Privacy in public

Social Media.https://defendernetwork.com/news/national/employers-relying-social-media/

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rivacy in public is the idea of small-scale intimacy existing in a larger context or background. Some examples of this concept are social media, smartphone use, public surveillance, and facial recognition scanning. These examples emphasize the shrinking world we live in, and maintain the fear that “Big Brother is always watching,” even in the most private of places.

Applications

Data Mining

In David Shoemaker's 2009 paper, Self-exposure and Exposure of the Self: Informational Privacy and the Presentation of Identity, he explains the “puzzle” of privacy in public with reference to data mining. Data mining is the process by which existing data is analyzed in order to create new data which relies on preexisting personal data sets widely available in public. Data miners use a large set of data from various sources to make connections and draw conclusions. He states that data miners draw on bits of publicly available information, such as social media or public records. These data miners are seen as unethical by informational subjects who believe their privacy has been violated because their personal data has been taken out of context and packaged into a data sets portraying their digital identity.

Social Media

One way that this public data comes to exist is through social media. Social media is the collection of the social network sites that engage people through user accounts via the internet. Some examples are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. These accounts can be “private” or “public” as decided by the user. It is important to note that all information posted on these websites are voluntarily supplied by the user. While not every account is publicly accessible, all information supplied to these sites is accessible in some way.

Disney Fingerprint Scanners. https://www.orlando-florida.net/walt-disney-world-now-requires-biometric-finger-scan-children/

Social media use is an example of a public in privacy. Facebook is a public domain where users voluntarily share their personal thoughts or stories through posts. Accessing this public sphere in a private setting, such as using a phone or personal computer, deems social media a public available in privacy. Therefore, the information that is posted to Facebook is public data, thus making it a target for data mining. For example, data miners might be interested in how many Facebook users between the ages of 18 and 25 are “in a relationship.” The discussion of data mining, with respect to public data, is often masked by the crime-prevention veil of public surveillance.

Public Surveillance

Public surveillance is the idea that your privacy is ignored in public settings. A few examples of this are facial recognition at the Superbowl, fingerprint scanning at Disney World, and public collections of phone numbers and email addresses through retail store databases. . Public surveillance, however, is a (violation of) privacy in public. Private and personal details, such as eye color, fingerprints, telephone number, and address can all be accessed publicly, in a public setting, such as Disney World or a football stadium. This is where technology jumps to the unethical side.

Ethics

Surveillance and Privacy

Privacy in public is a right to be respected. If a human does not wish to share his or her personal details, then those pieces of information should be left private. Some personal information surrounding an individual typically becomes public information once they leave their private residence and enter the public domain. What car one drives, what clothes and brands someone wears, their marital status, spoken language, and physical appearance can lend a great deal of information to who you are as a person. Income can be estimated, individual location can be ascertained, and physical identity can be described based on watching an individual walk from their house to their car. Though this might not be an accurate reading, it is a breach of privacy that most humans forgo by existing outside of their personal dwellings. Is being recorded a breach of privacy one overlooks or simply dismissed in order to watch a sporting event live? As Shoemaker says, “it is no wonder that most of us have reason to object to the sort of profiling produced by data mining. That a stranger may come to know our flaws is mortifying.” He continues, “when it comes to the exposure of ourselves, most of us prefer that our selves be the ones doing the exposing.” It is a matter of autonomy and control at the root of the numerous violations of privacy in public.

Surveillance in a public space can cause uncertainty on who is observing an individual’s actions. This impacts a person’s sense of freedom and discretion. Regardless if a person knows they are being surveilled or not, surveillance affects a person’s experience and abilities in a space . For example, video cameras implemented in public areas for security purposes are a common mode of surveillance. However, this means innocent people are being constantly monitored and the information collected can be used in ways unknown to the individual. This ultimately affects privacy because this is consequential for a person’s sense of self ownership . As forms of surveillance increase in public spaces, including online spaces, a person’s ability to protect their privacy is greatly limited.

Expungement

Expungement in the age of social media and mass media has become a hot topic in the domain of public privacy. Laws on Expungement differ state to state, with some former criminals able to apply for expungement after 5 years from an encounter with the law. While the time frame for applicability seems reasonable, implementation and other concerns surrounding the practice are of concern. Expungement is granted to relatively few applicants each year, usually later than the 5 year minimum to apply, and once it is granted, it can be difficult to fully remove the records from the internet due to the development of data-brokers. Data-brokers scrape the internet for records on individuals, storing that data and sometimes failing to update these records years past. It is probable that an individual with even a first-time minor offender could be locked out of future employment opportunity due to criminal background searches conducted via outdated data-brokers. The concern surrounding future employment is one of the main ones, as there can be as much as a 20% increase in employ-ability post-expungement as compared to pre-expungement. The presence of any sort of criminal record is typically a deterrent for prospective employers and a burden for those seeking or receiving expungement and one of the easiest ways to access these records is through a simple Google search. In certain cases it should be, and sometimes is, possible to remove oneself from Google searches online (called delinking). As Luciano Floridi describes, it is possible to remove oneself from Google within several European nations but as Floridi argues, it should occur solely within national boundaries, not across international borders. Floridi argues that those searching for an individual through Google are almost always searching from within the same nation, as is the case in the U.S. with employers looking at criminal records of almost exclusively U.S. citizens.