However, once a document is public on the web, one can no longer make presumptions about how it will be used. Even if Pete Warden does not release his dataset, others have already collected this data and are using it for unknown purposes. In fact, it’s probably on sale here. If Pete Warden releases the Facebook data, he will just be bringing attention to the fact that this kind of automated collection is already happening, which in my mind is better than allowing people to remain ignorant of this possibility.

You could argue that this argument is based on the premise that one wrong justifies another, which is in part true. If no bots crawled this data, then your argument against releasing the data would be stronger. However, there’s no way of enforcing this kind of control, so this is a moot point in my mind.

When I read your mention of “cross-culturally”, I (incorrectly) presumed you meant different global cultures.

Reading your later comment and blog post, you’ll be happy to know I’m in complete agreement about the fact that there isn’t a singular conception of privacy within the U.S., whether among scholars or users. (Although U.S. law/regulation tends to have a singular — and flawed — conception of privacy).

I hope that if you read through my blog, you’d discover that I’m one of the loudest adherents to the contextual nature of privacy: it means different things to different people in different contexts.

I look forward to following your blog…

-michael.

I actually was writing a blog post about this anyway when I came across this so I’ve responded more fully there (http://www.kimberlychristen.com/?p=885)

But I’m working on similar projects focusing on the intercultural challenges of information ethics, especially in the African context. I’ll post more on that soon, but there’s some helpful information at the International Center for Information Ethics, as well as the African Information Ethics portal.