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The Conversation

Feb 6

2026

Cornell Cinema Ithaca, NY

Tickets
with

Karen Levy

Associate Professor, Department of Information Science, Cornell University

The Conversation— Surveillance and Doubt

From traffic cameras and video doorbells to ride sharing apps and “Find My Friends,” surveillance technologies have become increasingly embedded in our everyday lives, collecting data about where people are, what they are doing, and who they are with. But what are the consequences of this intensive data collection? What happens when these technologies are used to enforce rules, make decisions about people, and dictate behavior?

In this Science on Screen event, Dr. Karen Levy, Associate Professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell and associate member of the faculty of Cornell Law School, will discuss the social and ethical aspects of data-intensive technologies through the lens of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974).

Dr. Levy will discuss how data generated through surveillance technologies is used to control human behavior, focusing on the power of uncertainty about what data is being collected and about whom, and connecting the themes of the film to the ubiquity of surveillance in daily life.

Cornell Cinema Ithaca, NY

Tickets

Film Synopsis

A paranoid, secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that a couple he is spying on will be murdered.

Considered by many critics to be the artistic high point of director Francis Ford Coppola’s career, The Conversation conjures a dark atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion, a precursor to today’s surveillance society. In the film, Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is an obsessive loner who is hired to record the conversation of a young couple (Frederic Forrest, Cindy Williams) as they walk through San Francisco's Union Square. All of this is simple enough, until Caul begins to suspect that his employer (Harrison Ford) may have a darker ulterior motive. Tormented by memories of a previous case that ended badly, Caul becomes obsessed with the resulting tape, trying to determine if the couple are in danger.

About the Speaker

Karen Levy is an associate professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University, and associate member of the faculty of Cornell Law School. She researches how law and technology interact to regulate social life, with particular focus on social and organizational aspects of surveillance. Much of Dr. Levy's research analyzes the uses of monitoring for social control in various contexts, from long-haul trucking to intimate relationships. She is also interested in how data collection uniquely impacts, and is contested by, marginalized populations. Levy is the author of Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance. She is a New America Fellow and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.