NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Weiner, Whiners, and Social: Public Means Public!
Weiner, Whiners, and Social: Public Means Public!
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000861.html
I had hoped that it would not be necessary to spend time discussing
the Twitter controversy of a photo that (might be) of a Congressman's
underwear-laden crotch.
However, people keep asking me about this, and about another story in
the news right now, regarding a PhD student at the University of
Amsterdam, whose nose is apparently all out of joint over his ability
to create a database of (we're told) 35 million public Google
Profiles.
It's difficult for me to imagine a topic in which I'd have less
inherent interest than Rep. Weiner's photography/Twitter habits in any
likely context. And the collecting of already public Google Profiles
is equally yawn inducing from my standpoint.
Yet there is an underlying theme. Both of these stories have been
sucking considerable oxygen out of the current news cycles, and also
remind me of the usually rather nutty and misguided protests regarding
Google Street View, about which I've written many times (I won't clog
up the text here with associated links today, you know how to find
them).
Fundamentally, there is a complex dynamic between "privacy rights" as
most broadly defined, and other key elements of civil rights,
including free speech.
I am of course a strong supporter of communications free from
government or other eavesdropping. I believe that if persons wish to
keep the private details of their lives away from public view, in most
cases that's completely reasonable.
Intellectually though, and at the gut level as well, I find it quite
distressing to see attempts to use unrealistic and often purposely
distorted "privacy concerns" as excuses to unreasonably muzzle free
speech and related activities.
We see people bemoaning the fact that it's possible to analyze public
Twitter feeds retrospectively. The ability to collect public Google
profiles -- created voluntarily by Google users and with all
information contained therein under their personal control -- is
suddenly a global story. The taking of photos from public
thoroughfares, of the same imagery that anyone can see from those same
vantage points, triggers bizarre protests of indignation.
And I might add to this list, the collection of geolocation data from
open, unencrypted Wi-Fi access points, that is irrationally treated in
some quarters as a civil or even criminal offense.
All of these are examples of ersatz -- that is, essentially false --
privacy issues. Some persons raise them out of genuine though in most
cases misguided concerns, other times they are invoked disingenuously
for political or commercial advantage.
Again, this is not to cast aspersions of any kind on genuine privacy
matters, and the protection of genuinely private data, categories of
great interest to me for decades. Nor am I arguing that there
shouldn't be intense deliberations over if and how various data should
be made public en masse in the first place, especially with a
proactive view toward whether such data, once easily available, might
be abused.
But let's get real. Sounding alarms over people or firms gathering
and using data that is already out there -- easily accessible and
easily viewable -- is nonsense.
In fact, creating artificial rules trying to restrict the gathering or
use of such data after the fact of its large scale availability can be
extremely counterproductive and do serious damage. Such concocted,
mock "restrictions" can easily give people a false sense of confidence
that their already public data is somehow going to be "protected" by
such rules, shifting responsibility from the making of reasoned
decisions about what data they really wished to make public in the
first place.
With so many critical, genuine privacy issues in the forefront today,
on both the domestic and international stages, we shouldn't be wasting
any of our time or energies on attempts to create sham privacy
controversies relating to already public information.
Otherwise, we may find ourselves inadvertently allowing the enemies of
freedom to distort and mutate genuine concerns about privacy into
twisted and perverted doppelgangers to be used as powerful weapons
against free speech itself.
It would be ironic indeed if we permit as important an area as privacy
policy to be hijacked to the detriment of fundamental civil rights.
But it could happen -- something to discuss with your family, friends,
and colleagues perhaps, that is ... while you still can.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Google Buzz: http://j.mp/laurenbuzz
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com