Privacy matters to all of us. As digital communications continue to evolve, the surveillance of those tools also becomes more advanced. Understanding your digital footprint and how to encrypt your communication is fast becoming one of the most important skills for journalists, advocates, lawyers and other professionals to possess.
This one-day course will introduce you to two sets of different but complementary skills. The first half will take participants through some basic encryption and anonymisation tools that can be harnessed to help improve your communication and handling of sensitive information. The second half will show participants how to turn the tables and access information about government agencies and private contractors using Australia’s freedom of information laws.
Guardian Australia reporter Paul Farrell will guide you through the day and bring you up to speed with Australia’s laws surrounding digital surveillance and how to use basic encryption tools. He will show you how he has used freedom of information laws to build powerful investigations around asylum seekers, the defence department and tell complex stories about the world around us.
This course is for you if…
- You’re a journalist, advocate or professional and want to understand more about digital surveillance and how to improve your handling of sensitive information.
- You’re a journalist looking to develop a greater understanding of freedom of information laws for investigations.
- You work in a policy, advocacy or government and want to learn how to target freedom of information requests to your fields of interests.
PLEASE NOTE: Please bring a laptop to use in class. A course preparation document will be provided ahead of class.
Course description
This Masterclass will explore how digital surveillance works, what you can do about it and how to seek access to government information.
Topics covered on the day will include:
- Understanding Australia’s surveillance laws and how they can be used to access phone, email and web information
- Using basic encryption tools including PGP email encryption, Off-The-Record (OTR) chat and anonymised web browsing to help protect sensitive information
- How to brainstorm, draft and target freedom of information requests to get the data you’re seeking
- Building narratives and stories from freedom of information requests
- Analysing data from freedom of information requests and building narratives and basic data visualisations
No special skills will be required, as the course will introduce you how to use these tools from scratch. You will leave this Masterclass with a new understanding of surveillance laws, encryption techniques and will walk away with a clear understanding of how to use freedom of information requests in your professional work.
A limited number of spaces are available for this course with a student discount of 50%. Please contact masterclasses.australia@theguardian.com for more information.
Tutor profile
Paul Farrell is a Guardian Australia journalist who produces investigations on immigration detention, privacy and surveillance. He was the inaugural winner of the 2014 Amnesty International Australia award for best online/print news story. Before joining Guardian Australia he was a co-founder of Detention Logs, an investigative website dedicated to enhancing transparency in Australia’s immigration detention centres using freedom of information requests.
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Details
Date: Friday 13 March 2015
Times: 10am-5pm
Location: Surry Hills, Sydney
Price: $ 399
Event capacity: 16
Dress code: There is no dress code for Masterclasses. Please wear whatever you feel comfortable in.
To contact us, click here. Terms and conditions can be found here.
Returns policy
Tickets may be refunded if you contact us at least 7 days before the course start date. Please see our terms and conditions for more information on our refund policy.
