Photo Tagging as a Privacy Problem? 143
An anonymous reader writes "The Harvard Law Review, a journal for legal scholarship, recently published a short piece on the privacy implications of online photo-tagging (pdf). The anonymously penned piece dourly concludes that 'privacy law, in its current form, is of no help to those unwillingly tagged.' Focusing on the privacy threat from newly emergent automatic facial recognition search engines', like Polar Rose but not Flickr or Facebook, the article states that 'for several reasons, existing privacy law is simply ill-suited for this new invasion.' The article suggests that Congress create a photo-tagging opt-out system, similar to what they did with telemarketing calls and the Do-Not-Call Registry." How would you enforce such a registry, though?
"remove tag" (Score:4, Informative)
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Yes, but that doesn't help when you unknowingly end up in a photo that someone else took.
Re:"remove tag" (Score:4, Informative)
I've untagged photos of myself before. Unless someone were to place these photos on, say, flickr, where I have no presence, I can control when I am tagged.
In the information-rich anarchy of the web, privacy is a dying hope. Anywhere you can be seen in public can be recorded, labelled, stored, distributed, and more. It's possible to hide, but it's getting harder.
Re:"remove tag" (Score:4, Insightful)
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With that kind of friends, who needs enemies?
I really hope my friends aren't stupid enough to put pictures of me on the Internet without asking me first. Never mind tagging them with my name. I would never put an image of another person on a public web without asking their permission first. It's just common sense.
Then again, common sense is uncommon these days.
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Individuals must keep track and protect their own privacy and images. Just like they should be carrying their own pavement instead of leeching off the public road system -- which is the most obscene part of the welfare state.
Every person in America needs a led test for their water. An e-coli sample kit for their meat. And a UV sterilizer for their vegetables. Of course, you also need to have a amperage-regulator and do a few days testing the
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> not to tag them. It does the job well enough. And if that doesn't do it, there are privacy settings that can prevent anyone other
> than yourself or a specific group of people (friends/network/etc) from seeing the photos.
How does that help me to get my tag removed from your photos, assuming you don't want to?
I was under the assumption (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I was under the assumption (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I was under the assumption (Score:4, Informative)
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And the previous point will be re-iterated... What if someone else takes the picture?
You must have remarkable restraint if you've never done anything that might be embarrassing were someone to take a picture of it and show, say, your boss, your wife, your parents, etc.
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Moreover, under existing libel laws you can have harmful captions removed, and if the publisher was intentionally harmful, you can even seek to recover damages. What more do you want? You have no expectation of privacy in public. I'm not will
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I didn't say "insight." I said "a look." Frankly, nobody has the right to either without one's consent, implicit or express.
Damn, you still haven't bothered to RTFA?
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You must be new here.
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You might still be ok to have your pictures show up there, because you figure that only people who know (or suspect) already will be checking out that website. Of course, the situation changes completely if google pops up that site when your real name is entered.
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The article proposes a registry of people who want to be excluded from automatic (machine) tagging, based on face recognition software; It's not proposing that we limit your friends' free speech rights.
IE, "This is a picture of Sunburnt, who is user 890890 on Slashdot," would still be legal, as far as I
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Indeed, but I was responding to someone who'd obviously not read the article, so I didn't figure that was too relevant.
As it should be. My point was that a friend's freedom
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Well, ...
;)
You're joking, right.
Your making a pun, but you're not seriously suggesting that there's a relevant contradiction between the freedom of association (freedom to hang out with people, or even to NOT hang out with people, f
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Right.
To be more explicit: I'm saying that if a friend used his freedom of speech in this manner and then refused the courtesy of removing my name from the picture's tags upon a polite request, I would cease hanging out with that particular person. No contradi
Re:I was under the assumption (Score:4, Interesting)
So if you argue that there is no name tagging then there is no right to take pictures of actors, politicians, etc. The law is about the general public not individual situations.
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Such as? Seriously - when this notion "you have no expectation of privacy if you're out in public," became commonly accepted, I doubt seriously they were able to foresee the development of the internet, and how completely inexpensive and painless it is to become both the one taking the pictures and the publisher. Publishing no longer takes place with the limitations imposed by traditional media, but
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Well, it hasn't happened yet, if that's any indication. Oddly enough, I'm not that close with anyone unconcerned with privacy. Exhibitionists, in my experience, are generally exhibitionists because their lives are too boring to hide, or at the other end of the spectrum, outrageous for the sheer purpose of provoking outrage.
