{"id":10432,"date":"2012-06-13T10:57:56","date_gmt":"2012-06-13T14:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=10432"},"modified":"2012-06-14T15:37:28","modified_gmt":"2012-06-14T19:37:28","slug":"a-new-privacy-pt-2-disclosure-damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-dont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2012\/06\/13\/a-new-privacy-pt-2-disclosure-damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-dont\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Privacy, Pt. 2: Disclosure (Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don\u2019t)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
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This image is on the Internet. Whose fault is that? (Is it anyone's fault, per se?)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Last month in Part I (Distributed Agency and the Myth of Autonomy<\/a>), I used the TtW2012 \u201cLogging Off and Disconnection<\/a>\u201d panel as a starting point to consider whether it is possible to abstain completely from digital social technologies, and came to the conclusion that the answer is \u201cno.\u201d Rejecting digital social technologies can mean significant losses in social capital; depending on the expectations of the people closest to us, rejecting digital social technologies can mean seeming to reject our loved ones (or “liked ones”) as well. Even if we choose to take those risks, digital social technologies are non-optional systems<\/a>; we can choose not to use them, but we cannot choose to live in a world where we are not affected by other people\u2019s choices to use digital social technologies.<\/p>\n

I used Facebook as an example to show that we are always connected<\/em> to digital social technologies, whether we are connecting<\/em> through them or not. Facebook (and other companies) collect what I call second-hand data<\/em>, or data about people other those from whom the data is collected. This means that whether we leave digital traces is not a decision we can make autonomously, as our friends, acquaintances, and contacts also make these decisions for us<\/strong>. We cannot escape being connected to digital social technologies anymore than we can escape society itself.<\/p>\n

This week, I examine two prevailing privacy discourses\u2014one championed by journalists and bloggers, the other championed by digital technology companies\u2014to show that, although our connections to digital social technology are out of our hands, we still conceptualize privacy as a matter of individual choice and control, as something individuals can \u2018own\u2019<\/a>. Clinging to the myth of individual autonomy, however, leads us to think about privacy in ways that mask both structural inequality and larger issues of power.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Disclosure: Damned If You Do, and Damned If You Don’t<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Your privacy is out of your hands, but protecting it is still your responsibility.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Inescapable connection notwithstanding, we still largely conceptualize disclosure as an individual choice, and privacy as a personal responsibility. This is particularly unsurprising in the United States, where an obsession with self-determination is foundational not only to the radical individualism that increasingly characterizes American culture, but also to much of our national mythology (to let go of the \u2018autonomous individual\u2019 would be to relinquish the \u201cbootstrap\u201d narrative, the mirage of meritocracy, and the shaky belief that bad things don\u2019t happen to good people, among other things).<\/p>\n

Though the intersection of digital interaction and personal information is hardly localized to the United States, major digital social technology companies such as Facebook and Google are headquartered in the U.S.; perhaps relatedly, the two primary discourses of privacy within that intersection share a good deal of underlying ideology with U.S. national mythology. The first of these discourses centers on a paradigm that I\u2019ll call Shame On You<\/em>, and spotlights issues of privacy and agency; the second centers on a paradigm that I\u2019ll call Look At Me<\/em>, and spotlights issues of privacy and identity.<\/p>\n

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Blaming the victim.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cYou shouldn\u2019t have put it on the Internet, stupid!\u201d Within the Shame On You<\/em> paradigm, the control of personal information and the protection of personal privacy are not just individual responsibilities, but also moral obligations<\/strong>. Choosing to disclose is at best a risk and a liability; at worst, it is the moment we bring upon ourselves any unwanted social, emotional, or economic impacts that will stem (at any point, and in any way) from either an intended or an unintended audience\u2019s access to something we have made digitally available. Disclosure is framed as an individual choice, though we need not choose intentionally or even knowingly; it can be the choice to disclose information, the choice to make incorrect assumptions about to whom information is (or will be) accessible, or the choice to remain ignorant of what, when, by whom, how, and to what end that information can be made accessible.<\/p>\n

