by companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and by government attempts to restrain or shape the evolution of online activity through law. The course will be structured around discussions of principal readings of recent (and hopefully readable) books and articles. There will be three student papers required: two short 3-page papers due during the semester providing a critical review of one of the readings chosen by the student, and a longer 10-page paper due at the end of exams comparing and critiquing two or more of the principal readings. The instructor will provide writing feedback on the shorter papers to guide the drafting of the longer paper, with the goal of helping students write clearly about complex subjects. Grades will be a combination of the papers and class participation. [BCCCR Requirement: this course contains 2 hours of BCCCR instruction.]