Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Privacy and Photo Posting



Privacy is a lot like your health, you don’t think about it until you lose it. 

I was recently reminded of this when a family member decided to send photos of me, inebriated and acting silly, out with the holiday cards.  Upon learning about this I was angered, and felt my privacy had been compromised.  A fun family intimate gathering, where I could supposedly relax, was potentially being shared with the world.  I trusted my family that these moments would stay with those experiencing them, but with the aid of the camera, they were not.

It was the use of the camera that led to Brandeis and Warren’s seminal 1890 Harvard law review article that established the “Right to privacy.”  The authors wrote the article in reaction to journalists publishing pictures of social events in the paper.  In their article they were trying to draw the line between private and public life in the face of invasive technologies when they stated, “Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that ‘what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops’."

In retrospect, what happen to me was quite minor.  Other than suffering embarrassment, little damage was done.  Especially since the pictures were hardcopies and not digital. 

However, a similar holiday gathering did not work out so well for Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

In this situation, Randi had taken pictures of her sisters trying out a new Facebook app on their phones at a family gathering.  She posted this on her Facebook (to her supposed friends).  One of these was a mediaite, who subscribed to Zuckerman’s feed, and assuming the photo was public, posted it on Twitter to her 40,000 followers.  Well, Randi was angry.

Observers were quick to point out that the slip up was due to Facebook’s confusing privacy settings.

However, the lessons learned from Randi’s privacy violation and to a lesser extent mine, can be summed up by Randi Zuckerman’s tweet:  "Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend's photo publicly. It's not about privacy settings, it's about human decency."

In the end, the tweet with Zuckerberg’s photo was removed and the hard copies of my embarrassing copies were returned to me.

In the future I need to be more aware of cameras at social gatherings, and also mindful of the pictures I take and post. 

Have you compromised another’s privacy or had your privacy compromised by photos posted online?