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Privacy: are exhibitionists screwing everyone over?
Loren Michael
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
(found @ /.)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8446649.stm
People who post intimate details about their lives on the internet undermine everybody else's right to privacy, claims an academic.
Dr Kieron O'Hara has called for people to be more aware of the impact on society of what they publish online.
"If you look at privacy in law, one important concept is a reasonable expectation of privacy," he said.
"As more private lives are exported online, reasonable expectations are diminishing."
...
Basically, people who have no qualms about privacy are lowering expectations for what privacy should constitute. Do you agree with this, is it true? What are the implications, is this spelling the end of civilization as we know it?
I'm a reasonably private individual, and a sort of multifaceted, different-person-to-different-people personality is kind of what I do, and I think privacy (of a sort) is kind of integral to my lifestyle. Nevertheless, in principle, I have almost no qualms about a massive lack of privacy, I'm pretty sure I could adapt and I think it might actually be good for society. I have kind of a thing for the idea of a manner of panopticon imposed on society in general, after all.
So I don't think it's that bad, in the long run. I can see this causing disruption in the short run, however, as peoples' lifestyles are forced to conform to the new expectations of privacy, as peoples' private lives are outed and as comfortable or dangerous personal secrets become easier and easier to practically be stumbled into by coworkers and loved ones who might not be in the know.
What say you?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8446649.stm
People who post intimate details about their lives on the internet undermine everybody else's right to privacy, claims an academic.
Dr Kieron O'Hara has called for people to be more aware of the impact on society of what they publish online.
"If you look at privacy in law, one important concept is a reasonable expectation of privacy," he said.
"As more private lives are exported online, reasonable expectations are diminishing."
...
Basically, people who have no qualms about privacy are lowering expectations for what privacy should constitute. Do you agree with this, is it true? What are the implications, is this spelling the end of civilization as we know it?
I'm a reasonably private individual, and a sort of multifaceted, different-person-to-different-people personality is kind of what I do, and I think privacy (of a sort) is kind of integral to my lifestyle. Nevertheless, in principle, I have almost no qualms about a massive lack of privacy, I'm pretty sure I could adapt and I think it might actually be good for society. I have kind of a thing for the idea of a manner of panopticon imposed on society in general, after all.
So I don't think it's that bad, in the long run. I can see this causing disruption in the short run, however, as peoples' lifestyles are forced to conform to the new expectations of privacy, as peoples' private lives are outed and as comfortable or dangerous personal secrets become easier and easier to practically be stumbled into by coworkers and loved ones who might not be in the know.
What say you?
Loren Michael on
Posts
I honestly don't see the causation and I've been pretty vocal about privacy on this very forums.
Same here. Even on things that I keep locked down to only friends on social networks, I only post what I don't mind the whole world knowing. I never send an email that I anticipate to remain confidential. I always assume that whatever I post online or send in writing can be shared. It hasn't caused a problem yet.
and quite frankly I don't have a lot to hide either, I'm an OK civilian. I just don't want the government to have my fingerprints, know what trains I take at what times and more of those details about my life. Not because my fingerprints are on a murder weapon or because I take the train to rapeville every night while I should be knitting4peace at the church, but because I simply feel uncomfortable with anyone keeping track of those details about me.
If you are comfortable about that... Good for you, don't assume I am like you and don't use your own outlook on life as a baseline for the rest of society.
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
I have the same attitude but I'm much less certain what exactly is "postable" and what isn't. Depending on the social climate, a harmless blog entry from 2005 or a post somewhere can easily be turned against me. This might sound paranoid but these things do happen.
Edit: There was a very interesting case of confidential emails made viewable by a third party, fucking someone over as consequence at my college. It's a rather long and biased story though.
And Disney World is nowhere in sight.
So what you're saying here is that you don't think what a "reasonable expectation" constitutes is subject to shifting societal norms. I just hope the judges agree with you on that.
I don't think that's really what the issue is about. It doesn't seem to be "Oh no, I posted on Facebook that I was a cross-dresser and now my coworkers know!" so much as "I told my best friend that I was a cross-dresser and then he posted it online and now my coworkers know."
