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

a. Don't put any personal works on MySpace? , because the terms and conditions granted the owners of the site – at that point, it had recently been acquired by none other than Mr. Murdoch's News Corp – unlimited distribution and use of any materials placed on a MySpace? page. The interpretation offered to us as that time: if you put a picture or original song on your MySpace? page, News Corp effectively owns it.

b. Deletion of something from the Internet does not eliminate it. Pages that have been taken down do not disappear altogether. Rather, a smart Internet user changes a page or post, rather than deletes it, so that cache services will see the revision. Otherwise, the deleted version exists in its finality in perpetuity.

This discussion was in 2006. In the great scheme of things, less than 7 years passing is not a great period of time. But the fact is, at that moment, this was most advance advice offered to graduating high school seniors on how to stay safe in cyberspace.

Seven Years Later:

Not a lot of space need be spent on these two past thoughts unto themselves. MySpace? is no longer a particularly popular vehicle for communication or media, having been completely overrun by Zuckerberg's behemoth. And as for the replacement rather than removal theory, a quick trip to the WaybackMachine? can allow to see “snapshots” of webpages from nearly any week since the site's launch.

This is all means by which to say that privacy on the internet is by no means a static concept. Rather, which each development, each technological advancement that supposedly brings the world “closer together” by some happenstance, more of our lives and individualities are being exposed to the circuitry of the internet – and, more importantly, those who control it or who have access to, or authority over, them – the more that such informational sessions for graduating high schooler become outdated moments after they are received.

Moving Forward:

Reflective of this new modernity, what can the average citizen do? How can we as community respond – if we want to – to this growing personal-informational market? To use myself as an example, I do not use Gmail, but it is entirely for reasons pertaining to my general dislike of the functionality rather than my knowledge in the lack of security it offers. I do, however, use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, and others like them. More over, I use these products masquerading as “services” to near excess. I brag about being told, after they reached 10 million users, that I was one of the first 10,000 Foursquare users. To some extent, it makes me a trendsetter, an original traveler. However, what that product does is tell my friends, my acquaintances, and some strangers exactly where I am at any given moment. I choose to reveal this information en masse, because there is something fun about it. I know that if someone wanted to rob me, or arrest me, or kill me, it would be incredibly easy to find me, a fact I personally choose to exacerbate. But I do it anyway.

To that effect, I choose to put personal details and photographs in large numbers on Facebook. I use it as a primary communication portal for too many contacts. I acknowledge the utter lack of security it offers me, or those with whom I am in contact. But again, it's fun, and I do it anyway. Like a well-educated, or perhaps just rationalizing, drug user, I know that my behavior is wrong, but I'm choosing to hurt myself, so, so be it. Even more to that point, my thinking is largely along the lines of: I have nothing to hide. I'm not someone the government would want to question for my beliefs. So, I'm not in jeopardy.

But as we all know in this class, such rationalizing is utterly incorrect. It is flawed from the beginning to the conclusion. I know this, but choose to do it anyway. To that effect, I can only contract my social-libertarian nature and say that, because we as addicts cannot protect ourselves, we must be protected.

Conclusion:

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

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