Attention 400 million plus users who are on Facebook: as of today, Facebook has once again changed your expectations, even if limited, of privacy on its website.
Well-explained in a commentary by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Kurt Opsahl, "Certain parts of users' profiles, 'including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests' will now be transformed into 'connections,' meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don't want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them."
Did you catch that? Not too many people did, and what it stands for is important.
These changes are significant because the area of privacy law is certainly an ambiguous space. When many of the legal rules around privacy are predicated on societal norms, and people accept these changes of what information they are sharing with the masses, those who do wish to protect their privacy can be adversely affected. It could shift how legally the reasonable expectation of privacy is analyzed.
Of great concern is that most users have no idea this change occurred. When Facebook profiles went to a public default several months ago, people were somewhat aware that such a change occurred. Again, Facebook did not undertake comprehensive measures by any means to warn of that change. It was a simple click-through. The lack of warning about Facebook's latest change demonstrates a dangerous evolution in how they treat their users and their data.
From the days of their initial launch, as a network just for college students to connect with other college students, Facebook has been the master of illusion, making users feel like they maintain some reasonable expectation of privacy. Over the last few years, Facebook has slowly gone from being a network of your "friends" to a public domain.
What's next? There is no protection for communications that happen over third-party platforms and communications platforms online. Facebook is emerging as not only a violator of privacy through its own policy choices, but inadvertently through the utilities that it provides for users to trip up their privacy rights.
Why should you care? The word "privacy" is thrown around too carelessly these days as if it was a mere novelty. The word "privacy" is representative of rights that individuals retain against the government and against others violating the intimate zones of their lives. We should not have privacy conversations casually. This issue is not about the online world knowing I like the show Mad Men from my Facebook profile; it is about preserving a right that in the civil sense has been continually chipped away at.
Privacy is a fundamental right. Let's demand it be treated like one. If you claim privacy is dead, I will be there with the defibrillator.
Follow Christina Gagnier on Twitter: www.twitter.com/gagnier
Nice phrase for what many folks just don't seem to understand anymore,especially when it comes to sex etc. There are just some things that are mostly private, should be but some younger folks have no clue.
And you're right that legal privacy protection is sorely lacking--which is why the ACLU, EFF, Google, Microsoft, and others (though, so far, not Facebook) are part of the Digital Due Process coalition working to reform our woefully outdated privacy laws. How outdated? Try 1986! (http://dotRights.org/ECPA)
And keep telling Facebook that you want control - by refusing to use all their "exciting" new features if necessary - until you get it. Don't be forced into choosing between control of your own information and using Facebook - demand both!
I have to put up with weekly (at least) cajoling from friends who would "just LOVE" to see me on Facebook.
I know a good portion of my life may be online already, but I'm drawing the line at this.
This plus foursquare will probably lead to increased incidents of real life and off line stalking, robberies and other crimes. Additionally, where are the checks and balances here? These companies like Facebook are increasingly worming their way deeper and deeper into the Government apparatus, making it harder to slow or stop these types of privacy invasions.
Was it last year that FaceBook anounced they owned the copyrights to all content? Then they backed off after the public outcry. But here's the thing: As a holder of copyrights I know there is only ONE thing a copyright is about and that is the right to sell. So who did they plan to sell all that content to and to what end? And if they asserted their ownership of the content once but droped the matter after people got pissed why would they not claim it again at a time when they don't care if anyone gets pissed?
Face Book is amassing the largest databank of personal information in history. Someday they will sell that information for a whole lot of money.