In affiliation with the School of Engineering, the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts will welcome David Carroll for an Open VISIONS Forum (OVF) Espresso Series virtual lecture titled “Data Quest: Exposing Cambridge Analytica and the Reclaiming of My Voter Profile.”
In 2018, it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, had improperly obtained the personal data of more than 87 million Facebook users in order to influence both the Brexit referendum and the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
David Carroll became one of the best-known crusaders for data protection rights in the U.S. when he legally challenged the firm for access to the information in his voter profile, resulting in the only criminal conviction of now-shuttered Cambridge Analytica by Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office. His pursuit of data privacy became the subject of the BAFTA-nominated Netflix original documentary The Great Hack (2019), which revealed the dark side of social media in the wake of the 2016 election.
In his lecture, “Data Quest: Exposing Cambridge Analytica and the Reclaiming of My Voter Profile,” on Wednesday, March 3 at 7:30 p.m., Carroll will spotlight the inadequacies and vulnerabilities of big data, educate listeners on the perils of information theft and third-party surveillance, and reveal how U.S. data rights continue to lag behind other countries.
“Data protection is a structural problem. We don't have effective ways to hold companies accountable and to enforce when they commit data crimes because we don't even have a way to define, let alone prosecute, these data crimes,” Carroll told Business Insider in an interview with the financial and business news website. “We can see that the existing tools we have are not succeeding at what they're supposed to do. They're not fit for the purpose.”
Carroll, an associate professor of media design at The New School’s Parsons School of Design in New York City, holds a BA in religion and art history from Bowdoin College and an MFA in design and technology from Parsons. In addition to The Great Hack, coverage of his confrontation with Cambridge Analytica has appeared in articles written for Wired, Quartz, The Guardian, Motherboard, The Boston Review, and numerous international publications.
The OVF Espresso Series virtual event “Data Quest: Exposing Cambridge Analytica and the Reclaiming of My Voter Profile” by David Carroll is free and open to the public. For more information visit quickcenter.com, and to attend the online lecture on Wednesday, March 3 at 7:30 p.m. tune in to thequicklive.com.
