Discussions of online privacy, privacy in public, intellectual privacy, digital surveillance, and the theory of privacy as “contextual integrity”.
Speaking of the research ethics related to automatically harvesting public social networking data, we are confronted this week with the story of Pete Warden, a former Apple engineer who has spent the last six months harvesting and analyzing data from…
Read More Why Pete Warden Should Not Release Profile Data on 215 Million Facebook Users
While participating in the workshop on Revisiting Research Ethics in the Facebook Era: Challenges in Emerging CSCW Research, the question arose as to whether it was ethical for researchers to follow and systematically capture public Twitter streams without first obtaining…
Read More Is it Ethical to Harvest Public Twitter Accounts without Consent?
To celebrate Data Privacy Day, Google has published its 5 guiding privacy principles. The principles are something every organization should commit to and strive for. The problem is, Google hasn't adhered to them quite as closely as they'd want you to believe....
January 28, 2010 is Data Privacy Day. To celebrate, MichaelZimmer.org no longer uses any services that rely on web cookies or web bugs...
Microsoft has fired a new salvo into the search privacy wars, announcing it will delete IP addresses from the Bing search engine logs after 6 months. Microsoft has decided to take the lead in search privacy and agree to the European Union’s demand that data retention be cut to six months. Previously, Microsoft de-identified its search logs immediately, but didn’t purge the IP address until 18 months. Now, de-identification still takes place immediately, and the IP addresses are completely removed in 6 months.
Responding to the brouhaha caused by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recent proclamation that social norms on privacy have loosened, Michael Arrington (the tech blogger who was interviewing Zuckerberg at the time) has posted a piece on his blog Tech Crunch:…
There's been quite a dust-up regarding Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recent proclamation that social norms on privacy have changed, and that Facebook is merely reacting to these shifting norms. Lots has already been said about Zuckerberg's remarks, so I'm only going to add three thoughts to the conversation: What Zuckerberg said isn't surprising, it isn't new, and it isn't true...
A story today on NPR's Morning Edition news program focused on the controversy surrounding Facebook’s recent privacy upgrade downgrade: "Groups Complain To FTC About Facebook Changes" My discussion with the reporter, Martin Kaste, covered most of the issues raised in…
Read More NPR: Groups Complain To FTC About Facebook Changes
Given the renewed focus on full-body "backscatter" surveillance technology, I thought I'd highlight this poster a group of students created in my Spring 2009 "Information Technology Ethics" class (brief news story is here). Airport Surveillance Posterhttp://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=airportsurveillanceposter-091231140539-phpapp02&stripped_title=airport-surveillance-poster View more presentations from…
Read More Student Poster on Ethical Issues Related to Backscatter Airport Surveillance Technology
One of the most controversial aspects of Facebook’s recent privacy upgrade downgrade has been the removal of the privacy setting allowing users to limit the visibility of their list of friends. Perhaps more than any other set of information on…
Read More Facebook Provides Some Control of Friends List Visibility, But Hides It
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