A while back I wrote a post on the subtle homogenization of privacy. The point was that social networking isn’t eroding privacy, but homogenizing it. And here’s an example of how this can become problematic. This police officer drew a mental analogy of facebook status to locker room talk.
“You have your Internet persona, and you have what you actually do on the street,” Officer Ettienne said on Tuesday. “What you say on the Internet is all bravado talk, like what you say in a locker room.”
This is a very normal thing for human beings to do. In fact, culturally, we’re all about analysis by analogy. When you don’t understand a situation, you look for analogous situations from which you can glean rules of behavior. The problem is that social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace don’t fit. The lines between public and private are hard, and not always dependent on your perception (if you post a staus on Facebook and no one reads it, is it public?). Let’s all pay attention to Officer Ettienne and learn the lesson. Unless you’re very sure, better treat the forum as public information.
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Officer Ettienne’s comment struck me funny. Hilarious even. Because we know, beyond reasonable doubt, that if it were the Facebook site of a civilian criminal suspect, the conversation would be completely opposite.
They would use any information found on a suspect’s Web site, Facebook profile, Twitter stream, etc. as evidence to say the person was guilty.
What’s interesting is that this sets a precedent for using online status information to demonstrate mood or intent. In this case, it wasn’t a thought out strategy for the defense, but the next time it’s used it certainly will be.
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