Fri

Sep 8
2006

Nikolaj Nyholm

Nikolaj Nyholm

Transparent Society Linkfest

Tim blogged about the transparent society a few weeks ago (Suburban Mom Embraces The Surveillance Society and whocalled.us), and as so often before the blogosphere seems to hit a hivemind. During the last 48 hours several interesting stories have popped up -- from Danish health survey mashups to sex baiting. Linkfest ahead:

  1. Waxy's account of a social experiment carried out recently on Craigslist. The story involves Jason Fortuny, a web designer, who decided to 1) post a fake request on craigslist, posing as a submissive woman looking for dominant men, and then 2) publishing all the responses he got online. Many of the respondents used their real names and gave out other personal information making them identifiable. (Waxy's post is entirely sex free and SFW. He warns you when linking into NSFW territory.)

  2. Findvej.dk/smiley is Google Maps mashup of restaurant and supermarket sanitary code violations for Frederiksberg, a suburb of Copenhagen. The smiley system used is a somewhat annoying - if charmingly simple - Danish government standard for health code status. (Nb. Don't buy milk at Elite Supermarket when you're in Copenhagen for reboot come next June)

  3. Quite alarmist reporting in this one, but nonetheless - can and should Apple track stolen iPods?

  4. Facebook users are unhappy about a new "personal feed" feature of the social network based on the sentiment that this isn't networking, but stalking.

It seems as if each of these privacy and surveillance stories are able to put a different spin on surveillance and privacy, indicating perhaps that it is already the case that the ethics aren't really tied to privacy and surveillance as such but just to each individual's use of all of this data in the specific situation.


tags:   | comments: 7   | Sphere It
submit:

 
Previous  |  Next

0 TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blogs.oreilly.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/4903

Comments: 7

  Henrik [09.08.06 07:38 AM]

If they do make a policy on stolen iPods as suggested, they better make sure it cannot be misused to hurt legitimate owners. What if someone other than the owner reports one stolen.

  adamsj [09.09.06 04:25 PM]

Privacy versus veracity: Scroll into the comments to get to the on-point part--I started to say interesting, but the whole thing is good.

  Tim O'Reilly [09.10.06 09:12 AM]

27B Stroke 6 has a thought-provoking perspective. He remarks that "A surprising number of commenters support Jason Fortuny's publication of the names, phone numbers, and photos of men who replied to a fake, explicit posting on Craig's List, ostensibly from a woman seeking a man to dominate her sexually." He then gives a list of other people seeking various things on craigslist, and writes: "Which of these do you feel superior enough to that you would want to see their private notes and photos displayed illegally on the internet?" Worth a read.

  Lee [09.11.06 06:16 PM]

Interestingly enough, he forgot about his domain name personal info that is PUBLIC information required by law for those who own domain names (courtesy of WhoIs.sc)

Registrant:
RFJason
726 Kirkland Cir
Apt C203
Kirkland, WA 98033
United States of America

Registrar: DomainPeople Inc.

Domain Name: rfjason.com
Created on .............Wed Oct 18 23:23:23 2000
Expires on .............Thu Oct 19 02:45:15 2006
Record last updated on .Sun Jun 26 16:38:53 2005

Administrative Contact:
RFJason
Jason Fortuny
726 Kirkland Cir
Apt C203
Kirkland, WA
98033, US
(425)5765417
(425)5765417


Technical Contact:
RFJason
Jason Fortuny
726 Kirkland Cir
Apt C203
Kirkland, WA
98033, US
(425)5765417
(425)5765417

  adamsj [09.11.06 07:48 PM]

27B Stroke 6 has a thought-provoking perspective.

I'd call it plain common sense, well-stated. But more of his commenters (as many as I could bring myself to wade through) seem to disagree with him more than agree with him. What's the split, two-to-one, sixty-forty? I'd say a majority, though.

The rise of such shaming is a good argument against the valorization of honor.

  mike [09.12.06 01:46 PM]

nice thoughts. don't forget that when Jason decides to vacate his kirkland digs, he can probably be found in his mother's basement.(Anne Fortuny in Gig Harbor, WA)

what a prick

Post A Comment:

 (please be patient, comments may take awhile to post)






Type the characters you see in the picture above.