Interesting discussion on privacy on NPR last night
 

I heard an interesting interview on NPR on the way home last night regarding privacy in the information age. Everything you put out on the internet is public AND permanent. I knew this already, of course, but the interview was still interesting. I think the point was to reaquaint the listeners with the fact that once your information is on someone else's server, it is no longer personal or private. Our laws regarding stuff like this date back to the seventies before all of this was even possible or at least before it was an issue for any of us.
Anybody else been thinking about this, besides me?

Yeah. I'd heard them talking about it a whiile ago as well. I've thought about it a bit. Reality moves a lot faster than laws, or peoples understanding of it. Just gotta deal with the new reality in my opinion.

- Peter.

No surprises. Thats why everyone should be careful what they put up online. I have heard of many cases where it affected peoples jobs and lives.

That was the point of the conversation to which I was referring. One of the people they interviewed was a lawyer who helped people deal with just this situation.

I guess this sort of goes hand-in-hand with our exhibitionistic/vouyeristic tendencies as a nation. Apparently, there are a lot of people who LIKE for everybody to know all about their "bidness." RE Oprah, Jerry Springer, etc, etc. . . .

Yes but when it affects them negatively, they squeal. It is popular to talk about giving someone rights but hardly ever spoken is what responsibilities go with that. You want to right to post out that you had sex with 500 guys last night but when others see it and call you "FAG" or worse, you are upset.

Hey, hey! I did NOT post that!

for the record, there are more than a few employers who will check out a job applicant's myspace and facebook page(s). if they don't like what they see, they may inform said applicant "sorry, we have no current job openings, but try us back in a year or so.......".

How is that any different from you muffing up an interview by telling the interviewer "I tend to come late to work and leave early. Last few jobs I had to leave because I was boinking the housekeeping staff in the office and gave her a sweater with a stain on it(George Constanza)." ?

Thats why my friends deleted their facebook/myspace pages as soon as they graduated from college.:D

it is VERY different. words tend to come across more harshly in emails, myspace, facebook, etc. and, depending upon the job, the employer may or may not want the employee to have a 'public' image.

I'm aware of an employee who worked for a MAJOR (Fortune 50) company who was told to sell his very high end luxury car. the company didn't want the public to make the assumption that they were paying their employees THAT much money. the employee continued to drive the flashy car to work and NEVER received another pay increase or promotion FOR THE NEXT TWENTY FIVE YEARS!!!

unfortunaltely, deleting their accounts does not get rid of embarassing stuf they might have posted on those accounts. That's the whole point. Once it's out there, you can never get it back.

The college I coach at has a person that spends half of their time doing searhes and looking at social networking and personal sites for current students to see if they are breaking any school policies or laws. Half of her job is too literally scour Facebook and look at all the pictures to see if any have people drinking on campus or have any athletes shown drinking, etc.

But it does make it harder for a potential employer to obtain the info. Facebook owns everything that has ever been posted there but a person would need to pay (or court mandate etc) to obtain information that isn't currently posted for everyone to view. I would imagine many employers do basic searches but very few dig deep enough to see PAST accounts.

Thats why I never went on those sites. Just not worth it.

The interview I mentioned cited several cases where this type of information did come up in searches by companies vetting potential employees. The employees did not always or actually, they seldom knew WHY tey were turned down for the jobs. Some of the cases mentioned had to do with arrest records in which the person was aquitted of the crime and their arrest record had been expunged.

I guess the new saying should be "Innocent until proven guilty OR until Googled."