A privacy violation is therefore ultimately a failure of vigilance, a failure of prescience; it redefines as disclosure the instant in which we should have known better, regardless of what it is we should have known. Accordingly, the greatest shame in compromised privacy is not what is exposed, but the fact of exposure itself<\/strong>. We judge people less for showing women their genitals<\/a>, and more for being reckless enough to get caught<\/a> doing so on Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Your location data can be used in ways you never anticipated. Is that your fault?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shame On You<\/em> was showcased most recently in the commentary surrounding the controversial iPhone app \u201cGirls Around Me,\u201d which used a combination of public Google Maps data, public Foursquare check-ins, and \u2018publicly available\u2019[i]<\/a> Facebook information to create a display of nearby women. The creators of Girls Around Me claimed their so-called \u201ccreepy\u201d app was being targeted as a scapegoat<\/a>, and insisted that the app could just as well be used to locate men instead of women. Nonetheless, the creators\u2019 use of the diminutive term \u201cgirls\u201d rather than the more accurate term \u201cwomen\u201d exemplifies the sexism<\/a> and the objectification of women on which the app was designed to capitalize. (If the app\u2019s graphic design somehow failed to make this clear, see also one developer\u2019s comments about using Girls Around Me to \u201c[avoid] ugly women on a night out<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n

The telling use of \u201cgirls\u201d seemed to pass uncommented upon, however, and most accounts of the controversy (with few<\/a> exceptions<\/a>) omitted gender and power dynamics from the discussion\u2014as well as \u201csociety, norms, politics, values and everything else confusing about the analogue world<\/a>.\u201d The result was a powerful but unexamined synergy between Shame On You<\/em> and the politics of sex and visibility, one that cast as transgressors women who had dared not only to go out in public, but to publicly declare where they had gone<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Women<\/a> and men<\/a> alike uncritically reproduced<\/a> the app\u2019s demeaning language by referring to \u201cgirls\u201d throughout their commentaries; many argued that the app was not the problem<\/a>, and insisted furthermore that its developers had done nothing wrong<\/a>. The blogger who broke the Girls Around Me story explicitly states that \u201cthe real problem<\/a>\u201d is not the app (which was made by \u201cguys\u201d who are \u201csuper nice,\u201d and which was \u201cmeant to be all in good fun\u201d), but rather people who, \u201cout of ignorance, apathy or laziness,\u201d do not opt-out of allowing strangers to view their information. He and a number of others hope Girls Around Me will serve as \u201ca wake up call\u201d to \u201cgirls who have failed to lock down their info<\/a>\u201d and to \u201cthose who publicly overshare<\/a>,\u201d since \u201cwe all have a responsibility to protect our own privacy<\/a>\u201d instead of leaving \u201call our information out there waving in the wind<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another blogger admonishes that, \u201cthe only way to really stay off the grid<\/a> is to never sign up for these services in the first place. Failing that, you really should take your online privacy seriously. After all, Facebook isn\u2019t going to help you, as the more you share, the more valuable you are to its real customers, the advertisers. You really need to take responsibility for yourself.\u201d Still another argues that conventional standards of morality and behavior no longer apply to digitally mediated actions, because \u201cpublishing anything publicly<\/em> online means you have, in fact, opted in<\/a>\u201d\u2014to any and every conceivable (or inconceivable) use of whatever one might have made available. The pervasive tone of moral superiority, both in these articles and in others like them, proclaims loudly and clearly: Shame On You<\/em>\u2014for being foolish, ignorant, careless, na\u00efve, or (worst of all) deliberately choosing<\/a> to put yourself on digital display.<\/p>\n

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Sexism: still alive and well.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Accounts such as these serve not only to deflect attention away from problems like sexism and objectification, but to normalize and naturalize a veritable litany of questionable phenomena:<\/strong> pervasive surveillance, predatory data collection, targeted ads, deliberately obtuse privacy policies, onerous opt-out procedures<\/a>, neoliberal self-interest, the expanding power of social media companies<\/a>, the repackaging of users as products<\/a>, and the simultaneous monetization and commoditization of information, to name just a few. These accounts perpetuate the myth that we are all autonomous individuals, isolated and distinct, endowed with indomitable agency and afforded infinite arrays of choices.<\/p>\n

