Department of Information Studies

University at Albany

Contemporary Issues:

Privacy, Security, Copyright, etc.

You are an information systems professional with five years experience. Your friends and co-workers value your evident technical skills and insight. Your manager has asked you and several co-workers in your team to make a presentation to a professional group that includes members from the computer industry, academia, and government. She knows that—as a graduate of IST 499w—you are knowledgeable about leading edge social and professional issues like privacy , security and related risks of computing, copyright, etc.

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Given this, she has given you the option to prepare a presentation on one of several topics:

1. what can be done to improve privacy on the Internet?
2. what can be done to improve security on the Internet?
3. what should be done to address copyright concerns? or
4. what other topic is worth bringing to the attention of this audience?

You are free to define the problem in your own terms. For example, you can concentrate on a single or multiple risks to privacy; similarly, you can address security as a risk created by hackers, by Operating System design, or by network limitations, etc. Remember you are preparing material for a professional audience: you are expected to make sophisticated recommendations.

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Your manager expects your team to prepare a PowerPoint presentation, but leaves it up to you to figure out how each member gets a speaking role. As a guideline, she expects your team to make a presentation for 15 minutes (but limits you to no more than 20 minutes). You should also be prepared for questions after your pesentation. You are expected to have slide handouts for your audience and to draft a one-page summary that can be circulated to those who cannot attend the presentation. Your slides are expected to include graphics, of course.

She has not said so, but you surmise that your upcoming performance evaluation (grade) will be influenced by how creatively and self-confidently you "deliver" your presentation.

Remember you must attribute the source of any thing (even if not copyrighted) that you incorporate into your presentation. You can acknowledge this by providing a separate citations page (or if space is available, by indicating sources in the slides themselves).

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Last updated: 10/8/07