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So ask your friend to remove it.
A while ago I started to get spam, which because of the way it was addressed I tracked down to an acquaintance's webpage where he'd acknowledged some advice I'd given, quoting an email I'd sent with that address. So I asked him to pull it and after a while that spam d
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That's what I'm advocating, yes. Disagreeing with a replier to the main article does not denote approval of the article's content.
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You and the other poster seem to think that you're arguing about whether or not people should post photos online. But reading your comments as a third-party it seems that you both disagree over what a photo actually is. When you're hanging out with your friends in a private environment you have some expectation of privacy. A
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No. The meat of the issue is whether that photo should easily be accessible through a name search.
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In any case, I tag photos with first names only, precisely to avoid any invasion of my friends' privacy.
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Not really. It refers to making anonymous statements in the media, not being judicious with the amount of times one appears in public databases.
Then you're a good friend in that regard.
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Well, that's completely incorrect, since we've been discussing a case in this thread where a woman lost her employment qualifications due to such an incident and an overzealous employer.
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Well, yes, that's the point. I would hope that a friend would, upon polite request, remove the ability for any unknown person to see their friend's image through a simple name search.
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Register the image of your face as a Servicemark. Sue anyone who tries to post it without your permission. "Defend" your mark by not letting arbitrary people take your picture. (I would say Trademark, but in most cases Trademarks are only applicable when you're selling something, Servicemarks are applicable at any point you may perform a service...)
Of course, you'd have to be a really paranoid SOB to really care that much. But hey, it's legal (as long as you
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Who cares about personal photos, really? (Score:1)
The only way out of personal tagging photo services is if companies like Flickr keep an e-mail address for those seeing their photos online and wanting them off. But they will have to prove they are the guys/gals on the photos. How will they do that? Sending other photos
Panoramio acquired by Google... (Score:2)
"if companies like Flickr keep an e-mail address for those seeing their photos online"
You haven't mentioned it, but I guess you already know about FlickrMap [flickr.com]. Flickr is part of Yahoo!, and they're not going out [slashgeo.org] of the competition vs Google / Microsoft and alternatives [openstreetmap.org] on the mapping stuff and photos.
Simply put.. (Score:2)
Not so simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Random other person X takes a picture of you. Maybe you were standing in a public place and didn't know your picture was being taken. Person X uploads the photo and tags it with your name. Other than spending your entire life outside of publicly-viewable physical locations and simultaneously ensuring that no-one knows your name (so that if they do manage to get a picture they don't know how to tag it), what sort of control do you have over that?
Re:Not so simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Worst case, send the host a letter demanding the removal of your name from the image tag. State that it is a risk to your health and safety. Most people, not wanting to be at risk of criminal negligence, will comply.
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Random person posting your picture on the internet, plus random someone else tagging said picture once its on the internet with your name is less so.
Especially once you realize that we're no longer talking about people running around in public, but pictures taken at private parties and such where the people present are all likely to know each other, or know someone who knows the other's name.
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Re:Not so simple (Score:5, Interesting)
I can see a whole new fashion genre being driven by our emerging everpresent surveillance and recording. When will ThinkGeek get a 'privacy enhanced clothing' section?
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And yeah, the Church did eventually outlaw masking there.
We already may have multiple identities for online life - how tightly associated is "Camel Coat Joe" with your RL particulars or whatever professional web presence you may have? Why not have more faces to wear as offlin
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None. As it should be. You're in public. People might *gasp* see you! I know, scary! As far as I can tell this is a free speech issue. I may have a photograph of you, but that doesn't make it your photograph. It's my photo and I'll do what I want with i
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Yeah, it's not like there are laws against commercial exploitation of another's image without their express consent. Of wait, there are, so I guess there is so
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Especially if you don't mind leaving yourself open to suit from the people who appear in the images, if they can find a way to demonstrate something like defamation or privacy infringement as a result of your use and correlation of their image and identity. Privacy laws regarding images vary state-to-state, but laws like Florida's [state.fl.us] are common.
Thanks for playing, anonymous coward.
