Abstracting Privacy

Abstracting Privacy

The early discussions that led to the upcoming March 28, 2012 Symposium (and this blog) focused a great deal of attention on the differences between generations in how they engage with — and with each other through — digital technologies, social media and the like. People of middle school age can hardly if at all imagine a world without Facebook, text messaging and instant downloads. Conversely, I know someone in her 80s who was enraptured by Skype, saying that using it made her feel like she was living in a “Star Trek world.”  Between those generational poles lie the rest of us, who will determine whether the best or the worst of the digital revolution will predominate. Privacy, for example, might have evolved (or devolved) to become something between an anachronism and a false hope.

During the 2002 manhunt for Beltway Sniper John Allen Muhammad and his minor accomplice (or first victim) Lee Boyd Malvo, law enforcement’s public statements included the confident assertion that surveillance video from convenience stores, gas stations and other retail establishments would lead them to the killer (at that time not knowing that there was more than one). It was reported that Americans are captured on video surveillance cameras many times a day. Estimates ranged from ten to two hundred. The tone of such reporting was reassuring — after all, a murderer was at large. But the 10-to 200-video-captures-per-day datum was nevertheless chilling in its own right: The surveillance infrastructure, which ultimately did play a significant role in the capture of the two shooters, remains, and is a great deal more pervasive ten years later. And for the aforementioned middle-schooler, she is no doubt entering her adolescence without even the expectation of privacy. It seems that almost daily there are new revelations concerning the tracking of online browsing behavior, deliberately obscure opt-out — rather than opt-in — privacy policies, and cookies that circumvent a computer operating system’s security protocols. But there is little if any scandal associated with such revelations. It is entirely possible, it seems to me, that by the time our middle-schooler’s cohort become our society’s judges, lawyers, physicians, law enforcement officials, warriors and politicians, even the word “privacy,’” and everything it contains, may only be remembered by historians and lexicographers.

In the meantime, however, we’re constantly reminded of our imperfect understanding of whatever privacy remains. Whether it is a married politician posting half-naked pictures of himself to someone he has only met online, a young co-ed posting her sexual exploit portfolio, or a judge posting a highly impolitic “joke” in an email, there seems to be a fundamental lack of awareness about the realities of cyberspace. In these and other such instances, the actors aren’t middle-schoolers, but adults (at least chronologically) who shouldn’t require being reminded of the adage, “If you wouldn’t put it on a post card, don’t put it in email.”

To be continued.

Richard Robeson