lrigdarts

“Pre-Internet, making something public took and enormous amount of time and effort, so much, in fact, that public expression was out of the reach of most citizens. Now, that cost structure has been turned upside-down: there are any number of services that will help you make any information you want publicly available for free; it is keeping things private that requires effort.”

—

Should Government Take On Facebook? - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com (via anxiaostudio)

This reminds me of the ‘commodification of privacy’ arguments that have been floating around for some time. It’s not entirely certain that government intervention will really ‘secure’ privacy insofar as the government in question has already passed legislation significantly eroding privacy for some years now. If you have a look at Privacy International’s 2007 report on ‘Leading Surveillance Societies’ here, it should be no surprise to see that even at that time parts of the US were already attaining the status of ‘endemic surveillance society’ whilst the entirety of the UK was characterized as such. 

(via mattermedia)