The Writer’s Block: A Video Q&A with Antonio Casilli

A debate about mass surveillance, the right to privacy, and national security is happening now. Some have claimed that the age of privacy has ended, particularly with Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelation of global surveillance programs run by the NSA. Digital researcher Antonio Casilli maintains that Internet users and civil society organizations are engaged in a culture war with digital industry over the issues of confidentiality, anonymity, and secrecy – a war that they could very well win.

Antonio Casilli is associate professor of Digital Humanities at Telecom Paris Tech and the author or co-author of five books on subjects that include digital labor, the right to privacy, the Internet and the social structures within it. In the book Against the Hypothesis of the End of Privacy (Springer, 2014), co-authored with Yasaman Sarabi and Paola Tubaro, Antonio Casilli argues for the resiliency of online privacy and the impact the Internet is having on our private sphere. In October of 2015 he came to City of Asylum to present his research on online privacy and the impact of the Internet on the private sphere. Before he presented his research, Sampsonia Way interviewed Antonio Casilli about his findings and what it means for digital consumers.