Hi Everyone!
Today’s article is about how we all have a responsibility to also protect the privacy of others. How we should work together to build a culture normalizing data privacy, and some small actions we can take in our daily lives to improve the privacy of others.
I hope you like it! 
That is a very comprehensive but at the very least it is something that anyone can at the very least accept. Unfortunately I may put it into Google Translate which is unfortunate it’s the only service I know that generates a link to the language to be translated to share it to others but other than that it is important to point out these aspects especially when people care about privacy like me.
Great article @em. Although there is something I can’t quite resolve for myself.
I think consent needs to be at the center of so many conversations including privacy. That said, when you described taking a screenshot of a post someone said, it got me thinking more generally about the internet archiving service.
I constantly screenshot things to remember the information and have no intent to use it to harm but rather save and share without requiring the platform. The internet archive similarly can be used for both librarian style archival, but similarly can has been used as a blame tool.
The simple answer in my mind is to refer back to consent and make sure the person knows, but can this scale for archival of the internet?
Similarly what about taking photographs of a parade? You don’t necessarily want to go out with a bull horn and ask for everyone’s consent. Likely once you do many will then question why you are asking for consent in the first place and be less inclined than had you just snapped the picture of the scene.
To be clear, I don’t intend to ask these questions to nitpick, but rather my brain naturally goes to these edge cases and I think it is worth the discussion here to get the general consensus.
My personal opinion is that if the material isn’t important to link to the human posting it, I just remove their profile info from the screenshot. If their PII is relevant and you’re a friend, get consent since you likely share the same circles. Otherwise, you should avoid getting PII of a stranger since you can’t get consent. This also applies to public figures and celebrities (maybe moreso).
For example, was Marion Stokes removing people’s privacy by archiving US media?
I certainly think not, because that is public domain, but these are more extremes that are easier to discern than snapping a picture at the public parade.
And everyone doesn’t necessarily want their picture taken? The burden is on the person infringing on others right to privacy, not vice versa. The constant surveillance in public places and the flawed belief that there is no right to privacy in public is deeply worrying.
This is fair, so face blurring in this case would have a to become the norm which would be a start. I guess I too have a deep seeded notion that taking pictures in public places is a given to some extent. I have all sorts of pictures of me at a park in the 90s with random people in the background. It just felt normal and fine back then because I grew up with this not causing us any harm.
I have a greater understanding that these sentiments are flawed but how do we go about handling all of these cases? It feels like we would need to avoid taking photos if other humans are nearby.
What about animals and other living creatures? Is it only a human right?
Like all these are legit things I’m trying to to explore and challenge even for myself.
Also curious to get your take on internet archive.
There’s a bit of a paradox of tolerance theme to this. On the one hand it’s freedom of privacy and on the other hand it’s freedom of information.
Everyone will have a line they draw arbitrarily and finding the right one is a very delicate and ever moving balance.
I really like looking privacy from this perspective, I haven’t read it in detail yet, but I immediately spotted some very good advice there, such as contacts, private messages, smart speakers.
Though making things work, as you said, is very challenging, since it involves a lot of actual work, which most people might not feel comfortable or feel needed to, and privacy friendly measures / alternatives often harm convenience and require people to change their practice.
The key point of success would be friction-less / pain-free migration, with at least on-par usability. There are some practical examples I would like to raise but I’d need to dig deeper to fully back it up first.
Meanwhile, @bitsondatadev asked some questions with fair points which I would try to chip in, but my primary point is that I think this guide simply aimed to raise the awareness, we don’t need to go too deep (just now on this thread 
) That being said,
Similarly what about taking photographs of a parade?
Usually professional photographers would do it (i.,e. ask for consent / blur faces / shooting from angle or distance make people in picture harder / impossible to be identified) automatically if they know the parade / protest is sensitive. For normal folks, its down to self-awareness and constant reminders from organisers and actual participants (which I think it is what this guide is talking about).
HOWEVER, the ultimate responsibility of protecting ones’ own identity in these situations is on each individuals. If you cannot risk being exposed, WEAR A MASK, COVER YOUR TATTOOS, etc.
archival of the internet
This guide covers normal folks in their everyday life, so I would think your questions from a non-activism perspective.
Privacy settings of your social media ( I mean Facebook, X, Mastodon, Reddit, etc.) is always crucial to avoid web scraping, also be careful of the platform you use, avoid services that uses your data to train AI. Consider what you said online, both publicly (like this forum or public FB page) or semi-publicly (like private FB group), to be public and will be stored and used by third party.
Personally I feel there is a difference between taking something that is super sensitive or taking something that makes sense to share on a necessary context level:
For example, When I tell friends and family not to share pictures im in to public platforms, they comply because they undestand I dont want to be in a service like Facebook but anything that isn;t exposed to the public like viber is fine (and is at least end-to-end encrypting the messages and attachments).
