Privacy refers to how one’s own personal data and information about
others are handled in social contexts, particularly more public settings.
Offline, privacy is understood as retention or concealment of personal
information and, at least in the US, is framed as an entitlement.
The right to be ‘left alone’
The ‘right to privacy’ is frequently invoked to protect sensitive
information, such as an individual’s finances, medical history, and intimate relations, from public view.
Privacy laws in the US largely reflect a desire to protect individuals from
exposure to the public through the press and from unwarranted search and surveillance by the state.
The right to be ‘left alone’ and of the individual to maintain freedom from
The new digital media allow personal information
to be shared with a broad public and are
consequently making privacy issues more salient
Distinct properties of the Internet bear on privacy
in new ways.
boyd (2007) identifies four such properties,
including
persistence (what you post persists indefinitely);
searchability (you can search for anyone and find their
digital “body,”);
replicability (you can copy and paste information from
one context to another); and
invisible audiences (you can never be sure who your
Sofia is an 18 year-old freshman at a small college. She has been keeping a blog on LiveJournal for several years and continues
Does Sofia think her blog is private?
Why does she think so?
Will there be any repercussions for
Sofia if people find out?
Could she have prevented being
Change in December 2009
Facebook just settled a class action
lawsuit over privacy issues related to a
feature called Beacon
An outcry over Facebook’s redefining
privacy
The argument was that youth do not
care about privacy and will not take
steps to protect it.
At least 10 scenarios exist where ‘anon
De-identified medical research database
You tell them.
Log in to Gmail, Amazon, or eBay
They’ve left cookies on one of your
previous visits
A cookie is a small text file stored on your
local hard drive that contains information
that a web site wants to have during the
current session (like your shopping cart), or
from one session to the next.
Big brother really IS watching today, and
his job has gotten much easier because
of the digital explosion
One brother: Government
Other brother: Industry
Aggregating, consolidating, analyzing, reporting
on the billions of individual transactions
Computers can correlate databases on a
Not on the radar
Not affected by privacy laws
9/11 has indelibly altered America in ways that
people are now starting to earnestly question:
Perpetual orange alerts, barricades and body
frisks (and more intrusive security) at the airport
Greater government scrutiny of people's records
and electronic surveillance of their
communications.
The watershed was the government's shift after
9/11 to a strategy of pre-emption at home -- not
just prosecuting terrorists for breaking the law,
but trying to find and stop them before they
Saving Time
Time is money
e.g., toll booth transponders (E-ZPass)
Saving Money
Supermarket loyalty cards
Safeway’s privacy policy (p.38)
Convenience of the Customer
e.g., Amazon - Why should anyone care that
Amazon knows so much about me?
It’s Just Fun to Be Exposed
Technology changes and social changes
reinforce each other
30 years ago, many people getting off an
airplane reached for cigarettes; today
they reach for cell phones.
The more people use a new technology,
the more useful it becomes (also known
as a “network effect”)
Credit card culture
Email culture
Email is as public as postcards, unless it is
encrypted, which it usually is not.