Internet Ethics: Views From Silicon Valley

Last weekend, Santa Clara University hosted BroncoHack 2015—a hackathon organized by the OMIS Student Network, with the goal of creating “a project that is innovative in the arenas of business and technology” while also reflecting the theme of “social justice.” The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics was proud to be one of the co-sponsors of the event.

The winning project was “PrivaSee”—a suite of applications that helps prevent the leakage of sensitive and personally identifiable student information from schools’ networks. In the words of its creators, “PrivaSee offers a web dashboard that allows schools to monitor their network activity, as well as a mobile application that allows parents to stay updated about their kids’ digital privacy. A network application that sits behind the router of a school's network continuously monitors the network packets, classifies threat levels, and notifies the school administration (web) and parents (mobile) if it discovers student data being leaked out of the network, or if there are any unauthorized apps or services being used in the classrooms that could potentially syphon private data. For schools, it offers features like single dashboard monitoring of all kids and apps. For parents, it provides the power of on-the-move monitoring of all their kids’ privacy and the ability to chat with school administration in the event of any issues. Planned extensions like 'privacy bots' will crawl the Internet to detect leaked data of students who might have found ways to bypass a school's secure networks. The creators of PrivaSee believe that cybersecurity issues in connected learning environments are a major threat to kids' safety, and they strive to create a safer ecosystem.”

From the winning team:

"Hackathons are always fun and engaging. Personally, I put this one at the top of my list. I feel lucky to have been part of this energetic, multi-talented team, and I will never forget the fun we had. Our preparations started a week ago, brainstorming various ideas. We kick-started the event with analysis of our final idea and the impact it can create, rather than worrying about any technical challenges that might hit us. We divided our work, planned our approach, and enjoyed every moment while shaping our idea to a product. Looking back, I am proud to attribute our success to my highly motivated and fearless team with an unending thirst to bring a vision to reality. We are looking forward to testing our idea in real life and helping to create a safer community." - Venkata Sai Kishore Modalavalasa, Computer Science & Engineering Graduate Student, Santa Clara University

"My very first hackathon, and an amazing experience indeed! The intellectually charged atmosphere, the intense coding, and the serious competition kept us on our toes throughout the 24 hours. Kudos to ‘Cap'n Sai,’ who guided us and helped take the product to near perfection. Kudos to the rest of my teammates, who coded diligently through the night. And finally, thank you to the organizers and sponsors of BroncoHack 2015, for having provided us with a platform to turn an idea into a functional security solution that can help us make a difference." - Ashish Nair, Computer Science & Engineering Graduate Student, Santa Clara University

"Bronco-hack was the first hackathon I ever attended, and it turned to be an amazing experience. After pondering over many ideas, we finally decided to stick with our app: 'PrivaSee'. The idea was to come up with a way to protect kids from sending sensitive digital information that can potentially be compromised over the school’s network. Our objective was to build a basic working model (minimum viable product) of the app. It was a challenge to me because I was not experienced in the particular technical skill-set that was required to build my part of the app. This experience has most definitely strengthened my ability to perform and learn in high pressure situations. I would definitely like to thank the organizers for supporting us throughout the event. They provided us with whatever our team needed and were very friendly about it. I plan to focus on resolving more complicated issues that still plague our society and carry forward and use what I learnt from this event." - Manish Kaushik, Computer Science & Engineering Graduate Student, Santa Clara University

"Bronco Hack 2015 was my first Hackathon experience. I picked up working with Android App development. Something that I found challenging and fun to do was working with parse cloud and Android Interaction. I am really happy that I was able to learn and complete the hackathon. I also find that I'm learning how to work and communicate effectively in teams and within time bounds. Everyone in the team comes in with different skill levels and you really have to adapt quickly in order to be productive as a team and make your idea successful within 24hrs." - Prajakta Patil, Computer Science & Engineering Graduate Student, Santa Clara University

"I am extremely glad I had this opportunity to participate in Bronco Hack 2015. It was my first ever hackathon, and an eye-opening event for me. It is simply amazing how groups of individuals can come up with such unique and extremely effective solutions for current issues in a matter of just 24 hours. This event helped me realize that I am capable of much more than I expected. It was great working with the team we had, and special thanks to Captain Sai for leading the team to victory. " - Tanmay Kuruvilla, Computer Science & Engineering Graduate Student, Santa Clara University

Congratulations to all of the BroncoHack participants—and yes, BroncoHack will return next Spring!