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Really? I thought it had to do with the fact that you've yet to disclose the actual nature of this "work," and the fact that people generally choose anonymity when they don't want to be associated with the things they posit, knowing them to be asinine or incorrect. Most people wouldn't care on a news discussion site, of course, but I suppose that anyone who gives a crap about their mod points is operating on that particular level of pettiness. Good night,
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Nope, I do it all the time myself. I just don't have such an inflated view of the value of my individual moderations that I would feel the need to post anonymously so that I could mod a particular thread. There are more than a few in need of moderation on any given day. And in the other direction, I never feel the need to post anonymously in a thread that I've already modded (or indeed at all), since I realize that there is just about zero reason to tak
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What a great approach: Start right off the bat by showing your ignorance of the relevant charges that have been repeatedly brought against his production company by generalizing the behavior of the majority of GGW participants to the entire set.
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How does X know who you are?
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Re:Simply put.. (Score:4, Informative)
I mean among friends this wasn't exactly unusual in the paper days. You have a picture from the New Year's Eve party, flip it over and it says "Joe, Bob and Anne drinking champagne". The trouble comes when this isn't some private photo album, it's something published and tagged and tracable to you. And unlike other info online you can pretty easily tell if this is the same guy you're considering hiring or not. Of course, you might say it's only the truth or whatever. But if you haven't done anything in your life you'd not very proud off like getting completely drunk and... well then you haven't lived enough.
The solution: SPAM (Score:4, Interesting)
The only advantage I can see to restricting information is that people can keep their hypocritic attitudes. With the flooding solution, attitutes will need to change.
I guess this is why Congress attacks picture labeling, rather than the kind of privacy information that really matters, such as shopping habbits. The later just re-inforses the corporate hold over the citizens, while the prior threatens the micture of hyporacy and pre-judices commonly known as "family values".
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What recourse do you have?
--jeffk++
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John Hacker comes along, cracks the well-protected DB and publishes online - sound great?
Re:Simply put.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the bigger problem is that people have to come face to face with hypocrisy. I remember when I was a kid in highschool (late 80's) there were teenagers that would be so nice and honorable to certain people. And then be the biggest bully to other people. People regularly were hypocritical and because there is no tape rolling or picture being snapped people could always talk themselves out of the tough situations. Now those excuses don't cut it anymore because, well there is proof to the contrary. And now the teenager that was so nice in one situation and bully in another has been outed.
I personally could never play the one face to one crowd and another face to another crowd game and I am glad it is over. AND I am glad it is over for others. Let's see, police beatings where people said it never happen, politicians insulting people taping them when they said oh it was not so bad, the list goes on!
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If a company is not willing to overlook a simple drunken pirate situation you didn't want to work for them anyways? For most people this is not a mater of principle on which to draw the line in the sand. They just want to be able to keep their jobs. Maybe they really want to work at the company other than that, and they'd like to just keep th
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I should have posted this higher, but this is as good a place as any...
The only solution to this ongoing privacy problem, and one that people happily ignore, is to never do anything that you would be ashamed of! It's that easy... If an employer decides to not hire you because you enjoyed a glass of champagne at a party then you most likely would not enjoy working for him/her anyway.
Why don't we all just admit to who we really are and take responsibility for our actions?
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Re:Simply put.. (Score:4, Insightful)
But I'm sure you're covered by your domain's tech contact, "Angel of Hell, Satan satan@holyhell.net". (Admin contact at 1834 E Hallandale Beach Blvd, Hallandale Beach, FL 33009 [google.com]. Can't wait for the Google Street View.)
From your blog: "We all have the freedom to do what ever we want, to think what ever we want, and be what ever we truly want to be. I feel that we need to exercise this privilege more often.... I think every person needs to either shut up or prove their point dead cold and if they can't they need to be enlightened on how stupid they are being. If you have something to say, say it then move on or try and prove your point, but don't drone on like a preacher about something not many people even really want to hear about. I am a strong believer in torture, rather than humane execution. This is the rule of The Red Death. Don't like it? FUCK YOU!"
See ya later, Red Death. And remember, if you enjoy privacy, don't put your personal information on the internet. What's so hard about that?
ps: If you wrote "Frankly i'm disapointed with my personal endurance psychological and physical over the past month and have gotten fed up and angry. Fuck you all in the pisshole with a sharpened and spiny knife", you may be a psychopathic time-bomb in waiting. Try not to kill anybody!
Re:Simply put.. (Score:4, Informative)
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I just run the place. He's a separate author.
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You just ruined someone you don't know!
