Law Humor

What I got from PrivacyCamp

By Pseudoanonymous

First off, I had one really neat idea, for which I’d like to get a simple implementation done quickly. I’m not sure doing so is within one person’s spare time efforts, but still, it was a neat idea. Other things:

1. The language used around data portability is confused and incoherent. Look at phrases describing data portability: take back, pull out, portable, removable, get out. Do those mean data portability meaning the ability of the user to access and copy? Or data portability meaning the ability of the user to remove–delete or make inaccessible on the original system–and transfer to another service. Data portability is itself an ambiguous term. Which of those meanings does it have for you?
2. Privacy advocates tend to believe what users say rather than what they do. I heard people argue this point at great length, at one point interpreting an experiment by danah boyd comparing perceived versus actual privacy settings for users–users think they’re much more private than they really are, boyd says–as showing users care more about privacy because they say they care more. I’ll look up her paper.
3. Many privacy issues will resolve (and have resolved) as social and cultural change destigmatize nonstandard behavior. We’ve seen this happen drastically in the aftermath of the sixties. Gay people are out of the closet all over the country. No one looks askance at a child born outside of wedlock. Just think what other changes have come, and what behavior no longer needs to be kept private. Those social changes solved many privacy issues by eliminating them.

Full post as published by Arkansawyer on May 08, 2010 (boomark / email).