By Robin Treen, special projects coordinator, San Jose Museum of Art. Above: Installation view of Covert Operations featuring work by Trevor Paglen, © Andrew Weeks photography.

Some 50 years ago, surveillance belonged to the world of espionage, privacy could be obtained with doors and curtains and notions of security involved nations and borders. Following 9/11, the meanings of these three concepts began an evolution that continues to play out, shifting relative positions like pieces on a chessboard.

Through 32 works of contemporary art, 13 international artists explore life in a post-9/11 world in Covert Operations: Investigating the Known Unknowns, now open at the San Jose Museum of Art. Originally organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona, the exhibition invites viewers to consider surveillance, data collection and storage, public safety, privacy, civil rights, democracy, freedom and the increasingly complicated and sticky relationship between liberty and security.

Are we safer? Is privacy dead? Massive new public and private data collection programs have opened the doors to a dizzying array of digital surveillance techniques, not to mention uses for unfathomable amounts of information. Who is watching us? How are they watching? Have security and privacy become mutually exclusive?

Above: Installation view of Covert Operations featuring work by Jenny Holzer, © Andrew Weeks 

To answer these questions and explore some of the provocative issues raised in Covert Operations: Investigating the Known Unknowns, the museum decided to produce a  one-day symposium supported by Knight Foundation. We partnered with our neighbor, The Tech Museum of Innovation, where the subject of cyber security is being explored through a new exhibit, Cyber Detectives.

On  Saturday, Oct. 3,“Living in Public: (re)negotiating privacy + security + surveillance” will begin at The Tech in a morning session focusing on security and surveillance. Privacy, along with lunch, will be on the menu for two interactive afternoon sessions at the San Jose Museum of Art with plenty of time for the audience to ask questions and engage in the discussion.

It has been my personal pleasure to work with two committed and patient partners-in-planning: Marja van der Loo, curatorial associate at the San Jose Museum of Art and Michelle Maranowski, curator and exhibit developer at The Tech. As we sort out the last-minute logistical details of “Living in Public,” I am struck by the depth and breadth of the journey we have taken together. Simplicity gave way to complexity early in the planning process as we wondered how people reconcile the conflict between notions of privacy in the physical world with that of an online presence. What are the parameters of cyber security and whose responsibility is it? What is metadata? When did the definition of security expand to encompass the right to self-expression? Is surveillance really integral to security?

Most striking though was how often we were asked, “Why should I care?” Frequently followed by, “What does it matter?” The sense of resignation and powerlessness we encountered was all too common.

To help us navigate some of these challenging issues that touch all of our lives we assembled two panels. The morning session, moderated by Larry Magid, journalist and on-air technology analyst for CBS news, will include:

• Hasan Elahi, interdisciplinary media artist, associate professor at the University of Maryland, and director of the Digital Cultures and Creativity Honors program;
• Jennifer Granick, attorney and educator, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society;
• Nadia Kayyali, lawyer and activist with Electronic Frontier Foundation and
• Robin Stuart, principal threat researcher for Fortune 500 companies.

The afternoon panel will focus specifically on privacy and will include:

• Erin Berman, project manager, technology and innovation manager, San Jose Public Library;
• Claire C. Carter, curator of contemporary art, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona;
• Michelle Dennedy, vice president and chief privacy officer at Cisco Systems, Inc.;
• Ricardo Dominguez, co-founder, Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0, artist, and associate professor of visual arts, University of California, San Diego;
• Amy Sara Carroll, associate professor of American Culture, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and member of Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0 and
• Irina Raicu, director, Internet Ethics Program, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and certified information privacy professional.

We are very grateful for the support and encouragement we have received for our efforts to provide a forum to help us all consider and reconsider life in the digital age and the rapid, sometimes radical changes that have happened since 9/11. We hope the community will take advantage of this assembled brain trust to learn, be inspired and be empowered.

Above: Installation view of Covert Operations featuring works by Hasan Elahi and Trevor Paglen, © Andrew Weeks photography