Olin Library commemorated U.S. Constitution day with a talk on personal privacy, libraries, and the Patriot Act. Technology has the ability to record every transaction of our lives, a scenario that progressives agree has terrifying potential for abuse.
We wholeheartedly agree that the Patriot Act tramples personal liberties. And good laws from the past can, and should, be applied to an electronic future. For instance, a law protecting one’s home mailbox from inspection and search is hard to argue against. Why shouldn’t such a law extend to a less-physical reality—the e-mailbox?
If we may shift the conversation slightly, however, it’s worth noting that as a generation we have an intimate relationship with issues of public and private information. When our parents forward us articles from the New York Times (most likely written by someone close to their age) about jobs lost due to Facebook profiles, or stalking via Myspace, we shouldn’t necessarily delete everything and buy a typewriter on eBay.
These studies and opinion pieces point to us as a reckless generation that can’t understand the consequences of our internet-chronicled pastimes. It’s true that a photo album of you and your friends testing out a new bong doesn’t belong on the internet—can’t some events be left in the fog of time? But just because your parents didn’t have a MySpace when they were in college doesn’t make it dangerous.
The internet is still too new to really predict how it will factor into our lives in the future. If anything, we have a more instinctual feel for its abilities and functions than previous generations. And as self-deprecating as we may be about our use of them, Myspace, Facebook, blogs, and online photo albums provide us a venue for our thoughts, an outlet for our personalities, and new places for discussion.
Those who caution us are wrong to assume we do not value our privacy. If the recent Facebook “news-feed” controversy proved anything—other than that we’re still capable of activism, even if it’s only from our desk chair—it’s that we know what the boundaries are, and we are not afraid to point out when they are crossed.
Instead of regretting our so-called lapses in judgment, we should revel in our honesty.
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