Basically, that people are going to have a tweaked view of what sort of details of one's life should reasonably be kept private.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
The idea seems to be that since people are now giving intimate details of themselves online that, twenty years ago, nobody would have shared with anybody, that our collective sense of privacy will be so buggered that people will no longer be able to tell what things they're supposed to keep secret.
Which I guess makes logical sense, but I'm somewhat dubious.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
That idea only really holds up if you think of humans as inherently stupid creatures, with no sense of shame or concept of self.
It would be more accurate to say that the standards by what we consider as being "private" are changing as access to world-wide communication networks open up. That doesn't necessarily mean that our sense of privacy is buggered, just that a certain group of people percieve it as becoming buggered, from their perspective.
Basically, it's simply a cultural shift that some people aren't adjusting well too.
That sounds fairly accurate.
I don't really give a shit about what individuals think about privacy except how it influences the judicial principle of "expectation of privacy." The problem I see here is that (for example) when small, inexpensive digital video cams become prolific on city streets, and everyone is uploading their videos to publicly accessible websites, I can't very well argue against the city installing their own cameras because I never had much of an expectation of privacy in the first place.
Yeah, that's my feeling as well. I mean, I say things on here that I would not tell, for instance, my coworkers. This is because I don't think it's likely my coworkers are going to stumble across these forums, but I'm aware there's a risk involved.
But a lot of people post shit to Facebook pages and don't expect that people they have actively friended are going to notice. It's like they think internet people aren't real, or something. A friend's coworker got busted in an affair because she posted pics of herself sneaking around with her lover, even though her husband was one of her Facebook friends. There's a serious disconnect there for some people.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
I wonder if this has anything to do with the tendency for people to have hundreds upon hundreds of people on Facebook. I can't imagine anyone who could list 438 friends, leading me to think Facebook is simply being used as a business card type of thing which would lead to more instances of 'oh, I friended him?' after having posted something supposedly private.
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
We're fucked
It is not as clear cut.
You can be in a private situation, in a private conversation, have private things in your pockets and write a private note, all in a public place and all that is required for "reasonable expectation of privacy" is an effort to make it private that would have provided for an overwhelming assumption that it would stay private.
Your post equates "in public place" with "under active surveillance" which is not a good idea and I should refer you to any of the cctv threads we've had on here for countless examples and arguments why CCTV is not "a good thing!". Especially the current implementations.
Every single person in the world without exceptions does things in public that they expect to stay private.
Pfff, facebook really needs different privacy tiers for different friends!*
*I have no idea if facebook actually has something similar....
I work with 3 categories:
1. professional folks. On this list is a teacher of mine and the FB account of the organisation I'm going to do my traineeship at. They don't see my wall posts, can't see who leaves messages on my profile and they don't get an update when I get tagged in a photo. They can send messages to me and see my basic information.
2. friends. This is where everyone from PA and most RL friends are on. They see my wall posts, they can see who leaves messages on my profile. They don't get updates on when I get tagged in a photo. They can send me messages and see my basic info.
3. vaguely trustable friends. This list only contains 3 people I think I can trust. They can see everything that happens to me and I think I know them well enough that they wouldn't forward any pictures or anything to other people. It helps that 2 of them aren't very interested in my life in the first place.
Now I don't trust people very easily, but I'm sane enough to understand that none of my PA friends and most of my RL friends are not very interested in me in the first place, so I don't mind that they see that someone messaged me saying I looked hot in a picture or that my puppy is adorable. My teachers and employees don't have to know anything about this, with them I only interact on a professional level.
To me this feels the closest to the truth. Maybe overall people are sharing more details about their lives with close contacts (spouses) that they would have kept private, but I think it's a lot of dumb people mis-using electronic tools then bitching about the consequences.
As been said here a thousand times, posting shit on forums, FB, Twitter, et al., there is no expectation of privacy for your "friends/tweeters," the company, its partners or affiliates. One one hand I'd love to have laws preventing Facebook LTD. from keeping or using my profile for marketing, but then I realize I'm a functioning adult who should be responsible for his own choices.