Teaching encryption as a safeguard of civil liberties

Image
A person teaching a class.

Glencora Borradaile, professor of computer science, has published “Defend Dissent,” an introductory textbook on digital security emphasizing the role of encryption technology in protecting civil liberties. Although Borradaile uses the text in a course they teach, the material, drawn from examples of U.S. social movements, is intended to be accessible to any curious person.

“There wasn’t a good single resource written at the right level,” Borradaile said. “There are training materials by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the like that aren’t deep enough for a university course, and there are cryptography and security texts that aren’t appropriate for my nonmajor, freshman-level audience. I also wanted to make sure it would be of interest to nonstudents.”

Borradaile’s Communications Security and Social Movements course has proven popular with students in both technical and nontechnical majors. The course motivates learning about communications security by including historical and contemporary examples of surveillance used to hinder social movements, such as the civil rights movement.

“Defend Dissent” was published as an open, English-language text-book and is about to be released in Spanish. A digital copy may be downloaded free from open.oregonstate.education/defenddissent.

March 3, 2022

Featured Researchers