Yeh but... (Score:1)
If you're trying to stop people from doing whatever they want with their own (online accessible) photos, some further steps down this "new invasion" might be: "My name/company/pet is mentioned/being blasted on a website! Noooooooooo must stop them!"
Well, here's a thought... (Score:3, Insightful)
As for laws that would deal with some kind of do-not-tag list, that is just damned stupid. Yes, somehow, magically all of these photohosting sites are going to be able to use facial recognition and ensure that someone else's photo doesn't have you somewhere in it? Facial recognition, from what I am hearing, is coming along, but it is nowhere near "that ready".
Personally, I am going out on a limb here, I see two options: one is that since most photos of people of teh interwebs is self-posted, simply have an option chosen at registration that says something to the effect of "do you wish other users to tag your photos?" and have a radial button beside yes/no. Or even a photo-level option, so that upon uploading and posting a photo it asks a similar question.
My other idea is decidedly less kind to those who get their photo posted: don't let other people take your picture. yes folks, you don't really need your photo taken, and it can be done with out looking like a party pooper. Volunteer to take the picture.
People have to start learning about technology, and the consequences of society's use of it. Imagine if people knew that posting that picture of them underage drinking at a high school bash on MySpace is going to get them in deep doo doo. Or that what they type can be used against them. Or that they shouldn't just post their personal details for all to see (including extra-marital affairs.... something I have seen several times) With action comes consequence... here endeth the lesson.
Now, for those who might start pointing their fingers at me, saying that "they are talking about people who get caught on camera without knowing it, like the bikini-clad Stanford co-ed students on Google Earth and such!" To that, I would say, you can't see a single identifying feature about them. And if you did get a picture taken by Google Earth that could be used to identify you (and let us face it, that number would be small indeed), if you were outside, you really have no reasonable expectation of privacy in such a situation.
Just my 2c...
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Sometimes... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Too early to pass laws (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, that's one case where any legislation would make modern Internet impossible. Google can not reliably distinguish an erotic novel from a sexy functional spec covering homosexual adapters to bridge male and female RS232 connectors. ISPs can not and should not screen every blog posting and afterw
"They may not like what they see." (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm trying to figure out, "What is it about this quotation that's bothering me?"
There's something that bugs me about this whole thing; Like we're ashamed of who we are, or like we're trying to keep ourselves safe from all the judgmental people out there, or like we don't have the courage to tell people, "Hey, this is how I have a good time, and you just have to deal with it."
I can't quite put my finger on it...
I think it has something to do with my ideas about how social progress is made. I think that, when, as a people, we're hiding and squirreling away the realities in our lives, from "the public," I think we're doing a disservice to the world. When people catch our private lives, and we have to say, "Well, you know what? Screw you all- THIS IS OKAY, and here's why" -- we find ourselves unwitting social activists.
We may have spent all our lives hating social activists, and bitterly spitting, saying, "Just keep it private," but now, something is exposed, and we have to start talking to people.
I think that's something of how progress is made, in society. I think a genuinely tolerant and compassionate society is not made of a bunch of people putting blinders over their eyes.
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It's not that we're ashamed of who we are. It's that other people will draw their own conclusions from your public persona, and use that to make decisions about you. That includes potential employers and current employers. For example, it's common in large corporations to fire employees who have been publically drunk in some situations, because the employee is considered to be representing the corporation -- even during off-hours.
Sadly, we all have to interact with other people, and that puts restriction
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We aren't necessarily hiding ourselves from all inspection and judgment, Rather, we are hiding ourselves from judgment against the many irrational moral codes out there. For example, some people have accepted th
Yeah it's been said already before (Score:2)
If you don't want people seeing your junk online, don't hang your junk out on myspace where everyone can search for it and see it.
Instead of government protecting people from the bad decisions they make, how about we let society learn and advance to the point where people understand what the internet is, and how it can be used to benefit, and to harm; and let that awareness grow.
Just like kids are tau
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Worthless Advice (Score:2)
First of all, human nature dictates that sometimes it's fun to do something that you're not supposed to do. Get a little too drunk, say a little to much, dress a little too funny/provocative/whatever, break a small law here and there, etc. If you live your life as the idealized version of yourself 24/7 and never let loose, well, you are one boring person, and very unusual.
