I have just been listening to NPR’s Technology podcasts and their coverage of the furore about strangers molesting children they first met through MySpace. I have some sympathy with the view that not enough had been done by the company to ensure the safety of children but some of the comments by those who are concerned make me worried as well.

Take for example the comments of Carl Berry, the attorney for a girl suing MySpace for letting an adult contact her “If they want to chat with each other that’s fine but I don’t see the social benefit of allowing children to talk to complete adult strangers online”, or those of Representative Diana DeGette (D) who told NPR, “we used to say to our children if a man comes up to you in the park or in the shopping mall don’t talk to them, run away. Now we have to translate that to the digital era.”

Are Americans really so terrified of each other? Fairly recent (2000) US research indicates only 7.5% of sexual assaults on children and adolescents were perpetrated by strangers (and quite a high proportion of assaults on teenagers are perpetrated by other teens, not predatory adults). The tens of thousands of ’stranger on pre-teen’ assaults in the US each year are terrible crimes but by far the majority of children will never face this danger. Is it worth creating a climate of pervasive fear and limiting childrens’ freedom to explore (and yes, even to make mistakes) in an attempt to tackle this? Just as adults’ civil liberties can be endangered in the ‘War on Terror’, those of children can be imperilled in the ‘War on Perverts’. And children arguably have even less of a chance to put their point of view than accused terrorists.
(Also see earlier posts Big Mother is Watching and The Death of Privacy).

David Brake

Alex Halavais notes that his students seem fairly uninterested in protecting their privacy in the face of increasing threats and alludes to an argument often made by technological determinists: “Maybe privacy was just a social artifact of the mass society of the twentieth century”. The question I would ask is if societal norms move in a direction you think is dangerous shouldn’t you act even if the process is voluntary and at the end of the process society will believe itself to be just as happy? I think a lot of technologists are giving up too soon and saying that computers make spreading data around so easy that it must eventually get everywhere (’information wants to be free’).

The fact is that like any other social phenomenon, the draining away of our privacy is at least in part under our own control. If you think (as I do sometimes) that we are strolling blindly into a scary self-imposed “omni-opticon” society then you can try to organize people to become better aware of the dangers (as Alex is indeed doing) and/or you can get governments to take action (and indeed in Europe our privacy is better protected than it is in the US - at least from media and commercial prying).

P.S. By coincidence MSNBC is doing a special online series on privacy (from an American perspective) this week.

George Toft has produced an entertaining presentation
in the form of a dialogue between a pizza buyer and a delivery agent that highlights some of the possible issues around privacy in the database age. Note that most of what he suggests would be technically possible even without a “National ID”. But rather than over-analysing it think of it as a bit of fun…

Online magazine Salon has a fascinating roundup of recent developments in the burgeoning market for kid tracking. I didn’t realise that intrusive technologies are already on the market - from GPS trackers (obvious) to RFID tags sewn into pyjamas or school ID badges (sneaky). It doesn’t go into surveillance of the online experience itself which is very common - AOL has a "guardian" feature that lists:

• Web sites your child successfully visited.
• Web sites your child attempted to visit but was restricted from.
• The number of e-mails and Instant Messages your child has sent.
• Your child’s Address Book and Buddy List activity.

But at least AOL’s tools notify your kid that you are tracking them - many other addon ‘parental control’ programs do not.
Is anything permissible in surveillance as long as you are monitoring a child? The UN convention on the rights of the child includes a right to privacy. But two countries have yet to ratify it - Somalia and the US.

Update: The department’s own Prof Sonia Livingstone has written a book chapter defending a child’s right to online privacy in “Information Technology at Home” (edited by Kraut, to be published by OUP).

A very interesting article has been produced outlining the privacy implications of Internet search engines. It isn’t just that they make it easy for others to get at publicly-held data - they also collect all sorts of data about your surfing habits and other information. Google and others say they don’t use such data or intend to use it in any way except to make your surfing easier, but will this always be true? And do people always realise the implications of their trading their privacy for convenience?

I have to say I use all of Google’s potentially privacy-intrusive functions, but I am addicted to new cool features…

P.S. I agree with Ray Everett-Mills who expresses surprise that a company like Google has no privacy officer. As far as I can tell they leave that stuff to the lawyers - lawyers can protect you from the consequences of mistakes but a good privacy officer would keep them from making mistakes. Here in Europe I like to think a company like Google would not think twice about having one…

The insularity of American web publishers has long been a pet peeve of mine so the launch of the Electronic Freedom Foundation’s Legal Guide for Bloggers with accompanying American-style logo struck a sore nerve. It’s true that in their overview of common issues FAQ they point out that laws vary between countries but several of the sub-FAQs fail to make this point and some of them could therefore actually mislead the unwary. Like their guide to defamation law which says, “If the plaintiff is a public figure, he or she must also prove actual malice” - not true in the UK, for example, I believe. I think in Europe people also have more rights to privacy than here (eg I think you in theory have to get permission from people you take pictures of if you want to publish them though I am not sure about this).

Simply calling it the Legal Guide for American Bloggers would help a lot here, and if they encouraged other major blogging countries’ policy wonks to produce similar guides (and linked to them) that would help a lot too. Meanwhile, serious UK and European bloggers might want to look at The Legal and Regulatory Environment for Electronic Information by Charles Oppenheim which I picked up some time ago though it is now four years old (can anyone suggest anything more recent and/or cheaper?). Suggestions via comments of websites and other online resources relevant to other countries would be welcome.

Of course, I should add, the EFF’s publication of a guide like this is, on the whole, a Good Thing, they have produced lots of other good stuff both for Americans and for the wider Internet-using public and if you are in the US and a blogger (or just want to see how their law affects ordinary members of the American web publishing public) this guide is well worth reading. Also see their guide to How to Blog Anonymously…

Lois Ann Scheidt - a fellow blog researcher - draws attention to recent AOL research which says, “a surprising eighty four percent of teens said they would not be willing to share their blog with just anyone on the open web”. I suspect that there is a big difference between what teens say if asked and what many of them do. Certainly there is plenty of evidence of very open blogging of sensitive information online even when privacy tools are available (eg using Livejournal). Our recent report on children and Internet use highlights some differences between what kids do, what they say they do and what they tell their parents they do.

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