The Innovation Hubs

The Internet we use every single day – to do our banking, rent our cars, plan our travel, manage our kid's school bake sale, read the news, and interact with friends – that Internet looks like this picture. It's like a sky of a billion points of light, twinkling with potential and wonder.

But according to professor of communications Dr. Jonathan Obar and local cryptographer James Donaldson (founder of Toronto Crypto), like the picture, the Internet is hopelessly broken. Those billions points of brilliance hide a much less poetic reality: mass surveillance from nation-state and corporate actors – "we do it because we can, and because we don't know when your data will become valuable;" travel websites juicing the prices based on your repeat visits, to encourage you to buy; and a tiny group of companies controlling millions of people's access; not to mention their sorry record on protecting consumer privacy. And like the heavens lurking above us wherever we go, we cannot simply turn away in disgust, and refuse to use, or opt out. Many of our basic tasks today are difficult-to-impossible to accomplish without the Internet, just getting access to government services requires us to go online, and previously analogue technologies that were known and comfortable (like a telephone or a television) are now digital and networked.

What is to be done??

Join Dr. Jonathan Obar and James Donaldson for a panel discussion on the many ways in which the Internet is broken, and what we as individuals, and organizations, can do about it. Bloor/Gladstone branch hosts this remarkable discussion, Thursday, June 15, 6:30-8 p.m. Please join us. If you want to prepare beforehand, or are looking for further reading, consider Data and Goliath (Bruce Schneier, 2015), and The Art of Invisibility (Kevin Mitnick, 2017) – two books that not only dissect how broken things are online, but both offer practical steps for individuals and organizations to mitigate the problems.

This is part of TPL's Digital Privacy Initiative – an effort to help the public take back control of their digital lives, and place TPL as a leading advocate for our patrons digital privacy and online security. Questions about this event or the project can be directed to Jonathon Hodge – Digital Privacy Project Lead. jhodge@torontopubliclibrary.ca.