Big brother and the panoptical: your information belongs to you
It has been a lot of talk about Facebook and the threats to privacy that this software carries, not to talk about the ‘small letter’ terms of agreement which gives Facebook absolute ownership of anything you upload there.
It has been said that you must not put into that web app whatever you do not want your boss to see from you. You think this is common sense, don’t you? Well, just in case, you may recall the Bono case two years ago.
The panoptical age
‘Social network software’ as twitter, miss tagged as a ‘micro-blogging’ tool, allows anyone tell everyone where he or she is, what are he or she doing, who are they seeing and what are they doing, to/with whom, 24/7/365. Absolutely crazy. But the most crazyness is that all social network web apps are increasing users, who upload not only their lives but their neighbours’ ones too.
This situation, at last, led some people to banish blog posting, tweets and taking pictures in some parties, events, clubs and bars in order to give a bit of privacy to their customers.
As I wrote some days before, the best way to keep one’s own information stream under control is to put it on a safe place, as a hosting server of your own. But when we talk about ‘social network software’, the trick is even more complicated, because, for example, you can tag anyone in a picture in facebook, even if this person does not have an account.
As we’ve seen before, just by following the trace of public information you can get really valuable data about anyone. With this so called ‘social network’ software, is even more easier: you can put a face on a name in seconds, see who are friends with, who goes with who, where (including ‘private’ vacation), how often, you can even know if the relationship is good or bad, you can know the tastes, sexual interests and, believe it or not, sexual partners. Hey, and all this can be done by a normal person without the need of a judicial warrant. Now imagine what a government agency could do with that info and its processing. Have I said that common sense is the least common of senses?
Some of you reading this may think that with new privacy agreements and modifications the issue is over. It is not. There has been more agreement modifications before and there will be endless modifications in the future and there will be endless privacy issues with these software, be it Facebook, Hi5, Twitter or whatever the future brings. The panoptical, for its own concept, carries privacy issues wich can not be solved with any agreement but leaving it alone.
