Digital Privacy: Post-script
Alhamdulillah, on January 17, Imidiwan held its inaugural event, where we welcomed participants from across the world for the “Digital Privacy in an Age of Hyper-Surveillance” info-session. We thank the presenter for sharing his deep knowledge with us, and we thank the participants for their attendance and thoughtful questions.
As the most common targets of surveillance, digital privacy is a critical topic for we Muslims to understand to protect ourselves, our families and our communities. As the speaker explained, there is a wealth of evidence showing that intelligence agencies have been targeting minorities, activists, and whistleblowers for many years, with enormous amounts of data being collected from the digital platforms we use daily. Moreover, in the age of Surveillance Capitalism, big tech companies are monetizing predictable behaviors based on metadata captured from all our online interactions and devices.
The presenter used spiritual and ethical evidence to support his argument that privacy is a fundamental human right. He also refuted some of the most frequent arguments people tend to make for why they don’t care about digital privacy, providing detailed evidence of why those arguments don’t actually hold up. He addressed misconceptions around end-to-end encryption, how metadata is “the new oil,” why open source code matters, and the role of data in the age of surveillance capitalism. He brought all these concepts together in a practical case study comparing how data is collected and used in WhatsApp versus Signal. (Spoiler: Your WhatsApp communications are not as private as you may think!)
Other key topics discussed were:
AI-fueled genocide
Privacy breaches from Meta, Cambridge Analytica, Google, etc.
Psychographic targeting and predictive policing
Dark patterns that ‘engineer’ certain online behaviors
Basic steps we can take to transition to more privacy-friendly alternatives
The session was held on Jitsi, a privacy-friendly, open-source video conferencing platform. Although there can be a learning curve when making a switch to privacy-friendly platforms, we think Jitsi functioned just as well as the more well-known options such as Zoom and Google Meet.
Finally, the speaker has provided the following references and resources for us to continue on our "digital hijra" [hijra=migration]. We hope it helps you on your journey!
Books:
Trusted Resources:
https://www.privacyguides.org/
https://www.nbtv.media/
We are grateful to you, The Muslim Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh (MCCGP), and the Pittsburgh Professional Muslim Network (PPMN) for supporting this initiative. We look forward to offering more thought-provoking programming to the Muslim community in Pittsburgh and beyond.
مع السلامة
Written in collaboration with PPMN