[Air-l] Google is watching !
Jonathan Lillie
jlillie at metalab.unc.edu
Thu May 20 07:00:50 PDT 2004
With regard to face-to-face conversation both the law (talking US law
before the Patriot Act) as well as what we may call the tradition of the
commons affording an understanding that what you say in a public place is
subject to being overhead regardless of your intentions. This includes the
police, although the 4th amendment has been applied to place restrictions
once electronic devices are needed for authorities to eavesdrop.
Furthermore, the home is place you can and should expect the most privacy
from authorities first, and others second. My point is that there are both
legal and traditional type understandings that help people to somewhat
gage the actual privacy of their conversations. Non-listserv email
currently has better boundaries...you have some sense of your level of
privacy vis-à-vis the service provider, hackers, and the government.
Thus, perhaps we could find a way to establish some more concrete
standards of privacy expectations and safeguards for listserv technology,
and other ICTs facilitating group dialogue. It would be nice if one could
join a group knowing that the archives of the discussion are a) completely
open to the public b) some middle ground c) only available to the group.
As far as listservs go, can AoIR restrict web access to the archives,
which would presumably limit Google's access as well?
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