With other variables obfuscated or reduced to the background noise of normalcy, the only things left to blame for unanticipated or unwanted outcomes–or for our disquietude at observing such outcomes–are those individuals who choose to expose themselves in the first place. Of course<\/em> corporations try to coerce us into \u201cputting out\u201d information, and of course <\/em>they will take anything they can get if we are not careful; this is just their nature. It is up to us to be good users, to keep telling them no, to remain vigilant and distrustful (even if we like them), and never<\/em> to let them go all the way. We are to keep the aspirin between our knees<\/a>, and our data to ourselves<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Shame On You<\/em> extends beyond disclosure to corporations, and\u2014for all its implicit digital dualism\u2014beyond digitally mediated disclosure as well. Case in point: during the course of writing this essay, I received a mass-emailed \u201cCommunity Alert Bulletin\u201d in which the Chief of Police at my university campus warned of \u201csuspicious activity.\u201d On several occasions, it seems, two men have been seen \u201croaming the library;\u201d one of them typically \u201cacts as a look out,\u201d while the other approaches a woman who is sitting or studying by herself. What does one man do while the other keeps watch? He \u201cengages\u201d the woman, and \u201casks for personal information.\u201d The \u201cexact\u00a0intent or motives of the subjects\u201d is unknown, but the \u2018Safety Reminders\u2019 at the end of the message instruct, \u201cNever provide personal information to anyone you do not know or trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Who escapes blame when we blame the victim?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If ill-advised disclosure were always this simple\u2014suspicious people asking us outright to reveal information about ourselves\u2014perhaps the moral mandate of Shame On You<\/em> would seem slightly less ridiculous. As it stands, holding individuals primarily responsible for violations of their own privacy expands the operative definition of \u201cdisclosure\u201d to absurd extremes. If we post potentially discrediting photos of ourselves, we are guilty of disclosure through posting; if friends (or former lovers<\/a>) post discrediting photos of us, we are guilty of disclosure through allowing ourselves to be photographed; if we did not know that we were being photographed, we are guilty of disclosure through our failure to assume that we would be photographed and to alter our actions accordingly. If we do not want Facebook to have our names or our phone numbers, we should terminate our friendships with Facebook users, forcibly erase our contact information from those users\u2019 phones, and thereafter give false information to any suspected Facebook users we might encounter. This is untenable, to say the least. The inescapable connection of life in an augmented world means that exclusive control of our personal information, as well as full protection of our personal privacy, is quite simply out of our personal hands<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

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This couple has "nothing to hide."<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second paradigm, Look At Me<\/em>, at first seems to represent a competing discourse. Its most vocal proponents are executives at social- and other digital media companies, along with assorted technologists and other Silicon Valley \u2018digerati<\/a>\u2019. This paradigm looks at you askance not for putting information on the Internet, but for forgetting that \u201cinformation wants to be free<\/a>\u201d\u2014because within this paradigm, disclosure<\/em> is the new moral imperative<\/strong>. Disclosure is no longer an action that disrupts the guarded default state, but the default state itself; it is not something one chooses or does, but something one is, something one has always-already done. Privacy, on the other hand, is a homespun relic of a bygone era, as droll as notions of a flat earth<\/strong>; it is particularly impractical in the 21st<\/sup> century. After all, who really owns a friendship<\/a>? \u201cWho owns your face if you go out in public?<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Called both \u201copenness\u201d and \u201cradical transparency,\u201d disclosure-by-default is touted as a social and political panacea; it will promote kindness and tolerance toward others, fuel progress and innovation, create accountability, and bring everyone closer to a better world. Alternatively, clinging to privacy will merely harbor evil people<\/a> and condemn us to \u201cgeneric relationships<\/a>.\u201d The enlightened \u201cdon’t believe that privacy is a real issue<\/a>,\u201d and anyone who maintains otherwise is suspect; as even WikiLeaks activist Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror<\/a>) has lamented, privacy is cast \u201cas something that only criminals would want<\/a>.\u201d Our greatest failings are no longer what do or what we choose, but who we are; our greatest shame is not in exposure, but in having or being something to hide<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear...right?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Look At Me<\/em> has benefitted, to some degree, from a synergy of its own: \u201copenness,\u201d broadly conceived, has gained traction as more \u2018open\u2019 movements and initiatives attract attention and build popular support. In 1998, the Open Source Initiative<\/a> was the first to claim \u2018open\u2019 as a moniker; it is now joined by what one writer has called<\/a> an \u201copen science revolt<\/a>,\u201d by not one<\/a>, but two<\/a> Open Science movements, by President Obama\u2019s Open Government Initiative<\/a>, by the somewhat meta Open Movements<\/a> movement, and by a number<\/a> of other<\/a> initiatives<\/a> aimed<\/a> at reforming<\/a> academic<\/a> research<\/a> and<\/a> publishing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTransparency,\u201d too, has been popularized into a buzzword (try web-searching \u201cgreater transparency,\u201d with quotes). In an age of what Jurgenson and Rey (@nathanjurgenson<\/a> and @pjrey<\/a>) have called liquid politics<\/em><\/a>, people demand transparency from institutions in the hope that exposure will encourage the powerful to be honest<\/a>; in return, institutions offer cryptic policy documents, unreadable reports, and \u201crabbit hole[s] of links<\/a>\u201d as transparency simulacra. Yet we continue to push for transparency from corporations and governments alike, which suggests that, to some degree, we do believe in transparency as a means to progressive ends. Perhaps it is not such a stretch, then, for social media companies (and others) to ask that we accept radical transparency for ourselves as well?<\/p>\n

