I've been working with a start-up trying to build a new platform focused on privacy, and they've had to work through their own issues on whether this is a teenager's sign on a bedroom door or if this will be really locked down and "safe" (as much as it can be, right?). One of the ways they plan on implementing this is through encryption. The kind of encryption where the platform does not store this key, only the client stores it and can share it with others. It eliminates the "show us x's account, x's group's posts, x's chats, etc." Of course, nothing is unhackable. That said, as a researcher, I have a really strong (vampire?) policy: If they invite me in, knowing I'm a researcher and will publish what I find, then I'm going to work. But if it is locked down (and a Private/Closed group on Facebook meets this criteria), I typically do not go knocking. Of course, in my major research area (disasters), the information tends not to be locked down because people are moving as fast as possible to share it. There is great incentive for them to keep these conversations public, not the least of which is huge social ROI. However, in my other research area (digital entertainment/drm), the opposite can be true - but since I look at sites such as Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, etc. I've had pretty good luck so far. Liza ______________________________________ Liza Potts, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Writing, Culture, and Technology Co-Director, CeME Lab Old Dominion University Norfolk, VA 23529 AIM: LizaPotts Skype: lkpotts http://ceme.digitalodu.com/ On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 10:46 AM, jeremy hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> wrote:

Michael brought up the example of what the understanding of privacy might mean in a group marked private on facebook and what that would mean for a researcher.

I responded comparing facebook to a privately owned shopping mall with publicly accessible stores and publicly accessible common areas, with all areas covered by video cameras and other surveillance technologies. That is still my perspective on facebook, but I wonder how much work can a group do on facebook to maintain any real sense of privacy beyond the request. By requested privacy I mean it is parallel to the signs that teenagers put on their doors in their parents home, it is a recognizable request for distance and separation that in most practical matters is respected 'day to day' but is summarily ignored once anything of import happens and sometimes even otherwise ignored. I'm thinking that much of what happens in regards to stated privacy on the web fits under something like either a requested privacy or really false privacy, with only 'real' privacy existing on the web (or the internet in general) when there really is no way to obtain the information provided wi thout agreeing to the terms of privacy. Also there might be a difference between actually having a sense of 'privacy' in such public arenas and requesting anonymity, which is really the sort of value one might expect in a shopping mall, 'just another anonymous individual'

thoughts?

Jeremy Hunsinger Center for Digital Discourse and Culture Political Science Virginia Tech

Everything you can imagine is real. --Pablo Picasso

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