Level: Grades 8 - 10
Overview
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In this lesson, students explore issues relating to privacy through a series of activities, surveys and quizzes. The unit begins with a quiz about access to personal information. Students then complete an opinion survey about privacy and compare their answers to classmates and Canadians in general. In “Who Knows What About Me?” students assess how much personal information has been collected about them, and in small groups, they assume the roles of various organizations in order to determine what information is necessary to collect, and where collection of personal information becomes invasive. In a privacy roundtable, students invite experts from the community to participate in a discussion about privacy issues, and in “It Could Happen to You” students write endings to stories that feature privacy related scenarios.
Learning Outcomes
Students:
- develop an awareness of their rights to privacy as citizens and consumers
- research and analyse information concerning a number of privacy issues
- develop critical thinking skills in determining personal ideas on privacy issues
Preparation and Materials
Photocopy the following reference sheets and student handouts:
Procedure
Day One
- Distribute A Privacy Quiz to students.
- Once students have completed the quiz, take up the answers and discuss their responses. Were students surprised by any of this?
In 1995, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and Fèdèration nationale des associations de consommateurs du Québec produced the report Surveying Boundaries: Canadians and their Personal Information.
Distribute the A Privacy Opinion Survey to students. When they are done, tally the class results and then compare this to the responses of the Canadians who were originally surveyed.
This report was the first opinion poll ever conducted by consumer groups on the protection of personal information in Canada. It’s results provided a much clearer and deeper understanding of actual experiences and concerns of Canadians about the use by others of their personal information. In its executive summary, the report concluded that:
Control over personal information is at the core of the social and legal issue called informational privacy, which can be summarized by the question: Who controls what personal information to what end? It refers to a fundamental conflict between the interests of many different stakeholders, who are usually divided into two groups: "data subjects" and "data users," but who are not always so easily categorized. The vision of an "information highway" anticipates individuals becoming both consumers and producers of information and transactional services. Consequently, the traditional concepts of "data subjects", "data users" and personal information protection must be replaced by more sophisticated models that better resemble the complicated web of social relations within which personal information flows.
Ask students:
- What do they mean when they say that the information highway (Internet) is going to change the way we traditionally think about “data subjects” and “data users?” (This report was conducted in 1995, just as the Internet was becoming mainstream.)
- With more and more information is being collected and stored electronically, what other privacy issues are emerging that might not have been considered in 1995?
Day Two
Do students feel that organizations know very much about them?
- Distribute Who Knows What About Me? and have students record what information others have collected about them. (Encourage them to think carefully about a wide variety of organizations, for example, their doctor’s office would have much of this information; if they have an shoppers’ card at their local pharmacy, their personal information is being combined with information about what they purchase and even what prescriptions they need.)
- As students complete this sheet, ask them to also consider whether or not this information is stored electronically. If so, would it be on a personal computer, or in an online data-base?
- Do students feel confident that information that has been stored electronically is secure?
- Do students know whether their personal information is shared with third parties?
- If so, who might these third parties be?
Day Three
Now students are going to look at information collection from the perspectives of different organizations.
- Working in a small group, choose the type of business or organization (a bank, an apartment building, a store, a hospital, a social service agency) you can imagine you might own or manage.
- List the information you would need to collect from your customers or clients.
- Beside each item, write the reason you think the information would be necessary.
Your chart might look like this:
Once this is done, exchange lists with another group. Do you agree with the other group's "information needed" list? Does it ask enough? Too much? Why?
Get one or more questionnaires or applications from a real organization like the one chosen by your group. Call the organization, describe your class project, and ask for an application. Once you receive the application, compare it with your invented "information needed" list. What are the differences between its questions and yours? Why does the organization want the information requested?
As a class, review all the real applications you collected. Do any of them allow you to opt out of direct-mailing lists? Do any explain how your information will be used?
Activities
Activity One: Privacy Roundtable
In a roundtable, people sit down together to discuss questions and answers about an issue. A Privacy Roundtable would include you and invited experts from your community. It would probably last for one period. Here's how to create an exciting roundtable event:
Before the Day
1. As a class, think of businesses and organizations in your community you would like to invite. Then think of whom you should call within that business. For example, it could be a school administrator or guidance counselor, a retail store credit manager or a personnel manager from a business, a lawyer, a hospital records manager, a journalist who writes about privacy, or a consumer advocate.
2. One group of students should be assigned to invite your roundtable guests; another should create questions and discussion points for the roundtable discussions. (For example, what's the business' perspective? Or the consumer advocate's perspective? Who takes what steps to protect individual privacy?)
3. Before your roundtable, distribute your list of questions and discussion points in your class. Send copies to your guests, as well.
On the Day
4. Divide your class into small groups. Arrange tables and chairs for discussions. Place one or more guests at each table. Choose one student as moderator and one as secretary for each group.
5. Within each group, begin the discussion by having each person complete the statement: "In today's world, the privacy of personal information is..." Use the answers as a discussion starter.
6. Talk about each of the points on the discussion outline. The moderator should make sure that everyone gets a chance to talk. The secretary should record the points people make: concerns, business and advocate perspectives, and answers to questions.
7. Reconvene the entire class. Each secretary or moderator reports on his or her table's discussion. Together, the class summarizes the overall findings.
Activity Two: It Could Happen to You
Distribute the student worksheet It Could Happen to You to students.
1. Choose one story to focus on. Briefly jot down an ending for the story, and then answer the questions below. Use your answers to discuss the stories in class.
2. What is the privacy issue in the story?
3. In your story ending, how was the customer's privacy protected?
4. In your story ending, did the business get all the information it really needed? Did it get all the information it wanted? Why or why not? What should the business do in the future to protect privacy of information for its customers?
Using the It Could Happen to You - Some Possible Endings sheet as a guide, discuss answers as a class.
Evaluation
