Privacy in public

Privacy in Public

Privacy 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.

David Shoemaker explains the “puzzle” of privacy in public with reference to data mining, stating that data miners draw on bits of publicly available information, yet are only to be greeted by disgruntled people who believe their privacy has been violated. Simply, data mining is the process by which existing data is analyzed in order to create new data. Therefore, data mining relies on preexisting public data.

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.

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. [CITE]

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.

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.

Though, it is compelling to think that some things about a person are deemed public information the minute they step out of their house. What car you drive, what clothes and brands you wear, your marital status, your spoken language, and your physical appearance can lend a great deal of information to who you are as a person. Your income can be estimated, your location can be ascertained, and your physical identity can be described based on watching someone 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.

If there were driver-less cars with cameras constantly on-- scanning, recording, and watching-- then this action of walking from the house to the car might be a prime source of data for the greater autonomous car parent company. This form of surveillance is a breach of privacy that one assumes when purchasing an autonomous car.

But what about when attending a football game? Viewing a sport inside an arena subjects one to all sorts of gazes, yet perhaps one (or more) of those sets of eyes is a camera? Is being recorded a breach of privacy one overlooks or dismisses simply to see a sports game 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 our selves, 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.