[Air-L] public/private

[Jeremy Hunsinger]

>  My good friend Jeremy has even
> taken the position that the people that produce these texts aren't
> even subjects. I'm sorry, but I just don't agree.

They are 'subjects' just not the type of subject defined by human  
subject research, which as I've said several times is clear, a  
subject is someone you intervene with or someone whose private  
information you have.   that is what the fed says they are.   THat  
does not mean that they are not ethical subjects or that we do not  
have certain responsibilities of care in our research, it just means  
that for the terms of human subjects review, studying texts is not  
studying human subjects.
>
> Granted, people who post (many of whom are minors) do subject
> themselves to the dangers of making their private information widely
> available to others. But to just say that it's all out there so there
> aren't any rules, is, in my view, drastically wrong. I believe that
> some of the rules DO apply. And even if they don't I think that we
> should follow ethical guidelines that are MORE concerned about
> protecting human subjects than we are about furthering our own
> research agenda.

that is the fundamental issue, it is not that we are protecting the  
subjects, this  is not an absolutist  regime, it is a utilitarian  
regime we are balancing the risks against the rewards.  There are  
always risks and there are always rewards (we hope), if the risk is  
small, or the risk created by the research is not new or increased  
substantively from the old, then... the research outweighs the risk.   
but to be clear, this is not a system that says 'thou shalt do no  
harm', it is a system that says 'harm must be weighed'.


>
> Two other points. This list serves a lot of people like you . . .
> graduate students looking for direction. In fact, this thread was
> started by a grad student asking for advice/direction. What's a
> faculty member to do? Ignore possible issues and just say "OK KID, GO
> FOR IT!" even when and if they think there are issues to be
> discussed? We were asked our opinion about these considerations. Both
> sides of the issue have been represented and discussed. I think
> that's healthy.

It is healthy until inapplicable positions are voiced, then we have  
issues.
>
> That's why stuff like this is often called a "contested issue." Just
> because one side says that it's a done deal, doesn't always make it
> so (not even my side). That's why I shared the U of Ill. procedure
> document. That wasn't my argument (though I used it) . .  . those are
> procedures used by a fairly enlightened IRB. I think those procedures
> would apply to a lot of the web-netted research that's been discussed
> here. Other folks don't think so. Ok.
>
> Second, some of us are the same faculty who will go into our classes
> and preach hour after hour to our students about the public loss of
> privacy in America . . all the time cautioning our students (let
> alone our children) about the dangers of over-exposing private
> information. Or at least, I should say, I do.

I think those that preach this do not really grasp the nature of  
privacy in america, as 'there is none or at least there is very  
little possibility of privacy in the classical european sense of the  
privacy of the individual and family'  To stipulate that we have a  
real sense of privacy is in my mind to be nostalgic for a fiction  
that can be shown mostly to be a fiction by the telling of  
minoritarian narratives in opposition of the grand narratives of us  
having privacy.

I don't think the schizoid nature of the faculty can be the  
argument.  We all do plenty of things every day that are antagonistic  
to our claimed beliefs.  We also recognize, usually, that what we  
teach our students might not be the way things are or were, but the  
way things have been presented, and that they are presented  
differently to students differently at different levels of expertise.

I'd expect that most of my students, much like I have, have signed  
away about 99% of their privacy, heck I don't even have control of my  
own genome, gave that to the government years ago:), other privacies  
are pretty much gone too, insurance companies, finance companies,  
etc. etc.  Is there a normative 'should not' in giving up  
'privacy'?   there would be... if it ever really existed as we  
imagine it did, but then I don't think it existed like that either.   
I just look at union busting, the red scare, black listing, and worse  
things that were predicated on the public knowledge of the supposed  
private, and I just don't see the empirical basis for a strong sense  
of privacy.   I see the legal foundations in the u.s., but others can  
comment on them better than I can.
>
> Then are we the very same faculty that turn around and grab whatever
> we can find from that netted-web without regard for protecting the
> very humans who produced the texts we want to study? That doesn't
> strike me as right, somehow.

There are plenty of people who drive cars and preach  
environmentalism... there are plenty of people who have glorious  
health insurance and vote against universal healthcare.   having a  
unified system of judgment  is another metanarrative fiction, usually  
tied to the unified subject of the enlightenment.  If you can find a  
person that does not have conflicting beliefs and operates in one  
unified belief system, I'm pretty sure that you've found an Angel.
>
> I'm sorry if I sound intransigent. I'm really not. I've often made
> applications to IRBs with all sorts of efforts to finesse various
> strictures, for various reasons. But I know, for example, that when
> Linden Lab took down their TOS restrictions to and procedures for
> research in Second Life, they explicitly offered the idea that they
> expected that the oversight provided to researchers by their local
> IRB would suffice. But for that to happen, applications to do the
> work, to get the exemption, must be filed. If the faculty member
> says, instead, "Oh, I know this is ok," then no oversight occurs.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes applying to the irb is appropriate, and  
if you have concerns, you surely should.  however, in terms of  
textual analysis, i likely would not.  However, before I decided to  
not apply, I would talk with other people in my department, like the  
department head  first, to make sure that everyone knew what i was  
doing and shared my judgment.   Remember my advice to the graduate  
student a while ago.  Check your local community first, check with  
the people you are citing, etc.
>
> I honestly DO NOT have an axe to grind over this. I DO happen to
> think that open discussion of issues such as these are important. I
> also think that the internet is a fuzzy enough business that the
> answers are not fixed or obvious or universal.  I am sorry if I
> seemed stubborn. I too, will quit now as I've made the key points I
> want to make and repeating them just wastes valuable bits and  
> bandwidth.

I love wasting bandwidth, of course... I'm borrowing this from the  
cafe next door because my dsl is not installed yet.

i think it is important to hear all sides here, but I also think we  
have to be very wary of the tendency to give up our own ethical  
judgments to a review board.



jeremy hunsinger
Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research,  
School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee  
(www.cipr.uwm.edu)

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