Secondly, have you never ma
What about the "international" problem of the web? (Score:2)
But that's not even the problem. The problem is the same as with spam. Normal phone calls and snail spam have a limit to its propagation, it become expensive to do it from abroad. Spam is a different matter, where a national law can't even remotely address the problem, if it's not allowed here, the spam is s
What expectation of privacy do you have? (Score:3)
Problems with Unwanted photo's on the Internet (Score:1)
Employers, divorce lawyers and other miscreants just need an excuse to make your life difficult. For example, you happen to be in the same picture with a criminal, then you are automatically tagged and associated with a criminal. Don't under-judge how unfair and unreasonable people can be.
Associating your face and your name with unwanted adjectives (tags), like let's say "alcoholic". Of course libel law can deal with this, but it is anything but cheap or e
I can stop my Website from being indexed (Score:2, Insightful)
To the other posters who say "don't post your pictures online": I never have; never will; never gave permission; yet e.g. Google image search shows several pictures of me posted by people who I've never met. It's briefly flattering when you first find yourself; but I wish the pictures weren't there.
Witness protection? (Score:1)
Unnecessary and Unconstitutional (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, our loss of anonymity can have some harmful consequences as the anecdotes in the paper illustrate but this doesn't mean they can't convey important information. I mean on first glance the story about the republican congressman whose daughter was seen kissing another girl on facebook might appear to illustrate a harm of our loss of privacy, and it certainly was a harm to the congressmen, but I would argue it was actually a benefit to society. If that congressman didn't get elected because people found out what he was really like (more tolerant than they suspected) then it was a win for the country.
Ultimately all this technology does is let us effectively say who did what when. Surely it wouldn't be right or constitutional to ban the news media from telling us about the picture of the congressman's daughter. Nor is it acceptable to outlaw any particular act of saying who is in what picture, that is quite squarely inside the domain of free speech. Yet if free speech protects my right to tag each individual photo then it would be a very troubling precedent to set to say it doesn't protect my right to organize those tags in an accessible way. I mean just think of the problems you would get into just trying to catalog the CSPAN archive to indicate which congressmen were doing what when.
More generally while the short term effect of a loss of anonymity in public might be immediate harms in the long term we will eventually discover that everyone does stupid shit and crosses sexual and religious lines. Hopefully the ultimate effect of this loss of anonymity will be to eliminate the double standard which allows everyone to say swears, have naughty/kinky sex, and make blasphemous/non-PC remarks but gives any public official caught doing it hell.
Of course it is scary to lose a protection that has kept us safe for so long but the truth of the matter is that anonymity in public is eroding no matter what we do about it. We can either choose to embrace the good consequences along with the bad by allowing search engines and tagging sites that set up a level playing field for everyone or we can choose a system where those with enough money and lawyers get to keep their anonymity while the rest of society does not. However, that's the worst of all options because it isn't really the loss of anonymity that's harmful but the unequal loss of anonymity. If someone at your office finds pictures of just you getting drunk and doing stupid thats awful, if they can find pictures of a large fraction of the employees it's just amusing.
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Note: purposeful anonymous commentary, e.g., anonymous blogs, are a totally different subject and should be preserved.
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T
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This seems somewhat convenient and smells of hypocrisy. Of course it is a different issue. I just find it somewhat ironic that you _purposefully_ conclude with that remark.
It sticks out like a sore thumb
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My point was that the COSTS and BENEFITS for purposeful anonymous speech are totally different than the costs and benefits for public but obscure speech. That is I think their are important public goods (bloggers in repressive regimes, anon
EU Data Protection Directive (Score:1)
This is why, in the EU, it is an offence to collect "Personal Data" without consent, except where there is a legal, contractual or public interest reason for collecting and processing the data.
In addition there are requirements that a data controller has to inform a subject of what the data is to be used for, and to whom it will be given, regardless of whether the subject gave the data or a 3rd party did (except in the case of some law enforcement). The data controller should ensure your personal data is a
Riya? (Score:2)
I know Riya is mentioned in the article, but it doesn't seem to answer my question.
Need I remind you people (Score:2)
Dear Stupid People (Score:2)
(And if you do, please, please, don't geotag them.)
Just let yourself go (Score:2)
Problem solved!
PS: The above is not really joking... people who worry about this are mentally deranged. I don't need the web to get a photo of you, all I need is a $50 and a lowlife with a camera, I give them your name and address (which I can get from your name) and I'll have a photo of you within a day.
Th