As I go through privacy policies researching for my ethics class paper I have just become more confused as to what exactly is privacy and especially what it means online. Part of privacy is an idea of not being observed. This obviously means that if someone peeks in my windows at home they are violating my privacy but what about when I go outside? About once a month when I’m eating lunch or studying in the Mountainlair (Our student center here at WVU) it seems that someone sitting near me has a conversation about a personal matter on their cell phone (usually loudly) at the next table. I try not to eavesdrop but I am only a few feet away. Some people seem to have an idea that they have a zone of privacy while on the phone, even when they are in a public place, and believe they are actually carrying on a private conversation. Now online things get even more complex because it is not clear what is public and what is private space in cyberspace. There is a funny commercial of a little boy sitting in front of his home with a megaphone telling all of his family’s secrets and that is something of how things are on the internet. Most social networking sites allow for “privacy” settings but their privacy policies do not guarantee that they can protect that privacy. But even if they can privacy in this case is analogous to throwing a party in your house. By allowing people to be “friends” the user is in essence inviting selected people into their “home.” While it is still private, like a real life party, the prohibition against unwanted observation is still lowered. The current trend in privacy settings is to create groups of people who can see different things on your site. One of my professors frets that her son de-friended her on FaceBook because he did not want her to see some things. Now FaceBook has been trying to let users have two classes of friends some of whom can see more than others.
In some ways I lead an unusually open online life. I freely post my email address when I participate on forums and my always full spam box shows the result of doing that. In my blog I have written about some deeply personal matters such as my alcoholism and struggles with both mental illness and spiritual crisis but I do stay mindful that it is a public space. While I feel free to ignore my own privacy I try not to say anything which would violate that of my friends and family. This distorts what the public can observe about me and thus I seem totally self-absorbed rather than just mostly. It is also interesting about who and when people respond to this stuff by leaving public comments as opposed to private messages. I suspect I get a lot more messages since the folks reading this tend to be older but that is just an educated guess.
One last thought on privacy and observation. When I use to DJ middle school dances there were always some 8th grade girls who would dress provocatively to attract the attention of a certain group of boys. Usually those boys were too cool to dance and hung with themselves ignoring these young ladies. What usually happened was the 6th grade boys ended up ogoogling them, which disturbed then greatly. Did these girls have a right to try to control who observed them while in a public setting?