After reading Bob Blakley’s post about privacy, I’m pretty sure I’ve been thinking about privacy in the wrong way. Blakley, of the Burton Group, noted that “keeping personal information secret” is the wrong definition of privacy. I’m pretty sure that’s how I’ve been thinking about it.
Blakley says, “privacy is the problem you have after you share sensitive information.” He talks about sociability — the “social good which we give to one another, not a social order in which we control one another.”
The key message I’m reading is this statement:
Technology can’t solve privacy problems because they’re not technology problems he says. But technology can make privacy problems worse.
If we accept the technology frame and let technologists define privacy as control over dissemination of information, we ARE going to have less privacy.
Blakley says we need to focus on building sociable spaces, so “people’s social and antisocial actions are exposed to scrutiny so that normal human social processes can work.”
Why do I feel that that’s not the direction we’re traveling?
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Nice perspective. Social networks and the availability of our own information on them is indeed up to us and not technology. I am not sure of the analogy to the telephone and the later addition of Caller ID. But I remember when it came out and the loss of anonymity it implied. Of course, it was very good for pizza delivery places and now you don't think much about it.
Social networking sites are simply new channels of communication and being prudent and genuine are, to me anyway, key to how I see my “privacy”. And recognizing, without being paranoid, those online efforts that are simply for branding or, as seen on Twitter, get rich quick schemes and interacting appropriately with them.