"Reasonable" expectations of privacy

Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis coined the phrase, ‘the right to be left alone.’ Apparently, in the year 1890, there were various troubling things to them that were impeding on personal property of individuals. Imagine if they could only see the world today.

First of all, people have embraced (sometimes with open arms) their lack of privacy. The world is an increasingly smaller place with fewer holes to hide in. This would be disturbing to Warren and Brandeis but how many of us really care?

When I Google my name, the first listing is my Facebook. The third listing is my ex-boyfriend’s Myspace. If I click on images, there are literally dozens of pictures of me that Google has pulled from my Facebook. And not just me, but my sisters, my friends, and even friends of my friends whom I don’t even know personally. So these social networking sites must not be that secure right? But so many of us don’t really care. My only halfhearted attempt at privacy is using my name that only my friend’s know I go by. If you Google just Sarah Moser, you won’t find a single picture of me. So maybe I do care a little bit.

My freshman year in college, I had a professor who warned us about social networking. Apparently burglars will create fake Facebook accounts and add people in their area, usually young women. Those young women tend to through parties, and post pictures of said parties. These pictures give the burglar clues to the inside of the house, as well has what kinds of things he can find there. Moral of the story: don’t put pictures of your house, your house’s location, your phone number or anything that can identify you and make you vulnerable.

Fortunately, we are grateful to live in a country that does recognize privacy to a certain extent. It’s what’s called a reasonable expectation of privacy. The more public a person you are, the less privacy you get to reasonably expect. The more public of a location you are in, the less privacy you can reasonably expect, as opposed to what you can expect from the comfort of your own home. So let’s say you are a non-public person, sitting on your couch at home, playing on Facebook. You are at home, so the expectation of privacy is pretty high. But you are also online, and suddenly you are bringing in a whole virtual world that Warren and Brandeis knew nothing about. Sure, you might be at home, but virtually you are in a hub bub of social activity. Think of it like the mall, or a park, or on a street downtown. Suddenly you aren’t alone anymore and how you act, or the things you might say, will be different than how you would act or talk while being at your house. This is what you need to understand about the online world – it is a public place. People can see you, hear you, follow you, and talk to you. You are not alone. So the reasonable expectation of privacy might not be what you thought it was. In light of that, take caution in the things you do online – because people can see you just as if you were shopping at the mall. If you have no problem wearing that skimpy bikini to the mall, or telling everyone about how you had too much to drink last night, then you might not have to evaluate your online behavior. But if that doesn’t sound like you, keep in mind that is exactly what you are doing online.