[Air-l] internet research and confidentiality

Thomas Koenig T.Koenig at lboro.ac.uk
Wed Dec 22 07:32:27 PST 2004


Selon jeremy hunsinger <jhuns at vt.edu>:

> >> At 11:48 AM 12/21/2004, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> >>> Blogging, Webpublishing and Usenet posting are demonstrably public
> >>> activities. '
>
> they are clearly and demonstrably public if and only if there is no
> assumption of privacy built into blog.

We thus agree on Usenet and webpublishing.

> an assumption of privacy might
> be having to login to view the blog, or being inside a password
> protected system, or being in a community of blogs in which some data
> is only viewable by certain members of the community.  those are case
> that move the blog toward requiring confidentiality because the authors
> have an assumption that some of their information is only for
> friends/family/themselves, etc.  if there are no known access barriers
> to the information, then yes, it is likely public, but we have to take
> care because it will not always be obvious.

I disagree. If somebody, inadvertendly or deliberately, publishes his or her
blog with the false assumption of privacy, it is still public. Even a
password is not always sufficient basis for a claim to privacy. Many of the
password protected message boards, where oftentimes binaries are exchanged,
are password protected through an automated system, that's still public, as
the only reason for the password is the avoidance of indexing through search
machines.

On the other hand, if someone creates a "blog" purely for his
family/friends/etc. and password protects it, then, of course, I am not
allowed to hack the site or use means of deception to gain access. That
should go without saying. Even if I would be a legitimate friend of the
person, the data would be off-limits.

To me, all these exceptions appear obvious, so maybe our differences boil
simply down to semantics.

Thomas
--
thomas koenig, ph.d.
department of social sciences, loughborough university, u.k.
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/staff/thomas/index.html



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