We live in an age where little of what we do is kept private. As we surf the web, the sites we visit and the buttons we click are logged and used for commercial purposes. Depending on where we live, our movement throughout the day may be tracked by GPS, by privately and publically owned surveillance cameras, and by countless cell phone cameras. Our financial, academic, and health records are held on servers that are sometimes breached. Personal information about us and our loved ones is readily available on the web, often because of our own over sharing, and our “right to be forgotten” is only a distant hope in many parts of the world. Depending on our race, ethnicity, or personal history, our location and communication may be monitored, even without a court order. Scientia’s colloquium series for the coming year will look at privacy from multiple perspectives, including computer science, law, architecture, history, and the future.

2016 Fall Lecture Schedule

• Tuesday, September 20, 4:00PM at McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

Annise Parker
Fellow, Doerr Institute for New Leaders
Presentation Title: Invisible Man? Where to draw the line in municipal surveillance

Click here to watch lecture video.

• Tuesday, October 20, 4:00PM at McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

Scott Colman
Assistant Professor, School of Architecture
Presentation Title: Prisonship Earth

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• Tuesday, November 15, 4:00 PM at McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

Jonathan Ishee
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics, UTHealth
Presentation Title: Privacy in the digital age, a comparative review of legal and policy framework in various jurisdictions

Video not available.

2017 Spring Lecture Schedule

• Thursday, January 26, 7:00PM at McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

SOLOMON BOCHNER LECTURE
Christopher Soghoian
Ph.D, formerly the Principal Technologist with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project
Presentation Title: Scoping law enforcement hacking

Privacy is in an arms race. What happens when the local police, like the FBI, hacks into webcams, smart phones and smart thermostats?

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• Tuesday, February 21, 4:00PM at McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

Steve Murdock
Allyn R. and Gladys M. Cline Professor in Sociology, Rice University
Presentation Title: Why is Privacy Critical to the Success of a Public Census: Observations from a Former Director of the United State Bureau of the Census
Professor Murdock will discuss the tension between gathering information about people through the Census and the privacy protections that are built into place for citizens.

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• Tuesday, March 21, 4:00PM at McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

Dan Wallach
Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Rice Scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University
Presentation Title: STAR-VOTE: A Secure, Transparent, Auditable, and Reliable Voting System

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• Tuesday, April 11, 4:00PM at McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

Kirsten Ostherr
Professror of English, Rice University
Presentation Title: Trust and Privacy in the Ecosystems of Wearable Technology and Self-Tracking Devices

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