PRIVACY IS OUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY
Michael Mayday
Issue date: 11/5/09 Section: Opinion
We shouldn't have to go to the deans to realize there's no privacy online. In order to enjoy the benefits of personalized music, news and social networking, one has to give up the ideal of privacy. The question is how much networking is too much? Should it stop at friends commenting on other statuses, or a list of statuses in a manila folder? What private information should we make public? It seems as social networking grows, privacy - but not the expectation of it - shrinks.
For example: Chris Johnston was born on June 1, in Naperville, Ill. and is 32 years old. He lives in Atlanta, Ga. and works as a video game producer, reviewer and has lived in Chicago and San Francisco working the same job. I don't know this man. I've never met him. I've followed his Twitter feeds and podcasts, but that's about it. He put all of his information online and made it public knowledge. There's a sizeable list of friends on Facebook too, who decided to put their phone numbers online. I could call them right now and have a nice chat. Or write the number down and hand it to a stranger - heck, I could even post it to Twitter. I would be violating Twitter's privacy policy of course, but no one could stop me. And there's the crux: one could be invading another's privacy, and not even know it. And if one did, they'd be hard to stop.
Privacy is odd. We all want it, but not entirely. There's a strange drive to let half of the people you know, and the other half you haven't talked to in years, to know what you're up to. Privacy is the veritable Man-Bear-Pig of the digital generation. It's half want, half need, and a quarter not-too-sure.
Take last week's article, "Without policy, Internet privacy in question," for example. What the anonymous Facebook stalkers did wasn't wrong, but it did leave a nasty taste in everyone's mouth. The idea that a "friend" would confront a dean about another's problem rather than confront that friend directly is troubling. It doesn't show responsibility and faith in others, but the absence of it.
Instead of having faith, he or she trusted another person to bear the responsibility of speaking up to a friend. There seems to be a tacit law: what goes online stays online. And when that rule is broken there's a queasy realization that Big Brother does exist. And he's us.
For example: Chris Johnston was born on June 1, in Naperville, Ill. and is 32 years old. He lives in Atlanta, Ga. and works as a video game producer, reviewer and has lived in Chicago and San Francisco working the same job. I don't know this man. I've never met him. I've followed his Twitter feeds and podcasts, but that's about it. He put all of his information online and made it public knowledge. There's a sizeable list of friends on Facebook too, who decided to put their phone numbers online. I could call them right now and have a nice chat. Or write the number down and hand it to a stranger - heck, I could even post it to Twitter. I would be violating Twitter's privacy policy of course, but no one could stop me. And there's the crux: one could be invading another's privacy, and not even know it. And if one did, they'd be hard to stop.
Privacy is odd. We all want it, but not entirely. There's a strange drive to let half of the people you know, and the other half you haven't talked to in years, to know what you're up to. Privacy is the veritable Man-Bear-Pig of the digital generation. It's half want, half need, and a quarter not-too-sure.
Take last week's article, "Without policy, Internet privacy in question," for example. What the anonymous Facebook stalkers did wasn't wrong, but it did leave a nasty taste in everyone's mouth. The idea that a "friend" would confront a dean about another's problem rather than confront that friend directly is troubling. It doesn't show responsibility and faith in others, but the absence of it.
Instead of having faith, he or she trusted another person to bear the responsibility of speaking up to a friend. There seems to be a tacit law: what goes online stays online. And when that rule is broken there's a queasy realization that Big Brother does exist. And he's us.
Be the first to comment on this story