Tuesday, 12 January 2010

Facebook's Zuckerberg Thinks Your Right to Privacy is Not Normal

Do you trust Zuckerberg, a thief, with your privacy? Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says your privacy is a thing of the past. 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.” ¹

He went on to say that privacy was no longer a ‘social norm’ and had just evolved over time.

How convenient that a 25 year old billionaire can decide on a whim that your privacy and that of over 350 million other FaceBook users is abnegated because it defies some misguided personal idea of a 'social norm' that by its very definition means you don't know what I know about me. I suppose this is the 'norm' we can expect from Zuckerberg who stole the idea and code for Facebook from the guys at Uconnect and ended up having to pay them by court order for this theft.

While social networking might be the new fad, is it worth your life's intimacy? Is it right that these social networking platforms can sell your personal data to the highest bidder? ² Or as in the case of Facebook, give it away for free to companies whose use has not always been socially conscionable or legally acceptable? ^{3 & 4}

There is a good reason why I don't belong to Facebook, or any social networking website. It's the same reason I put together the application that powers Blogacause. I wanted the ability to publish anonymously, and I wanted to offer that same opportunity to people who had a cause to champion but were afraid to do so for fear of retribution, especially if they are fighting against a corporate machine or government trying to suppress the truth. ⁵

This stance doesn't exactly make me a targeted takeover by big corporate interests... so in my case its become a labor of love. But there is one thing that I can guarantee all users of Blogacause and that is your privacy is intact from the moment you sign up. No government or Corporation will learn who you are or any identifying information about you from posts you make on blogacause unless you put that information in a post.

The U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy. In the same breath, it does not deny it either.

The Bill of Rights, however, reflects the concern of James Madison and other framers for protecting specific aspects of privacy, such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy of the person and possessions as against unreasonable searches (4th Amendment), and the 5th Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal information.

Most importantly, the Ninth Amendment states that the "enumeration of certain rights" in the Bill of Rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people." The meaning of the Ninth Amendment is elusive, but some persons (including Justice Goldberg in his Griswold concurrence) have interpreted the Ninth Amendment as justification for broadly reading the Bill of Rights to protect privacy in ways not specifically provided in the first eight amendments. ⁶

I believe that the 9th Amendment should be read to mean that all parts of our life are protected, private from government and corporations who would use it to control and manipulate our lives and otherwise use the intimate details of our lives in ways that would hurt us and the freedoms we enjoy. If we go by the constitutional norm wherein the founding fathers expressly laid out the things government may not do, then the reasoning based on their thinking is that the government may not invade our privacy. We alone decide what constitutes our privacy via the 9th Amendment.

Government has long wanted a way around this. That tenuous hold on power that they have is based on knowing if a free and armed society is plotting to overthrow a despotic and intrusive government. The only way they can know this is if they can spy on their own people (against the law) or if the people willing tell them what they are doing.

The same applies to corporations. If they, through an analysis of your likes and dislikes, your blog posts and purchasing habits, and a boat load of other internet data that can potentially be collected about you while your online, discover a trend, social or economical, then they can prepare for that trend and reap the profits.

Facebook is the perfect medium for both camps to take advantage of an unsuspecting public. Unfortunately, Facebook has been the bully on the block when it comes to your privacy, take for example the case of Charlene Li. She made purchases online at a site unrelated to Facebook only to login to Facebook and see her purchases made public because of Facebook's Beacon program. ⁷

She writes:
So I'm joining a growing chorus of Facebook critics that Beacon has some serious problems. Facebook has made the point that Beacon isn't sharing information publically, but with your friends. That's correct, but I think both the critics and Facebook are missing the point.
The biggest problem is the lack of transparency. Facebook is right in that I would really like to have some things that I do on third party sites to conveniently appear in newsfeed, e.g. events I'm attending from Evite or eBay/craigslist listings so that my friends know about them. That's the promise of Beacon. But I need to be in control and not get blindsided as I did in the example above. I was seriously wigged out, but wouldn't have been if Overstock had simply told me that they were inserting a Facebook Beacon and given me the opportunity at that time to opt-in to Beacon.

Guess its a good thing she didn't buy a bunch of sex toys, whew, disclosure to friends and family that she bought a fist shaped dildo would surely be humiliating. But then if Facebook really cared about your privacy, they would set their Beacon type apps to automatically opt you out and its your 'choice' to opt in. But then I digress, that's giving a free people another freedom.

Now you would think that after a massive class action lawsuit forced Facebook to close down the beacon program ⁸, Zuckerberg would have gotten the sticky 411 on this... unfortunately with his latest spew it appears he is and always will be looking for the next opportunity and app to help our ostensibly benign citizen loving government and his corporate partners do a little more spying on free and peaceful Americans.

References:

Technorati Tags: privacy falacy facebook cia google microsoft yahoo