There’s a fresh push to protect student data. But the people who need the most protection are the ones being left behind. It seems that student privacy is trendy right now. At least among elected officials. Congressional aides are scrambling to write bills that one-up each other in showcasing how tough they are on protecting […]
Earlier this week, Anil Dash wrote a smart piece unpacking the concept of “public.” He opens with some provocative questions about how we imagine the public, highlighting how new technologies that make heightened visibility possible. For example, Someone could make off with all your garbage that’s put out on the street, and carefully record how […]
Yesterday, Pew Internet and American Life Project (in collaboration with Berkman) unveiled a brilliant report about “Teens, Social Media, and Privacy.” As a researcher who’s been in the trenches on these topics for a long time now, none of their finding surprised me but it still gives me absolute delight when our data is so […]
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal posted excerpts from a debate between me, Stewart Baker, Jeff Jarvis, and Chris Soghoian on privacy. In preparation for the piece, they had us respond to a series of questions. Jeff posted the full text of his responses here. Now it’s my turn. Here are the questions that […]
Our contemporary ideas about privacy are often shaped by legal discourse that emphasizes the notion of “individual harm.” Furthermore, when we think about privacy in online contexts, the American neoliberal frame and the techno-libertarian frame once again force us to really think about the individual. In my talk at Personal Democracy Forum this year, I […]
In the fall, Alice Marwick and I went into the field to understand teens’ privacy attitudes and practices. We’ve blogged some of our thinking since then but we’re currently working on turning our thinking into a full-length article. We are lucky enough to be able to workshop our ideas at an upcoming scholarly meeting (PLSC), […]
Eszter Hargittai and I just published a new article in First Monday entitled: “Facebook privacy settings: Who cares?” Abstract: With over 500 million users, the decisions that Facebook makes about its privacy settings have the potential to influence many people. While its changes in this domain have often prompted privacy advocates and news media to […]
I gave today’s opening keynote at the WWW Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. My talk was about methodological and ethical issues involved in the study of Big Data, focusing heavily on privacy issues in light of public data. The first third focuses on four important arguments: 1) Bigger Data are Not Always Better Data; 2) Not […]
Yesterday I gave the opening keynote at SXSW to over 5000 people (OMG, that room was huuuuuuuge). My talk was about privacy and publicity and I spent a lot of time pushing back against the notion that “privacy is dead.” In some ways, the talk is a call to arms, an invitation for people to […]
When I learned that Mark Zuckerberg effectively argued that ‘the age of privacy is over’ (read: ReadWriteWeb), I wanted to scream. Actually, I did. And still am. The logic goes something like this: People I knew didn’t used to like to be public. Now “everyone” is being public. Ergo, privacy is dead. This isn’t new. […]