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Siobhan Wagner
With all the recent privacy concerns surrounding the expansion of CCTV or airport body scanners, one might think society is united in its stance against personal intrusion.
Future of privacy
For anyone who owns a mobile phone or subscribes to Facebook or Twitter, it is hard not to notice a growing trend of people willingly surrendering their privacy.
It started with status updates and tweets, which offer anyone the opportunity to eavesdrop on the inner dialogue of any of their Facebook friends or the Twitter members they follow. Now, more and more social networking users feel the need to reveal not only their thoughts but also their exact location in real time. This is enabled by mobile services such as Google’s Latitude, which beam the location of users to a map that is visible to a network of friends. The service relies on activating the GPS location features on a mobile phone.
Surprisingly many do not consider this as TMI (that’s ’too much information’ in net-speak, for the uninitiated). Vic Gundotra, Google vice president of engineering, announced at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona last year that his company had seen ‘more than a million’ mobile subscribers sign up for the Latitude service in the first week from its launch in February 2009.
Other mobile location-revealing services, such as Foursquare, take a slightly different approach. After signing into the Foursqaure application on their phones, users are presented with a list of nearby shops, restaurants, bars and other listed businesses. They then can select their location by ‘checking in,’ which then sends alerts to friends using the service or updates a user’s Facebook status.
The trend is catching on elsewhere. Yelp, the user review and recommendation site for restaurants, shops and other services, has enabled a ‘check-in’ feature for its iPhone App. There has also been speculation over the past few months that Facebook will soon be introducing location features.
There is an obvious large demand for these features, which leads me to wonder where have all those privacy conservationists gone. Is it true that members of our society are now willing to give up their privacy for a few techno-fripperies? We look forward to hearing your comments.
Siobhan Wagner
Chief reporter
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Readers' comments (19)
Alan Fielding | 26 Mar 2010 2:31 pm
I've never understood this willingness by people to allow their privacy to be invaded by all and sundry. These social networkers permit important private information to be transmitted via the computer and give out their dates of birth, etc, where anyone who is attempting to get into someone's on-line banking site can soon decipher the relevant password.
I remember the words of Robert Carr, a Labour politician I believe, who said that "privacy is a measure of the quality of our society". What privacy are we allowed to have now? People are up in arms about having an identity card but allow their more personal data to be transmitted everywhere on the computer for every Tom, Dick or Harry to see.
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Andrew | 26 Mar 2010 2:32 pm
One has to wonder if all this information is just going to end up being white noise.
There are other services such as Blippy that take your online purchases and tweet these to the world. So now not only are we pushing out information about ourselves, but we are enabling machines to share information about what we are doing and where we are without any intervention whatsoever.
Living in the public domain may seems scary - but it almost seems to me that a glut of information offers similar sorts of privacy barriers as living in the private domain.
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Ian | 26 Mar 2010 2:36 pm
'privacy conservationist' ? If you are referring to people who seek to preserve a persons right to 'privacy' i.e. intrusion from the state, corporations etc. I think it unlikely they would see it as their right to prevent somebody signing up to a 'locating service' of their own free will. To me, you have conflated two different issues.
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Kevin | 26 Mar 2010 2:41 pm
I use facebook to keep in touch with people I don't regularly contact and those distant friends from my childhood, hometown and previous places of employment.
I do not and would not let them all know my current location due to friends of friends facebook stalking i.e. "I'm using a laptop in a cafe". Why would I? I find it sad that:
1. I would feel the need to carry a laptop around just to 'chat' to friends. Hello, I have a phone!!!
2. I hate coffee.
Additionally, I've messed up all my home, education, previous, and current employment history details to reduce the risk of being targeted by identity fraud.
Finally, I hate twitter simply because it appears to be a vessel for people to tell others that they are 'sitting in a cafe using a laptop'. Use a phone!!!! The name 'twitter' does suggest the intelligence level of those who use it......twits!!!!
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Anonymous | 26 Mar 2010 2:49 pm
I don't believe that the majority of people actually think about the issues of privacy surrounding the use of their mobile phones or computers, but they will be the ones to complain if it is used against them. These things are sold on the basis of the opportunities they present for more freedom. I reckon it is a bit like motor cars - people don't show an interest in the safety aspects of one car over another, they simply buy onthe basis of it looks good, goes fast and takes them where they want to go. The advertising of cars and mobile phones is targeted at the upsides and never the downsides. People just walk into these things because they don't consider the hidden downsides - they believe what they are told in the adverts and that is the upside invariably. It takes many years for the bad sides to become apparent and by then it's too late, they (and society as a whole) are hooked.
Big Brother is finding it easier day by day!!
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Dave Horrigan | 26 Mar 2010 2:52 pm
As Ian says (2:36 pm), there are two separate issues here. If I choose to share information about myself via Twitter or Facebook, it is just that - a choice I make, my own free will. If I go through an airport scanner or am watched on a CCTV camera, I don't get to make that choice.
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alex wilks | 26 Mar 2010 3:00 pm
I find it rather sad that people think themselves so important that others would give a damn where they are at all times, it's like those who wander round garden centers on a Sunday with bluetooth headsets on. For God's sake let it go, the world will keep spinning even if you can't be contacted 24/7
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Kevin | 26 Mar 2010 3:05 pm
Responding to Dave's comment.
If people feel threatened by airport scanners of CCTV cameras, they generally have something to hide.
I would personally prefer CCTV on most residential streets. People would feel much safer knowing that the thugs out there would be caught instantly for breaking the law - if those operating the CCTV units were efficient.
Airport scanners - would rather be scanned as I boarded a plane than fall out of it at 10,000ft with no parachute after some fanatic blew the plane apart!
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Niel Leon | 26 Mar 2010 3:12 pm
Privacy, especially in an information driven world is a matter of personal control. You should only release information the absolutely necessary to meet your own needs and objects, with the understanding that it is possible for failures to happen. Once the information is in the ether it is not 100% guaranteed that it will always be as secure as promised.
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Brian M | 26 Mar 2010 3:39 pm
Privacy is about having the choice, if you want to put your information out to the rest of the world, then that’s fine, but no one should be forced or put into a position of accidentally having their private information revealed.
The use of airport back scatter scanners is not so much a privacy issue, but one of health and safety. The golden rule when using ionising radiation is that the only safe dosage is zero, anything above zero has to be justified. Random security screening falls way outside this criteria - you are more likely to be die falling out of bed than to be killed by a terrorist (or the police for that matter).
With the recent reports of an Airport security worker being cautioned by police for sexual comments about a scan of a woman, then perhaps this is indicative of both privacy and abuse issues.
The enforced use of an x-ray scanner for security purposes can only be described as an assault on the person.
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