No Place to Hide Online Soon?
Yesterday I watched an interesting show produced by Peter Jennings about the future of digital privacy sparked by a book, “No Place to Hide”, written by Robert O’Harrow, Jr., a reporter at the Washington Post. I was driven to Ted Leonsis’ Snag Films site thanks to an article in the Washbiz Blog. The film focuses on the future of digital privacy and is an informative piece which opened my eyes.
Over the past few months my focus on digital privacy has increased as I’ve begun to realize the flaws with the existing systems and that we are in the process of defining privacy standards. For the past few months my digital privacy exploration has been relatively limited to social networks and when I saw the video embedded below, I realized how big of a deal this really is.
The thing that struck me the most is how the same dynamic in which the private sector is able to act without interference from the public sector for the most part exists across most technology organizations within the U.S. I’m not sure that this is completely shocking but it is substantial. One of my personal goals over the coming months is to continue exploring the impact of social technology on privacy.
In the process, I hope that we can interact with and that readers of this site can learn from some of the policy makers who are helping to shape the future of digital privacy. As the film below highlights, the government remains to be ill-suited to handle the oversight of companies that oversee the management of our digital identities. For the past few months I have expressed the need for the creation of a formal organization that oversees digital privacy.
Whether or not this is a sufficient solution, it is important that this publication as well as others continue to explore this area. Without continuing coverage I fear that social technology could soon become as infamous as credit card companies when it comes to the trading of our digital identities without our explicit consent. This could be an unwarranted fear but without exploration of the issue I believe that we risk having our digital identities compromised further.
What do you believe the implications of social technology to be on digital privacy? Do you think an organization that oversees digital privacy is justifiable?