However you can also argue that sharing someone else’s response where it deems the context to be necessary could be fine: eg. Recently I would do this where I screenshot my friend’s responses to my best friend when it came to playing marvel rivals on Signal, now in a way that is a invasion of privacy but not necessarily anything I would consider sensitive like images of your face or home/location or anything like that.
Yes, I think this is reasonable. Most people don’t want random people in the background of their photos anyways, and with AI tools getting better, you can pretty trivially remove them entirely rather than having admittedly ugly, blurred faces ruining your photo. I think this should apply in all situations, but of course, the harm is significantly reduced if someone is taking a photo for their own use vs posting it publicly.
It depends on whether they are identifiable. In a lot of cases, the focus will be on the subjects in the foreground, and as long as the people in the background aren’t identifiable, I don’t have a problem with it.
I don’t really have an informed opinion as to whether certain intelligent animals should be afforded the right to privacy. That being said, it seems obvious to me that they currently don’t have any such right (given they are kept at zoos in full public view, etc.).
I’m honestly not really sure. Obviously, things you say in public will remain public, but without a primary source (i.e. a screenshot or a recording of a public statement), these things would traditionally have faded from public memory, which I certainly think is a good thing. For example, someone shouldn’t have their career opportunities ruined simply because they’ve made ill-advised comments on social media in their youth.
The PII of the author should certainly be removed, as should any PII in the content. As long as the author can’t be linked to the content, I don’t see it as a privacy issue anymore, and it becomes a copyright issue.
I haven’t used these tools yet but yeah, it would actually be a pretty cool tool to build that would do this en masse after you upload photos. I think another thing is that we should prioritize tools that help people deal with the bulk of useless photos they do keep. I certainly got into the habit of taking like 15 pictures to get higher odds of a “good take” but you add all sorts of bulk.
Privacy could definitely be baked into a massive image/metadata processing software. Also, I do think blurring when you want to capture “yeah a crowd was there” but you don’t really care who the people were, just that you were with a crowd of celebrators. In this case blur would be great as attending an empty parade would kind of make for a crummy memory.
Yeah same, although I just have the sentiment these days that I likely underestimate what an animal recognizes or feels so whatever rights I afford a human should generally be reciprocated to the animal…but yeah…long ways to go before we get there (meat industry and zoos first).
This is where I’m not so sure it is a good or a bad thing. I just think it kind of is, and the modern ways in which this information is used is what is at the root of the problem.
For example, to me, I think the real problem here is that we limit career opportunities based on stuff people did in their youth…not that they posted it or that it exists on the internet. I think that evolution is something we should praise and realize we’re all just animals evolving and we had shitty opinions back then that we’ve since updated, we have shitty opinions today that we will update in the future, and we’ll have new shitty opinions in the future…but we’ll also have growth and great opinions along the way as well.
That said, living in the reality of today, information can be used as a weapon rather than an archival of beauty and growth. I hope that one day isn’t the case and there will always likely be a need for a delicate balance between freedom of privacy (based in consent) and freedom of information (based in openness).
I still feel like there should be some continued control of information you’ve made public regardless of how it’s used. Someone should be able to take down their posts on social media without fear that they’ll pop up again in the future. I suppose this is also a social / societal issue beyond privacy though because people always see removing content as an attempt to hide something. It’s entirely possible someone removes a previous posts because they have now realised that it reflects poorly on them and that their views have now evolved as you say.
Excellent post! I noticed that at the bottom PG’s Signal username is shared. I am curious, beyond having issues with one’s account, what would be the purpose of contacting PG via Signal?
I remember seeing this trailer a while back. Never saw the film, though. In the context of privacy, I definitely have a new interest in it. Is it good?
The Security and Privacy, someone who may have a higher threat model would prefer to be contacted via signal for example.
or someone like me who has a public signal, where I can always tip.
It’s also why I’ll be using signal for my business for example for support contact, it’s just a choice the consumer has.
Since we’re talking about privacy and consent, it’s important not to pressure anyone to have their photo taken or shared. This happened to me. Last Christmas, my sister’s girlfriend, who knows I don’t like having my picture taken or shared on social media, pressured me into consenting.
She took some family pictures, to which I reluctantly agreed to be a part of, and promised me that they wouldn’t go online because she understands I don’t like that. Then literally with in minutes of taking the pictures with my family, she said the picture was too pretty not to share on social media and basically insisted that I let her post it o IG. I very reluctantly said fine, because I didn’t want to start an argument with her, or my family, but I absolutely hate it.
Some people will argue that if you go to family event, like a wedding or Christmas dinner, you inherently agree to have your picture take and shared on social media. Maybe for a wedding, but I disagree about Christmas parties.
GDPR takedown request…
You have public Signal? As in for your business? And what do you mean by tip?
I understand businesses having Signal, too few don’t use it IMO. But PG is not a business.
The reason I was asking this question is because it made me wonder if it would be appropriate to contact PG via Signal to ask for privacy advice where very personal details about one’s situation may be shared.
Are you seriously suggesting I do that? Report my sister’s GF and ask for a GDPR takedown? Is it not too aggressive?