KSG on the Cutting Edge of Journalism
Karen Harmel and Melanie Roe
Issue date: 9/20/06 Section: KSG News
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The Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center sent 4 MPPs this summer to work in investigative journalism for a project called News21. Five universities, including KSG, comprise the News21 project under the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism.
Each KSG fellow worked with 10 other graduate students from a leading journalism school on a homeland security topic with the goal of producing innovative approaches to reporting. The Citizen presents two of those stories:
Karen Harmel, MPP2
Topic: Privacy in an Age of Security
I spent the summer working in Washington, DC, with students from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Our focus was on the balance between security and civil liberties in the post-9/11 era.
The group worked on a comprehensive guide to federal data-mining programs, as part of an effort to determine how the government's anti-terrorism efforts have affected individuals' privacy. The information we compiled went into an interactive web application that helps users determine which homeland security data-mining programs incorporate their personal information.
My major project was a story on biometrics at Walt Disney World, the largest commercial application of biometric technology. Finding that all visitors to Orlando theme parks had their finger geometry analyzed at turnstiles, I attempted to determine whether the biometric technology could be used for homeland security.
A Medill student and I researched Disney's relationship with the government and its use of biometrics. We found Disney's ties to the government closer than we anticipated: former Disney executives have worked for and advised such organizations as the National Security Agency (NSA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and Senate Intelligence Committee.
In the biometrics field, Disney has considered adopting face recognition technology, and is currently upgrading its finger geometry readers to fingerprint scanners - developments that had not previously been reported in the mainstream media.
Each KSG fellow worked with 10 other graduate students from a leading journalism school on a homeland security topic with the goal of producing innovative approaches to reporting. The Citizen presents two of those stories:
Karen Harmel, MPP2
Topic: Privacy in an Age of Security
I spent the summer working in Washington, DC, with students from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Our focus was on the balance between security and civil liberties in the post-9/11 era.
The group worked on a comprehensive guide to federal data-mining programs, as part of an effort to determine how the government's anti-terrorism efforts have affected individuals' privacy. The information we compiled went into an interactive web application that helps users determine which homeland security data-mining programs incorporate their personal information.
My major project was a story on biometrics at Walt Disney World, the largest commercial application of biometric technology. Finding that all visitors to Orlando theme parks had their finger geometry analyzed at turnstiles, I attempted to determine whether the biometric technology could be used for homeland security.
A Medill student and I researched Disney's relationship with the government and its use of biometrics. We found Disney's ties to the government closer than we anticipated: former Disney executives have worked for and advised such organizations as the National Security Agency (NSA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and Senate Intelligence Committee.
In the biometrics field, Disney has considered adopting face recognition technology, and is currently upgrading its finger geometry readers to fingerprint scanners - developments that had not previously been reported in the mainstream media.
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