This is probably getting away from the IRB focus, but Lior
Strahilevitz, a legal scholar, had a good article a few years back
entitled "A Social Networks Theory of Privacy", suggesting some ways
to think through the discomfort which many -- rightly, I think -- have
with seeing public/private applied as a binary distinction to speech:
"This paper argues that insights from the emerging literature on
information transmission through social networks can help courts
develop a more rigorous and objective notion of 'privacy' for the
purposes of the privacy torts. It argues that privacy tort law should
not focus on the abstract, circular, and highly indeterminate question
of whether a plaintiff reasonably expected that information about
himself would remain 'private' after he shared it with one or more
persons. Instead, the law should focus on the more objective and
satisfying question of what extent of dissemination the plaintiff
should have expected to follow his disclosure of that information to
others."
cheers
Bram
