The New Expectation of Privacy

Facebook zygote and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has suggested that people no longer have an expectation of privacy based on the current buisness performance.  Nice to see that the best and brightest minds of our (?) generation are looking out for what really counts.

From eWeekEurope:

Privacy is no longer a social norm, according to the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg commenting on the rise of social networking

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook has said that people no longer have an expectation of privacy thanks to increasing uptake of social networking.

Speaking at the Crunchie Awards in San Francisco this weekend, the 25 year-old web entrepreneur said: “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people.”

besides saying a big Fuck You out to Mr. Zuckerberg for having such a swarmy little attitude toward our fundamental rights, I would like to remind everybody (oh Vast Readership!) that everything you write and upload becomes the property of Facebook, to do with what wish.

To remind everybody what that really means, need I remind you that the rules for Government acquisition of personal information (assuming that rules are adhered to) are almost non-existent when applied to so called "fourth party" holders.

From an abstract from "Buying You: The Government's Use of Fourth-Parties to Launder Data about 'The People'" :

Abstract:
Your information is for sale, and the government is buying it at alarming rates. The CIA, FBI, Justice Department, Defense Department, and other government agencies are at this very moment turning to a group of companies to provide them information that these companies can gather without the restrictions that bind government intelligence agencies. The information is gathered from sources that few would believe the government could gain unfettered access to, but which, under current Fourth Amendment doctrine and statutory protections, are completely accessible.

Fourth-parties, such as ChoicePoint or LexisNexis, are private companies that aggregate data for the government, and they comprise the private security-industrial complex that arose after the attacks of September 11, 2001. They are in the business of acquiring information, not from the information’s originator (the first-party), nor from the information’s anticipated recipient (the second-party), but from the unavoidable digital intermediaries that transmit and store the information (third-parties). These fourth-party companies act with impunity as they gather information that the government wants but would be unable to collect on its own due to Fourth Amendment or statutory prohibitions. This paper argues that when fourth-parties disclose to law enforcement information generated as a result of searches that would be violations had the government conducted the searches itself, those fourth-parties’ actions should be considered searches by agents of the government, and the data should retain privacy protections.

The entire paper can be found at the link above and I am in in position now to comment on it (have PAK1 and PAK2 to watch), but just wanted to get a few things out there since the number of posts I have skipped is much larger than I would like it to be.

For the record I know that many of the same rules of IP ownership are also in play with the blogger.com site, but I don't have the time or motivation to set up my own site to complain from.