Who should dictate levels of privacy?

(Update July 28) With the massive leak of over 91,000 documents from the US Army operations in Afghanistan to wikileaks, the notions of security, confidentiality, privacy and piracy have hit the front pages of mass media around the world.  The role of the internet and the oversight of governments on issues of privacy, in particular, is likely to become a focal point in cabinet meetings, board rooms and at dinner tables alike.

Whether you like, love or hate Facebook, it and its smaller peers are having an impact on every level of life.  With Facebook now hitting the half billion mark worldwide (of which 110+ million in the US) and Facebookers spending some 7 hours per month on average on this social media, businesses are now ramping up their involvement everywhere.  But, considering its scale, you now have to believe that governments will ineluctably start to intervene on this media and on the issue of privacy.  The real challenge for politicians around the world will be keeping up with the rate of change.  If you consider the length of time due democratic process takes in government, by the time a law is written, the playing field will surely have shifted and new players will have taken root.

For example, the US Senate has recently put the subject of consumer protection on the table (see Fast Company article here covering the ongoing discussions).  However, the issue is far from new and the discussions, which began in April, keep on rolling along and nothing substantive appears to have been put on paper other than a letter of concern to Zuckerberg.

Meanwhile, there have been some governments that have gone the draconian route and banned access to Facebook such as China and Iran (due to political control), and Pakistan and Bangladesh (due to “sensitive” cultural issues) .  Other governments have weighed in about the incursions into one’s private life.  With the ever wider transparency of a Facebook user’s profile on the web, it would appear that Facebook is singlehandedly defining the boundaries of what is personally publishable to the public and what should be personally private.

In some regards, the different ways governments are reacting to Facebook is symptomatic of the cultural divide(s).  While the US Senate considers protecting the individual from unsolicited viewing, Facebook is widely used in the recruitment process and, apparently, is also usable in the court of law or by the IRS.  The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers indicated in press releases that 81% of its members have seen an increased use of evidence from social networks, 66% of which cited Facebook as the main source of evidence, followed by MySpace at 15% and Twitter at 5%.  In August 2009, the WSJ wrote up this piece “Is Friending in your Future? Better Pay Your Taxes First,” about the use of MySpace and Facebook by the taxman (IRS).

If you sit back, you can observe that social media is playing an evermore important role not just in mainstream life and helping to keep in touch with your friends and family around the world, but in recruitment as a CV, lawcourts as evidence, politics as an opposition statement (Iran…) or to rally voters (Obama…), disaster relief (Haiti, Iceland…) and even taxes and criminal investigation for illicit dealings.

It will be interesting to see how governments rule on the issue of privacy and how much/if the consumer will indeed be more protected or outted in the end!  If a central tenant of democracy is anonymity, it stands to reason that privacy should also be protected.  What are you thoughts?  What level of intervention should a government be allowed?

Putting Social into Social Media

It is most interesting to observe the rise of social media out of the ashes of human tragedy.  The outpourings that have followed major calamities speak to the strong social component of social media.  I think of it in three steps, to date that is…

First, there was #sandiegofire for the forest fire in San Diego in October 2007, when the hashtag was born on Twitter.  With this first hashtag, Twitter started to galvanize attention around a singular event or issue.

Secondly, in mid 2009, there was Iran with the Green Revolution. You had on-site Twitter reporting (#iranelection among others) and Facebook Groups (100 million people 275,000 people on Facebook!), with the creation of sites like the Green Wall (10,000 strong).  With the Green Revolution movement, there was no doubt that Twitter was made a headline MSM newsworthy affair.  The “what are you doing now?” question had a sense of real urgency, both real (human) and urgent (legitimate and newsworthy).  And, according to the Huffington Post, the Green Revolution is gaining traction…helped in part, I do not doubt, by the continuing internet buzz.

Now, we have had the Haiti disaster.  And the social media machine has been thrown into the fray again, with mainstream news journalists reporting on the use of social media, not just the unfolding human drama.  Again, social media is putting the social into focus.  This time, the cause is bringing not just a stampede of Twitterings and Facebook pages, but also concrete help in the form of millions of dollars of aid.  On Twitter, there is #Haiti which is registering between 5% and 8% of all hashtags since the earthquake.  On Facebook, there are now — between the four Haiti groups — over 1.5 million “members” with over 1 million members on “Every person that joins we will donate $1 to Haiti”.  Unfortunately, this latter group does not identify who the “we” is… so it is presumably just some miserable scam.  Another Facebook group “Earthquake Haiti” (with over 185,000 members) is designed to help locate missing people and reunite families.  Meanwhile, the American Red Cross (which now has 50K followers on Twitter) has reported that, thanks to the social media / digital support, it has raised some $10 million in aid for Haiti, just four days after the event.   The American Red Cross allows anyone in the US to text HAITI to 90999 as an easy way to donate $10 to the recovery effort. The money is billed to your mobile phone account. Naturally, the celebrities who have garnered a strong social media following and are discussing Haiti have helped bring the media pitch up and out to a wider swath.  Lance Armstrong, for example, with some 2.5 million followers on Twitter, pledged a quarter million dollars in Haitian relief to two different associations.

The use of technology and the internet in the Haiti disaster has been both widespread and innovative.   I think of Apple’s iTunes app (“donate to Haiti“) which allows people to make donations with its easy-as-pie pay scheme. Google has ramped up its google maps (and donated $1 million) to help geolocalisation for the relief efforts.  As reported on the AFP, a number of sites such as FamilyLinks and haitianquake were posting pictures and messages to help reunite families.  Google is also offering a “person finder” at HaitiCrisis.appspot.com.

All in all, the social media platforms have clearly managed to bring speed (real time) and globality (new word) to an unfolding crisis. Perhaps, Haiti, which ranks as about the 25th poorest country in the world, will come out of this tragedy with some lingering benefits on the worldmap.