Josh Voorhees’s Internet Privacy

Josh Voorhees’s Individual Privacy in an Online World, does a great job of encapsulating the issues and challenges related to online privacy. I especially like how Josh details the five pressing problems concerning internet privacy. Of these fears, I’m especially concerned about #4, the prevalence of Big Brother. Josh writes,

While it is easy to dismiss many drastic claims of online dangers, the reality exists for potential serious implications for the collection of private data all in one place. Imagine if your potential health insurance provider had access to your credit card bills and could tell how often you ate fast food, drank at a bar, or bought cigarettes, this information could then be used to set your premiums and deductibles.

I see the concern here but when I think of Big Brother I’m even more concerned about the government using and manipulating information about me. Say for instance I post a message to a political blog or email list, and then I’m put on the no-fly list—it wouldn’t surprise me if this has actually happened. Recently we learned that Verizon has given out personal information when the government asked for it—they didn’t even wait for a court order.

So, to my mind, this whole issue is probably the most important facing the Internet today.

 

Joe Reco’s Social Networking

I have to agree with Joe Reco about MySpace and Facebook. His site examines the arms-length approach to socialization where strangers decide to become freinds. I wonder how a person chooses whom they want to befriend if they’ve never met-face to face? If reading about someone’s interests, their favorite music, or their likes and dislikes captures friends, then where is the depth in the relationship.

After reading one of the articles Joe recommended Found in (My) Space I fear the first impression of a person’s site might lead to quick judgments. As this article pointed out, exaggerations are commonplace and people write misinformation. Mistakes like the one in the Allgier’s case, where a false site was created by someone other than the person in question, leaves journalists writing something that isn’t correct.

I began to see how these sites could be manipulated. Anyone can create a site and put whatever they want on it. This could become dangerous as well as hurtful. And what I find even more appalling is how a university can do research on an individual, bring up his indiscretions, then use the information against him. Earlier in the year we wrote about email and the disadvantage of employers peeking into our mail and reading its contents. I find those who helicopter around personal sites to be of a similar ilk. These two Big Brotherish eavesdropping devices scare me. I guess I will remain terribly unpopular in the high school scheme of things because I will never have a MySpace or Facebook site. I think I’m safer that way.

 

Liability Issues from David Shabazz

David Shabazz has a posting with lots of information about liability issues. The discussion of the early liability cases is like a short history of the Internet. The way Compuserv was found not liable for distributing the messages of its users while Prodigy was based on its editing of the content. The early idea seemed to be, kill the messenger, don’t destroy the road on which the messenger has traveled. It seems like the later solutions as in the Internet Telecommunications Act take a more balanced approach.

I can see the need for internet service providers to have the ability to edit or remove messages. There could be any number of reasons for needing to do this. They should not necessarily be liable because they try to clean thing up. In all, this is still a bit murky for me. Maybe that is how it should be—each of these cases probably calls for tighter scrutiny and will be decided on its own merits, I suppose.

 

Marcie Barnes’s Reading Labels

After reading Marcie Barnes’s Global Issues in Nutrition Communication: Focus on Food Labeling, I can understand why so many Americans still eat bad food. Even educated consumers run to Sam’s Club to buy loads of ground beef. (How about beef recalls?) Labeling is evasive and shifty, but here is the solution, as Marcie points out. Buy better food. It’s out there with plenty of stores that provide quality products. Your health is at risk if you don’t; again, as Marcie points out, maybe not immediately but eventually.

62% of Americans are overweight and 25% are obese. Pesticides in our food cause brain cell death as well as reproductive damage. Helpful blogs like Marcie’s are priceless but the consumer has to be willing to make a change. If the government continues to mislead and allows false and deceptive labeling, then it only makes sense to buy products from that part of the industry that you can trust: organic, cruelty free, and naturally raised foods. I bet if every American started on an organic diet, with an all-natural agenda to their meal planning, then the medical and insurance industries would lose quite a few costumers.

 

Traci Grigg’s Federal Funding

Traci Grigg’s essay, Let’s talk—Federal funding used to oppose U.S. policy, is an enlightening piece, showcasing how two ideologies—those of the US government and Planned Parenthood—can strive toward a positive outcome for AIDS sufferers in Africa, even when their formulae for getting there are divergent. The government ABC program wants abstinence while Planned Parenthood wants to promote the use of condoms.

The culture in many African countries would not allow women to abstain from sex and it would even be more difficult to persuade a husband or male partner to wear a condom. The female condom might work. Many girls are given to older men and while they might want to be protected or even abstain from intercourse their voices are never heard.

While we are funding groups like Planned Parenthood it seems the money might be better spent on educating against misogynist male cultural ideologies where the subordination of women to men should be unthinkable. Until women can speak for themselves and run their own lives they and their children will suffer the most from the AIDS epidemic. While our government and Planned Parenthood may have good intentions they are both missing the point. The best solution to end the AIDS epidemic is likely to come through educating men and women to see one another as equals.