Julianna Yau’s blog

Today, the Globe & Mail had an article by Pamela Hess on the some US officials calling for a redefining of privacy.

The technological and social practises in place today are very different from what they were 50, or even 10 years ago, and we certainly need to revisit our expectations and practises for privacy. The undertones of what the US officials are saying (at least as they are presented by Hess) concern me, though, because they seem to be using the changes in technology and culture to justify wider and more lenient access to information by the state.

Yes, “Millions of people in the United States – particularly young people –have already surrendered anonymity to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and to Internet commerce.”… But they have  “surrendered anonymity” voluntarily. The amount of information given and, for the most part, the audience for that information is controlled by the person volunteering the information. The question then becomes whether a person is still entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy when they are providing information about themselves to multiple social networking and Internet commerce websites, and what is then “a reasonable expectation of privacy”.

Surely if I broadcast to my friends on Facebook that I’m going on vacation, I should expect them to engage me in conversation about the vacation and be inquisitive about it. Likewise, if I were one to make use of the “relationship status” field provided by Facebook, I should expect questions, congratulations or consolations from friends if I broadcast changes in my relationship status.

But by providing my information to multiple sources, should I expect someone (or the government) to lawfully harvest all of that information into a file? Sure, it could be done by anyone with the desire and enough time on their hands, but am I implicitly authorizing such a use of my information by simply providing it and authorizing, in the case of social networking sites and my own sites (such as this blog), the distribution of that information?

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One Laptop Per Child’s Give One, Get One program starts today. For $399USD plus shipping, you’ll be paying for the donation of one laptop to a developing nation and one laptop being shipped to you. For me, this came to $433.95USD (an unusually low $429.76CAD).

In all honesty: (a) I can’t really afford the donation, but can’t let this opportunity pass (it’ll hurt in December and January when all my year-end bills come rolling in!); (b) although the program is marketed to send the laptop to “the child in your life”, I am that child (anyone who knows me understands how my eyes light up when I get my hands on such innovative use of technology).  I do feel guilt for not giving my “get one” laptop to a child, but I have no such child in my life. I plan to absolve my guilt by giving [my limited ability to provide] tech support back to XO owners and to talk to my friends who teach elementary school to see whether I can get the laptop into some children’s hands.

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