A brief thought about the ongoing privacy debacle surrounding Google Buzz. It seems easy to categorize.
Much has been said about the benefits of interdisciplinary research. And while there are lots of high-minded things to recommend it, I often find that one of the most useful benefits of reading an interdisciplinary article is that when authors are attempting to put two disciplines into conversation with one another, they often end up summarizing vast subfields of literature into easily digestible snippets.
Such is the root of my love affair with a 2004 article by Anton Alterman, titled “A Piece of Yourself: Ethical Issues in Biometric Identification.” In describing to us why we should care about the moral issues behind fingerprinting, retinal scans, and so forth, Alterman manages to winnow down an enormous debate surrounding privacy and information technologies to three simple concerns:
- One is that someone…will legitimately gain access to information about you and utilize it to locate and harass or harm you in some manner.
- A second is that information you provide for a particular purpose will be retrieved or purchased, say by direct marketers or credit bureaus, perhaps to be correlated with other data, and used for purposes that you would neither have predicted nor agreed to.
- A third kind of concern is that the data will be stolen or illegitmately released, exposing you to risk, embarrassment, or other harm. (p. 140)
I’m thinking the Buzz fiasco falls squarely under number two. What do you think? Are there other concerns it touches on? Is there a category worth mentioning that Alterman failed to include?