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G+ was supposed to be the Anti-Facebook...or was it?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 2011 launch of social network-cum<\/em>-\u201cidentity service<\/a>\u201d Google+ served to test this theory, but the protracted \u201c#nymwars<\/a>\u201d controversy that followed seemed not to be the result that Google had anticipated. Although G+ had been positioned as \u2018the anti-Facebook\u2019 in advance of its highly anticipated beta launch, within four weeks of going live Google decided not only to enforce a strict \u2018real names only\u2019 policy, but to do so through a \u201cmassive deletion spree<\/a>\u201d that quickly grew into a public relations debacle. The mantra in Silicon Valley is, \u201cGoogle doesn\u2019t get social<\/a>,\u201d and this time Google managed to (as one blogger put it) \u201cout-zuck<\/em> the Zuck<\/a>.\u201d Though sparked by G+, #nymwars did not remain confined to G+ in its scope; nor were older<\/a> battle<\/a> lines<\/a> around<\/a> privacy<\/a> and anonymity<\/a> redrawn for this particular occasion.<\/p>\n

On one side of the conflagration, rival data giants Google and Facebook<\/a> both pushed their versions of \u2018personal radical transparency\u2019; they were more-or-less supported by a loose assortment<\/a> of individuals<\/a> who either had \u201cnothing to hide<\/a>,\u201d or who preached<\/a> the fallacy<\/a> that, \u2018if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.\u2019 The \u2018nothing to hide\u2019 argument in particular has been a perennial favorite for Google; well before the advent of G+ and #nymwars, CEO Eric Schmidt rebuked, \u201cIf you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place<\/a>.\u201d Unsurprisingly, Schmidt\u2019s dismissive response to G+ users with privacy concerns was a smug, \u201cG+ is completely optional. No one is forcing you use it.<\/a>\u201d If G+ is supposed to be an \u2018identity service,\u2019 it seems only some identities are worthy of being served.<\/p>\n

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Transparent is the new black, right?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the other side was a \u2018vocal minority<\/a>\u2019 who, despite their purportedly fewer numbers, still seemed to generate most of the substantive<\/a> digital<\/a> content<\/a> about #nymwars[ii]<\/a>. The pro-pseudonym-and\/or-privacy camp included the Electronic Frontier<\/a> Foundation<\/a> (@EFF<\/a>), a new website called My Name Is Me<\/a>, researcher danah boyd<\/a> (@zephoria<\/a>), pseudonymity advocate and former Google employee Skud<\/a> (@Skud<\/a>, \u2018Kirrily Robert\u2019 on her passport at the time and \u2018Alex Skud Bayley<\/a>\u2019 on it now), security technologist Bruce Schneier<\/a> (@schneierblog<\/a>, who had argued previously against Schmidt\u2019s view of privacy<\/a>), the hacker group Anonymous<\/a> (unsurprisingly), and a substantive minority of Google employees<\/a> (or \u201cGooglers\u201d). There was a long list of pseudonymous and ‘real named’ users<\/a> who had been kicked off the site<\/a>, an irate individual banned because of his “unusual” real name<\/a>, and an individual with an unremarkable name who couldn\u2019t seem to get banned<\/a> no matter how hard he tried.<\/p>\n

Digital dualists took issue, too; one declared the \u2018real names\u2019 policy to be \u201ca radical departure from the way identity and speech interact in the real world<\/a>,\u201d while another came to the conclusion that, <\/strong>\u201cThe real world is often messy, chaotic and anonymous. The Internet is mostly better that way, too<\/a>.\u201d And in what may be one of my favorite #nymwars posts, a sixteen year old blogger<\/a> took on the absurdity of equating not only \u2018real name\u2019 with \u2018known as,\u2019 but also \u2018network\u2019 with \u2018community\u2019\u2014and then went on to argue that Shakespeare\u2019s Juliet had it right in asking, \u201cWhat\u2019s in a name?\u201d whereas Google\u2019s Eric Schmidt sounded \u201cshockingly similar\u201d to the head of \u201cthe evil, Voldemort-controlled Ministry of Magic<\/a>\u201d in J. K. Rowling\u2019s first Harry Potter<\/em> book.<\/p>\n

