The STS "Surveillance and You" Civic Forum was an event designed to bring together stakeholders from several different societal groups including members of the general public, private sector, government and academia.

By A report by the STS team

Participants were mixed in terms of gender, ethnicity, age, occupation, and experience with knowledge level about the issue of surveillance. Everyone walked in the door with at the very least and opinion and this blend created an environment rich in dialog and information sharing from many perspectives.

Upon arrival at the Civic Forum, attendees were reminded of the "costs" of privacy and the ubiquity of surveillance, through participation in a "Privacy Economy." In exchange for $5 worth of "Anonymity Dollars" participants were given the option to give their digital fingerprint. Attendees were given a badge with an IP address instead of a name. For another Anonymity Dollar a participant had the option to purchase their true name or they could opt to stick with the IP Address. For a few more Anonymity Dollars they could purchase alias name badges such as "Harry Potter" or "Lois Lane" or a white mask to cover their face to fully protect their privacy at the Forum. The "Privacy Economy" brought into sharp focus the issues of surveillance, privacy, what we as individuals are willing to sell in order to be able to participate in our monitored environments, and the fact that maintaining privacy can be costly.

Privacy money and masks in hand, the participants then entered the main auditorium where they were confronted by additional surveillance decisions. These came in the form of several persons armed with cameras and clipboards who engaged the attendees by filming them, and asking personal questions about their individual lives. Some of the questions seem innocuous such as, "Who is your dentist?" others clearly more invasive including, "What is your Social Security Number?" The concept of this exercise was to create an environment of awareness and engagement to get people thinking about what information they regularly share, with whom they share it, how they convey information, and why. Comments from participants on these activities ranged from "thanks for making us think" and "how fun that we can play with our identity" to "why do you need this information" and "what are we doing?"

The STS "Surveillance and You" Civic Forum was designed to engage the participants in a variety of ways including the initial interactive activities, the viewing of a documentary film "Surveillance and You," a question/answer session with a panel of surveillance experts and smaller discussion sessions each led by a panel member. Each panelist gave a short introduction on surveillance, highlighting issues and topics they deemed most important. Notably, panelist Brian Roberts (Vice President for Information Technology, Information Technology Services, UT Austin) asked the question, "We could put surveillance everywhere – but it's not everywhere. What drives it?" Following this important query, panelist Sirkka Jarvenpaa (James L. Bayless/Rausher Pierce Refsnes, Inc. Chair in Business Administration, Department of Information Risk, and Operations Management, Red McCombs School of Business, UT Austin) commented, "There is a very strong relationship between surveillance and trust… so when we bring this to the societal level, the level of trust influences the impact of surveillance." Panelist Philip Doty (Associate Professor, School of Information, UT Austin) remarked, "Data-mining generates false positives, where the innocent are identified as threats, and false negatives where the guilty are not… the myth of perfect information leads us astray." Overarching themes of innocence, guilt, the role of government, and the rights of citizens guided much of the discussions. Lance Hayden, (Ph.D. Candidate, School of Information, UT Austin and former CIA Officer) moderated the question/answer session, directing questions elicited from the audience and interjecting his own comments periodically. Members of the panel had varying backgrounds ranging from the Air Force and CIA to industry and academia. Attendees and panelists re-convened after the small discussion sessions to summarize the major surveillance themes of their discussions and reflect on the issues. The formal Civic Forum program was followed by an optional workshop on computer security.

Ten student volunteers helped with the initial set-up of the auditorium and start of the event by putting out signage/acting as guides so the attendees could easily find the parking garage and Civic Forum location on the UT Austin campus. In addition, several volunteers were involved in the interactive engagement activities and were simply excellent in these roles of playing with the participants. We are grateful to the volunteers for taking the time to serve UT Austin and the community.

The Civic Forum was a wonderful learning experience for everyone involved as the issue of surveillance was explored from many different perspectives and through a variety of engaging activities designed to engage every type of learner. From events such as the Civic Forum, the STS Team continues to learn the best ways to meet our outreach goals and refine our events to be the best possible. The Civic Forum is designed to create a new civic engagement model linking the university and the community to create an active citizenry engaged about societal impacts of surveillance and other technologies in terms of legality, morality, technology, security, privacy, and economics, etc. In addition, all attendees to the Civic Forum received a resource bag full of information to review after the Forum including a DVD of the short "Surveillance and You" documentary film, a CD with several PowerPoint presentations and other resources put together by the STS Team on the topic of surveillance.