Privacy Is Equality—And It's Far from Dead

A talk at DEF CON 25 claimed that privacy is "gone and never coming back." This talk offers a different view, inviting the audience to see privacy as fundamentally about equality-something we have never fully had but also should never regard as gone. The speaker is a human rights lawyer and investigator, and will draw on decades of human rights thinking about state surveillance as well as her 2017 revelations about Defense Department monitoring of "homegrown violent extremists." Adopting a feminist and race-conscious perspective and inviting audience participation, the talk will challenge received wisdom about basic concepts such as privacy, national security, the warrant requirement, and online radicalization. With a view to the future, it will also offer a thought-provoking history of the connections between privacy and equality in the United States-and the ways unchecked surveillance operates to categorize us and reinforce divisions between us. It is easy to forget that _1984_ was partly a story about poverty and economic inequality. This talk embraces Orwell's insight into the connection between the erosion of privacy and a dangerous loss of equality, and carries it forward.