Issues of power are conspicuously absent from Look At Me<\/em>, and Google makes use of this fact to gloss the profound difference between individuals pressuring a company to be transparent and a company pressuring (or forcing) individuals to be transparent. Google is transparent, for example, in its ad targeting<\/a>, but allowing users either to opt-out of targeted advertising or to edit the information used in targeting them does not change the fact that Google users are being tracked, and that information about them is being collected. This kind of \u2018transparency\u2019 offers users not empowerment, but what Davis (@Jup83<\/a>) calls \u201cselective visibility<\/a>\u201d: users can reduce their awareness of being tracked by Google, but can do little (short of complete Google abstention) to stop the tracking itself. <\/strong><\/p>\n

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Transparency can be a real drag.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Such \u2018transparency\u2019 therefore has little effect on Google in practice; with plenty more fish in the sea (and hundreds of millions of userfish already in its nets), Google has little incentive to care whether any particular user does or does not continue to use Google products. Individual users, on the other hand, can find quitting Google to be a right pain<\/a>, and this imbalance in the Google\/user relationship effectively gives carte blanche to Google policymakers. This is especially<\/em> problematic with respect to transparency, which has a far greater impact on individual Google users than it does on Google itself.<\/p>\n

Google may have \u2018corporate personhood\u2019, but persons have identities; in the present moment, many identities still serve to mark people for discrimination, oppression, and persecution, whether they are \u201cevil<\/a>\u201d or not. Look At Me<\/em> claims personal radical transparency will solve these problems, yet social media spaces are neither digital utopias nor separate worlds; all regular \u201c*-isms\u201d still apply<\/strong>, and real names don\u2019t stop bullies or trolls<\/a> in digital spaces any more than they do in conventional spaces. At the height of irony, even \u2018real-named\u2019 G+ users who supported Google\u2019s policy still trolled other users who supported pseudonyms<\/a>.<\/p>\n

boyd offers a different assessment of \u2018real names\u2019 policies, one that stands in stark contrast to the doctrine of radical transparency. She argues that, far from being empowering, \u2018real name\u2019 policies are \u201can authoritarian assertion of power<\/a> over vulnerable people.\u201d Geek Feminism hosts an exhaustive list<\/a> of the many groups and individuals who can be vulnerable in this way, and Audrey Watters (@audreywatters<\/a>) explains that many people in positions of power do not hesitate to translate their disapproval<\/a> of even ordinary activities into adverse hiring and firing decisions. Though tech CEOs call for radical transparency, a senior faculty member (for example) condemns would-be junior faculty whose annoying \u201cquirks\u201d turn up online<\/a> instead of remaining \u201cstifle[d]\u201d and \u201chidden\u201d during the interview process. As employers begin not only to Google-search job applicants, but also to demand Facebook passwords<\/a>, belonging to what Erving Goffman calls a \u201cdiscreditable group<\/a>\u201d carries not just social but economic consequences.<\/p>\n

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Transparency can be a weapon. Who's pointing it at whom?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rey points out that there are big differences between cyber-libertarianism and cyber-anarchism<\/a>; if “information” does, in fact, “want to be free,” it does not always “want” to be free for the same reasons. \u2018Openness\u2019 does not neutralize preexisting inequality (as the Open Source movement itself demonstrates<\/a>), whereas forced transparency can be a form of outing<\/a> with dubious efficacy for encouraging either tolerance or accountability. As boyd, Watters, and Geek Feminism demonstrate, those who call most loudly for radical transparency are neither those who will supposedly receive the greatest benefit from it, nor those who will pay its greatest price. Though some (economically secure, middle-aged, heterosexual, able-bodied) white men acknowledged their privilege<\/a> and tried to educate others like them<\/a> about why pseudonyms are important, the loudest calls for \u2018real names\u2019 were ultimately the \u201cmost privileged and powerful<\/a>\u201d calling for the increased exposure of marginalized others. Maybe the full realization of an egalitarian utopia would lead more people to choose \u2018openness\u2019 or \u2018transparency\u2019, or maybe it wouldn\u2019t. But strong-arming more people into \u2018openness\u2019 or \u2018transparency\u2019 certainly will not lead to an egalitarian utopia; it will only exacerbate existing oppressions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The #nymwars arguments about \u2018personal radical transparency\u2019 reveal that Shame On You<\/em> and Look At Me<\/em> are at least as complementary as they are competing. Both preach in the same superior, moralizing tone, even as one lectures about reckless disclosure and the other levels accusations of suspicious concealment. Both would agree to place all blame squarely on the shoulders of individual users, if only they could agree on what is blameworthy. Both serve to naturalize and to normalize the same set of problematic practices, from pervasive surveillance to the commoditization of information.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, both turn a blind eye to issues of inequality, identity, and power, and in so doing gloss distinctions that are of critical importance. If these two discourses are as much in cahoots as they are in conflict, what is the composite picture of how we think about privacy, choice, and disclosure? What is the impact of most social media users embracing one paradigm, and most social media designers embracing the other?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Burned by disclosure?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As I will show next week, the conception of privacy as an individual matter\u2014whether as a right or as something to be renounced\u2014is the linchpin of the troubling consequences that follow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Whitney Erin Boesel (<\/em>@phenatypical<\/em><\/a>) is a graduate student in Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.<\/em><\/p>\n

