Betre,

Your essay is interesting. First, I agree that what we need is to try and reveal the danger of online data in a way that gets attention. I tried to do that in a paper I wrote last semester, to perhaps limited effect. I think your idea of a Facebook application is intriguing; of course, the danger is that how do you create something to reveal the danger of data mining without that very tool/app becoming dangerous itself (since it would have to do some mining itself to be effective)? You seem to recognize that danger in saying "These methods of exposure cross ethical and legal lines that should not be traversed ..."

I am optimistic, however, that we can find a way to communicate the dangers without such a dangerous tool.

-- BrianS - 04 May 2010

There is something about privacy that we all understand in an intimate way and yet seem unable to apply broadly. What is it about our conceptions of privacy that can make an individual angry when a companion reads a diary and yet allows that same individual to make a wealth of information available on the internet? Is there a difference, in kind, between the two forums such that a post online is ‘supposed’ to be read while a diary is not? It is hard to imagine a substantive difference between revealing online activity and a diary.

Or can it be that we view each post as a small slice of a puzzle that we don’t mind sharing so we dole ourselves out a tweet, post, or thought at a time not fully aware that the trail we leave can be put together to tell a story of ourselves that is amazingly accurate. In this paper, from a former class, a student spoke of urbanization as a cause of changed attitude towards these issues. In the piece, and the discussion that follows, students argued that we do not give ourselves away when we buy items from different locations in a city or in our conversations with strangers or when we engage in passionate loud conversations with loved ones that are overheard in snippets. As one student comments ‘our souls’ do not live in those moments.

That paper and those comments as well as a conversation with a friend who has an active face book page, g chats constantly, and, like we all do, uses the web to search and entertain and yet was upset about a companion reading a diary made me think that what those unconcerned about privacy fail to understand is the aggregation of information is what’s frightening. The thing that seemed to upset her the most was that ‘everything about (her) from when (she) was 14’ was in that diary. In that bounded space, it was clear what that invasion of privacy had cost her. In the unwieldy way that we live life in a city it is unclear how we lose ourselves, as students noted. (Indeed, I am not sure we lose ourselves at all as those moments are not often ‘connected’).

And maybe that’s the key to progressing the ‘pro-privacy’ movement. To show that things can be ‘connected’ rather easily online. That unwieldy way information is scattered in our urban existence can be welded together in our online existence. We are all aware that our movements online are not a secret but what many may not be aware of (or are unable to comprehend) is that those movements can be put together in a way that exposes one as clearly as a diary kept from the age fourteen can expose someone. What needs to be shown is not a breach of a site but rather a breach of an identity. Like the diary, maybe we need to bound all the ‘private’ online moments, and package it not to retailers to sell things to us but to consumers so that the may buy the idea that their privacy is being severely impaired.

Imagine an online game, maybe a face book or iphone app that presents a comprehensive data mining ‘diary’ of your friends that you are to guess to whom that ‘diary’ belongs. When you guess correctly, the information along with a message gets sent to the friend whom you correctly identified. Maybe something to the effect, “Congratulations, Your Friend Really Knows You…Now”. Or, possibly create an alternate face book page comprised of information created through data mining, which only the user can see.

These methods of exposure cross ethical and legal lines that should not be traversed but it is my belief that without being exposed to the fact that while ‘our souls’ may not exist in each email, text, twitter, status update and blog post they (our souls) do exist in the internet waiting to be connected by someone either trying to sell us something or by someone with a more malicious intent. It seems to be that while twitter accounts and face book pages may be hacked, identities have not been. We have not been exposed to the ‘internet us’ or vice versa.

Once this happens, it is my belief (read: hope) that the ‘pro-privacy’ folks will have an opportunity to present an alternative product; whether a statutory, constitutional or technological change. Until then, the convenience of the mediums (face book etc) and the medium (the internet) as is will outweigh the abstract threat there is someone that can put together my Gmail, face book, twitter, and blog posts to create the (in)complete me. In other words, it’s the aggregation that’s frightening and the aggregations that needs to be shown to create an environment that can push users to another conception of internet uses (whether it be Eben’s home servers) or another conception of the ways the internet cannot be used (limited through statutes) or another conception of the internet’s place in the Constitution (to 5 justices on the Supreme Court).

-- BetreGizaw - 03 May 2010

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