Post-Modern Privacy
A recent news item cited Senator Hillary Clinton for receiving sizable campaign contributions from Chinatown busboys and waiters, most of whom are presumably living on the margins and some of whom have already (proudly) said that they were merely following orders from community leaders. Donating at the behest of another person is strictly prohibited under federal campaign finance laws.
Catching Hillary and other politicians who garner money from suspect sources is a good thing. Our political offices are not for sale. But what is less clear is whether putting all of this information on the internet does not in some way infringe on other freedoms.
By analogy, the internet is in some ways like new traffic light photo technology that catches drivers who roll through empty intersections, or perfect speed traps that nab otherwise good drivers doing 75 on a long stretch of barren highway. Sure it’s still the law, but the law was passed in a time when enforcement was nowhere near 100%, a critical component for policy makers trying to ascertain the impact of speed limits on traffic patterns, safety issues, simple economics and overall convenience. Better enforcement throws the prior agreed-upon equilibrium of weighed interests out of kilter.
There is a lot of information about each of us that is public but not very accessible. In the pre-internet era, it would take a motivated person to dig up, say, my voter registration or property records. The information wasn’t private per se, but it was effectively shielded from public view due to the effort involved in digging up the public records. Newspapers could print my information and the information of my neighbors, but voter rolls and other mass quantities of data do not make for compelling reading.
The New York Times ran a fascinating piece on Subprime lending, tying in data on rates of subprime lending to community maps. The riveting maps took complex data and made it accessible and understandable to the general public. In the coming months we are going to see exquisite internet mashups showing public information laid out in maps of all types. This mapping is a prime component of the New Media Workshop course at Columbia, a cornerstone of the New Media concentration. Obviously, these maps are going to make data mining much more convenient. But therein lies a subtle problem.
There is a lot of public information that, while public, we would prefer not to have broadcast. As the mapping software gets more intricate and more data gets mined, the public will have access to maps showing all sorts of interesting data about their neighbors that they would not otherwise work to have access to. For example, the voter rolls are public information, but are not generally accessed by the public. Conceivably, local community papers could create maps showing the addresses of Democrats and Republicans on a resident-by-resident basis. That access might not be comfortable for Democrats in Crawford or Republicans on the Upper West Side, as their neighbors would suddenly know who the specks of off-color are in their community’s otherwise monochrome map. Such minority status could well be a stigma for the outed. Over time, extreme minorities might take to registering themselves as something other than their preferences, yielding less speckled, albeit more inaccurate, maps, and distorting our culture and political system. Criminal records, property tax data, voter information – all of these could conceivably be mapped, giving all members of a community a far more intimate look at their neighbors than they had previously.
Our privacy culture and laws were in part based on the premise that public information would be mined only by the most overzealous of neighbors. Now, public information on the internet makes everyone that overzealous neighbor. Public information may be crucial in checking the appetites of avaricious politicians and for informative pieces like the aforementioned Times article. But, without revisiting what should lie in the public sphere, our past and present will soon be fodder for our neighbors, the world over.
Yeah, it’s pretty creepy to be able to search the Federal Elections Committee database for the addresses of local business leaders and then tie that info to Zillow to get an estimate on the value of their houses, zooming in from space.
And there are probably arguments to be made both for and against public lists and maps that track sex offenders and pedophiles.
Lots of companies have established lucrative businesses by making public data more easily accessible. That value used to be the province of journalists, who would effectively arbitrage the obscure nature of certain public documents and directories. But that “value” or market niche is increasingly usurped by data aggregators. So what’s the problem? I’d rather have the data that’s out there on me available via google, where I can monitor it and counter it than stuck in some obscure data-tracking system accessible only to private investigators.
I’m not sure I buy your argument that our civil liberties and freedoms are at stake here. The idea that someone would go through the FEC database to find the one democrat in their neighborhood seems an over-exaggerated fear. Is there a real threat or is it just FUD?
I can see your point, but practically speaking, no private investigator will want to invest any amount of time investigating most Americans (including me). And most Americans will be unable to effectively counter whatever information is out there. Neighbors, though, just might have that curiosity, and the convenience of the search makes the data miing easier. The relative lack of effort involved in making the search threatens the privacy of the individual, even if the records have always been public, because more people would be looking. And more people looking = less privacy.
Let private enterprise come up with ways of obscuring your information. If it’s such a problem, hire lawyers to figure out how to keep your business private. The rich will always have a shield of complexity to resort to. Privacy is a luxury good that can be bought.
I’m not sure that there’s always a WILL for one neighbor to go snooping on the person who lives next door. If I had a child I might be interested to learn if the guy next door was a convicted pedophile, but I can’t say I’d care to learn if he has a private plane registered in his name or learn exactly what he paid for his property or even who he gave his political contributions to.
There’s a tendency to get really into digging up data when you’re a reporter, but at the nascent stages that’s little more than flexing new-found muscles. I doubt most people care to know what their neighbors do. Hell, I’ve never even said hello to my next door neighbors of the last 18 months!
Alex,
You recently relocated to California, probably live with or near young professionals in similar circumstances, and don’t have much vested in your location. You will settle down someday and move out of the city, and how the community perceives you and your family will then take on added importance.
I think you overestimate the power of lawyers to keep things private once they are online. Once any information hits the internet, it is definitely too late to do anything about it. Privacy is also probably like good insurance – one of those goods that is not appreciated until after a storm hits. And as you say, privacy is a “luxury good”. I am thinking not of the rich, but of ordinary people caught up in improved law enforcement and data collection techniques.
And the extent that our neighbors don’t care about what we do is sad! Our communities are unraveling, and the prying of nosy neighbors is the flip side to many of them caring about their community. I appreciate this caring. I just wish to frustrate it at most turns.
Seems to be no doubt that technology continues to make it easier for Big Brother (all in the name of progress of course). Can’t there just be limits instituted to protect against the pitfalls you talk about?
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omg.. good work, guy