Image Credits:<\/em><\/p>\n

Baby bathtub image from http:\/\/www.mommyshorts.com\/2011\/11\/caption-contest.html<\/em><\/p>\n

Peeping bathroom image from http:\/\/gweedopig.com\/index.php\/2009\/11\/03\/peeping-tom-hides-video-camera-in-christian-store-bathroom\/<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Victim image from http:\/\/news.nationalpost.com\/2011\/11\/24\/let-me-run-through-your-dumb-mistakes-teen-burglars-apology-letter-to-victims\/<\/em><\/p>\n

Pushpin image from http:\/\/www.pinewswire.net\/article\/to-warrant-or-not-to-warrant-aclu-police-clash-over-cellphone-location-data\/<\/em><\/p>\n

Don’t rape sign image from http:\/\/higherunlearning.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/05\/dsc7600r.jpg?w=580&h=510<\/em><\/p>\n

Anti-woman image from http:\/\/www.feroniaproject.org\/fired-for-using-contraception-maybe-in-arizona\/<\/em><\/p>\n

Naked wedding photo from http:\/\/www.mccullagh.org\/photo\/1ds-10\/burning-man-cathedral-wedding<\/em><\/p>\n

Cop image from http:\/\/www.quickmeme.com\/meme\/6ajf\/<\/em><\/p>\n

G+ vs. Facebook comic: by Randal Munroe, from xkcd: http:\/\/xkcd.com\/918\/<\/em><\/p>\n

Transparency word cluster from http:\/\/digiphile.wordpress.com\/2010\/03\/28\/transparency-camp-2010-government-transparency-open-data-and-coffee\/<\/em><\/p>\n

Transparent sea creature image from http:\/\/halfelf.org\/2012\/risk-vs-transparency\/<\/em><\/p>\n

Transparent grenade image from http:\/\/www.creativeapplications.net\/objects\/the-transparency-grenade-by-julian-oliver-design-fiction-for-leaking-data\/<\/em><\/p>\n

Transparency and toast image from http:\/\/time2morph.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/01\/transparent-toaster.jpg?w=300&h=234<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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[i]<\/a> Note that \u201cpublicly available\u201d is tricky here: Girls Around Me users were ported to Facebook to view the women\u2019s profiles, and so could also have accessed non-public<\/em> information if they happened to view profiles of women with whom they had friends or networks in common.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[ii]<\/a> Alternatively, my difficulty finding posts written in support of Google\u2019s policy may simply reflect Google\u2019s \u2018personalization\u2019 of my search results, both then and now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

moral imperative<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month in Part I (Distributed Agency and the Myth of Autonomy), I used the TtW2012 \u201cLogging Off and Disconnection\u201d panel as a starting point to consider whether it is possible to abstain completely from digital social technologies, and came to the conclusion that the answer is \u201cno.\u201d Rejecting digital social technologies can mean significant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1875,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967,892],"tags":[36426,10730,584,347,13,424,3312,1528,732,10125,190],"class_list":["post-10432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-essay","tag-commentary","tag-connected","tag-digital-media","tag-identity","tag-inequality","tag-privacy","tag-privilege","tag-sexism","tag-social-media","tag-visibility","tag-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1875"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10432"}],"version-history":[{"count":53,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10490,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10432\/revisions\/10490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}