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> | | | | Introduction:
Years ago, when Facebook was still only accessible to students with registered .edu email addresses, I sat in a lecture with my other high school seniors for a discussion on internet privacy. The speaker, whose public speaking background was primarily with sexual assault and personal privacy among college students, spoke that day about how to keep yourself safe in the digital era. The two major themes that day were | | | Conclusion: | |
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< | The idea of government 'protecting' its citizens from self-harm is something I am opposed to wholeheartedly. I admit that my opposition to Bloomberg's soda ban was wildly disproportionate to what it deserved; but as a soda drinker, I did not feel comfortable having a 'nanny state' intercede in my personal choices. But, sadly, I do not see an alternative in this instance. It seems as though every few months, Facebook alters its privacy settings, there is some uproar and turmoil over how we are now less protected, a few people change their settings, a few people threaten to shut down their account. But in the end, everything stays the same.
Perhaps the idea of government-mandated privacy on the internet is not so novel. Perhaps the idea of a right to privacy means that citizens can not, as they do now, choose to hand over personal information for the benefits afforded by products such as Facebook. But as these sites have become so ubiquitous, it becomes more and more difficult for citizens to choose not to join. Rather, they are put at social and professional detriment by not joining. So, as long as society functionally compels Americans to join such services, it seems that they must be protected from themselves. A right to digital privacy, whether in the form of legislation or judicial action, is necessary to them from themselves.
-- MatthewAmsterdam - 14 Mar 2013
I don't see how we
would find ourselves discussing forms of regulation involving
prohibiting people from speaking, or others from offering to listen.
We spent, I think, a sufficient time discussing the First Amendment
in relation to the business of learning, thinking, and teaching, to
appreciate why even if this line of policy thinking were attractive
for other reasons, which it mostly isn't, it's fortunately
constitutionally impossible.
So perhaps it would make more sense to ask why you wouldn't simply
want better services, that allow you to share what you want with who
you want, without letting middlemen see what you're doing, or
control the data about access to data? It would be just as exciting
to be a pioneer in using pro-privacy services as it would be to be a
pioneer in privacy-destroying services, wouldn't it?
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> | The idea of government 'protecting' its citizens from self-harm is something I am opposed to wholeheartedly. Moreover, as has been discussed above, the willingness of users to allow a service such as Facebook access to such personal information is by choice, as even a knowledgable user such as myself is aware of Facebook's policies, but does not care enough to stop using the service. This choice is my protected freedom, no matter how foolish it may be. | | | | |
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> | As such, it would seem the only solution to this dilemma would be the classic American solution to most ails: free-market capitalism. In a hypothetical, Professor Moglen offered anyone in his class $100 in exchange for the right to read their emails in perpetuity, an offer nobody accepted. An enterprising developer should see this as a strategy for their own service. The creation of new, pro-privacy services to compete with Facebook is made difficult already by the expanse of Facebook's empire, and the barrier to entry being that everyone already has accounts. But by stressing the privacy issue, the dichotomy of privacy protection and intrusion, a competing service has an automatic advantage, one which the email hypothetical showed cannot be bought easily. Create the distinction not just with features, as companies like GooglePlus? have tried, but with an unmistakeable demarcation with regard to privacy. Surely, the fact that nobody accepted the $100 offer shows that the market exists for such a product to thrive. |
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