RE: Privacy, Data Mashup's, and Practical Obscurity

No.  

1.  Magistrates and law enforcement agencies in the US have records
management systems.  There are strict business rules implemented that
prohibit publishing certain kinds of information to the web or even within
the departments.  While policies vary by location, much information
collected does not qualify for publication to the web.  Sex offender
registries are published as a side effect of Megan's Law.  Access for
example to the NCIC is strictly controlled.

2.  Social networks as forms of technology only change the media to which
something of this form might be published.   They are not different from the
printed notices send to neighborhoods when sex offenders register their
locations.

3.  That said, social network applications such as Facebook are certainly
used as Wide Area Notification Services and will be increasingly.   It is
more likely that the WANS APIs will be integrated into the narrow focus of
Wide Area Alerting Systems such as health and emergency services where a
Facebook page could be registered as 'yet another device'.

However, there is a conflict in the thinking of those who assert that full
transparency with respect to government records is an effective means for
all objectives.   Sealed records are a matter of practice and court records
as well as law enforcement system records are often secured for reasonable
and legal objectives.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: public-xg-socialweb-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-xg-socialweb-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Mischa Tuffield
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 10:18 AM
To: public-xg-socialweb@w3.org
Subject: Privacy, Data Mashup's, and Practical Obscurity

Hello All,

I have long been thinking about how the interweb affects the notion of  
practical obscurity and how one can no longer expect to be forgiven  
for a crime after they have served their sentence.

An example I have used for a while now is the Georgia Sex Offenders  
mashup :

http://www.georgia-sex-offenders.com/maps/offenders.php

IMHO sites like the above one will just end up creating ghettos of sex  
offenders as real-estate agents start to adopt such online resources  
to help sell properties to future homeowners. Eventually we will see  
neighbourhoods of sex offenders as no family would ever choose to live  
next to a rehabilitated offender. The key word in the previous  
sentence being "rehabilitated", as they have been released by the  
judicial system into the community as reformed human beings.

Now one can install an iPhone App, which tells the phone own about sex  
offenders in their local area, GPS/web magic, note that this only  
works in the US :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/5918923/iPhone-app-tracks-sex-of
fenders.html

I believe that practical obscurity is a dying concept. At this point  
in the post I should stress that I DON'T classify sex offences are  
petty crimes, but I believe that the advent of such data on the web  
will set a president for other forms of crimes to be being posted to  
the public domain. I can easily imagine a future where all crimes  
committed in some US state X are posted to the web.

For example, high-school student Bob gets arrested for shop-lifting  
and gets a minor punishment that could be community service or  
something of a similar vain. Alice a classmate of Bob's finds this so  
funny that she posts it to whatever cool social network she is  
currently a member of, pushing it into the public domain. Now after  
Bob has served his sentence in pre-interweb days this information  
would have been practically obscure, it would have been logged in a  
filing cabinet in some local magistrate court, and unless you had the  
impetus to seek out this information you would probably never have  
found out about it. Alice would have been able to communicate the  
"funny story" to her social network, but those conversation's would  
not have been in the public domain. And now they would be.

Well that is all from me, would love to know if people in the US have  
installed this APP, and wonder how many linch mobs are going to run  
around US cities taking following their trusty iPhone and taking the  
law into their own hands. Here is a link to an article whichoade  
describes some of the vigilantism which occured in the UK after the  
tabloid new paper "The News of the World" published a list of sex  
offenders in the year 2000. Do excuse the fact that I am pointing to a  
document on the "world socialist web site", but it seems to report the  
story well :)

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/aug2000/brit-a12.shtml

Does anyone else in the group have similar fears/interests or aware of  
any work which touches on practical obscurity and the social web ?

Regards,

Mischa *has turned this into a blog post : http://bit.ly/sMp4t

_________________________________
Mischa Tuffield
Homepage -http:/mmt.me.uk/
FOAF - http://mmt.me.uk/foaf.rdf#mischa

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Received on Wednesday, 5 August 2009 15:44:28 UTC