Sydney Ideas

Contemporary governments frame surveillance and secrecy as evils necessary to ensure our security. Individual privacy has been trumped by the need for covert behaviour on the part of states and corporations who collect and store our personal metadata and monitor our activities via new technologies without our knowledge or consent. We ask: how does the gathering and suppression of information subvert our right to know and preclude the media from exposing wrongdoing and holding officials accountable? What are the existing accountability mechanisms, and what are the challenges current surveillance measures pose to these? Panellists: - Ian Shaw, political geographer at the University of Glasgow, UK - Felicity Ruby, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney - Peter Fray, professor of journalism practice at the University of Technology Sydney, the founder of the fact-checking website PolitiFact Australia and the former editor-in-chief or editor o