Accidental Privacy Spills

ahem writes "A journalist attends the World Economic forum, and writes an email to a few friends. It's a chatty, casual conference report. The conference is a gathering of the 5,000 most powerful people in the world. The report gives a breezy insight into how stuff gets done at that level, and what the concerns are that keep the world's leaders up at night. That email was intended only for the journalist's friends. That email winds up getting plastered all over the net. Here is a very interesting discussion of the implications of this "privacy spill." Make sure you read down to the Epilogue. Here is the email itself." The Lawmeme discussion is quite thoughtful and in-depth, very good reading.

Comments

Actually, I have this problem on slashdot.

[MickLinux]

I opened both the article and the email itself -- but read the article first, and did *not* read the email. If she didn't intend for me to read it, and made it clear she still doesn't intend for me to read it, then I'm not going to read it.

I strongly suspect that her grammar was one of the reasons she did not want it read. She possibly *can't* spell or construct proper sentences when she rights, and depends on an editor to fix her writing. If so, then the change in public perception will damage her credibility as a journalist. It shouldn't, but it will. If she *can* spell, then the poorer level of writing may still make people assume she can't, with the same result.

But it really was her own fault. I have this problem myself, not only with email, but on Slashdot.

There are lots of times when I see an article, and write a post, and then think "I don't want to post this". Or "I don't want to post this in my name."

When I have those thoughts, I think about why. Usually, rather than clicking "Post anonymously", I simply click "x" in the upper right hand corner.

You see, often what I think I don't want to be associated with, shouldn't be said, even if it is is true.

It is for this same reason that within the Catholic Church, one of the things that can really hurt a person's candidacy for sainthood is their writings. People simply need to not be frivolous with things they write, because what they write can spread. And if it's wrong, or evil, or even right and good -- but in the wrong context to do good -- then it was a bad idea to write it down.

[But just so you know, I too later discover grammar errors in my writing, and I too use my writing skills professionally. My most common mistake is to use "to" where "two" or "too" belongs. My second most common mistake is broken sentence structure, that appears when I go back and edit my writing, and use the "Submit" butten instead of the the "Oewcuwq" button.]

so mindless!

[twitter]

Any time we release a document to any other group of people, inside work or out, we are 'encouraged' to copy all, paste into a new document. That document is then password protected from editing (weak, I know, but it shows diligence). Only then is it to be sent out. Of course, following all of that is a royal pain in the arse

Of course that's a pain in the ass, just like the other fifty dumb things you have to do to overcome Word's "features". Don't you wish you had a program that would print to post script of portable document format with a two clicks? Pssst! Open Office does that.