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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.
The only way to have anything not exposed would be to of encrypted the messages for each person.
The next step? Go the Microsoft way and have either a timed encrypted message or some way to have a message self-delete after so much time. Both are possible but either add it's own complexities or possiblities of comprimise. (ie. the timed message abitliy is out there but basically you view a message which exists on an external server and is displayed on your machine via a doc.write comand. Not the best way.
Patrick Havens (Mr. 573333 to you.) Graphic Artist / Coder / Father / Journeler
The solution is simple don't send anything to anybody that you don't want them to spread around.
Technology gives us more speed and a larger play field but gossip is gossip and it will spread via word of mouth over the backyard fence or on somebody's blog. There is nothing new here except the speed and scope.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
This is a symptom of what has become all too common in todays email society - the trivialization of communication.
The "forward" has become a replacement for an actual composed email message. Its easier to maintain the illusion of staying in touch by forwarding some insipid crap rather than taking the time to actually *gasp* drop someone a personal note.
As a result, most email is not private, or more importantly, personal. I can easily imagine what went through the recipients mind - "wow, this is cool, let me forward it to ____". Why wouldn't he ? After all, we foward crap to each other all the time, why should this very interesting email be any different ?
You get something that looks interesting, you forward it. It couldn't POSSIBLY have been intended for ONLY you.
I would bet that had this letter been handwritten, the recipients would not have shown it around.
Welcome to the global communication era.
There is a liberal bastion that opposes the way not because of the people, but because there investments will get screwed.
Power is sexy
Swiss is a hick way of saying "expensive"
Al Qaeda's threat is mostly done with...
Nope... No major news here... Move along... nothing to see.
This is an excellent illustration of being extremely careful with the information you posess. And, as the subject indicates, who your friends are. If she considered the information to be somewhat sensitive in nature, then she could have easily: (1) kept it to herself for a future article or (2) maybe make it clear in the email to not redistribute. She obviously chose to do neither, which sort of opened the doors. Unfortunate that someone on her "distribution list" felt that everyone needed to know what went on at the World Economic Forum based on Laurie's experiences. From reading the email it really doesn't look like she has divulged any really serious world secrets. Another prime example of how to learn from one's mistakes.
-- Rick
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When will people get that email is not secure. Its the digital equivalent of a postcard, but idiots still email credit card numbers and worse.
:)
The problem is that _nothing_ is secure once it's decrypted. Even if the e-mail had been sent encrypted and with "DO NOT PUBLISH" written on every other line, some random friend might still have sent the body of the e-mail (after decrypting it to read it) to a friend of theirs, who then forwards it to a friend who has a webpage... and so on. The same applies to written letters as well (ever heard of the "Xerox machine"?)
What's really amazing to me is some of those responses to the second letter. "You shouldn't write anything that you don't stand behind"?!?! Jesus, do people really think that _everything_ is for public consumption? I reserve the right to have a private life! I mean, we're talking about a letter from a woman to her pals. I would like to think that my e-mail is not innately for public consumption. But according to some people, if a person with a weblog gets their hands on one of my e-mails, then suddenly it's my fault for not somehow making my e-mails self-destruct once they've been read! I have more to say about people who think like that, but I doubt that slashdot's lameness filter will let me post it.
And yet the first posts were done within minutes of the article.
A very fascinating talk about privacy, copyright, and the failures of both. Betrayed by friends.
And of course, the assholes that chat online (blog? what a stupid word).
But it comes down to one small point- a single failure allowed that message to get out. Who's to blame? The guy forwarding it to the mass list? Did he know *everyone* on that list? Probably not. So therefore I'm saying the fault lies there. In every other case, the people that forwarded knew the others, no more than if a simple discussion was being undertaken among friends. I might not know joe and amy, but sue does, and she might mention how I had a good success at work. I wouldn't have told them, but that knowledge propogated without my help.
However, if Sue then posted on some forumn about my work success, then she'd be crossing the line. So I say, that is where the line in the sand is....and you crossed it. And Laurie is the one that pays for your broken implicit promise.
Society and politics aren't changing as fast as technology. They can't possibly handle all the implications of each new invention.
Privacy may be an outdated idea. People want it to hide what may embarrass them. But their embarrassment really is the problem.
If something would embarrass them, either they are too weak to stand up for who they are, or they are doing something they know to be bad, and against their own stated principles.
We need to be more forgiving of people for their weaknesses, and be more careful about our own. If loss of privacy would help these two statements, then what is the problem?
-------
Incite and flee.
Lots of people use email as a replacement for mail. Lots of people forget that email is not much like mail at all.
Mail (in it's traditional form) is slow, hard to copy, and difficult to compose. Email is fast, easy to copy and easy to compose. Neither are very secure. Combining composability with easy copying gives you forwarding.
With forwarding being so easy, people do it as second nature to share interesting/relevant information. It would not surprise me for a minute to see something I didn't want passed around forwarded because the recipiant didn't realise it was confidential, mostly due to not taking the time to rub two brain cells together. Nevermind the technolgical security issues, which make me place email as being way less secure than calling someone on my phone.
If I'm going to send anything at all that that I don't want forwarded, I'll make it painfully obvious with 'DO NOT FORWARD, PRIVATE, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY' etc. Of course, even with that, I still would not forward anything other than the lowest of privacy concern on my part, since email is so insecure.
If I want to keep it secret, the most secure form is to tell no one. If I'm going to tell someone, at the highest security level, it would be in person where I have the least chance of being overheard. Email is LAST method on the list, used only for trivial secrets.
W9x:Thanks for the make-work project Bill.
Nice links. The reporter's (or I should say unwitting correspondent's) reaction is a good indictment, of course, of any online discussion forum. Wasted "community" indeed.
But here's the thing: I already know I'm pissing away time here, and one day I'll just stop. Usenet and MetaFilter and Slashdot are near-complete failures - no argument. But telling an addict to go out and get straight has never been effective, and I think Garrett knows that. Look at the minutes it will take me to compose this reply - and for what? It all just feeds the addiction.
And here's the other thing: I really enjoyed reading that letter. Yes, it was a slight invasion of privacy (though it wasn't particularly personal, and if it had been I'd have quit reading), but I feel like it lent me insight into what a WEF summit is in ways that Garrett's presumably carefully-crafted official piece just won't. Why isn't that kind of writing the norm? What the heck are we afraid of if it were? I already knew that all those "world leaders" and "captains of industry" were jes' folks, with all the attendant fears and irrationality, but it was nice to see such a candid (and not uncharitable) description. And for some other reader that same insight might be both novel and very useful. It might just be the thing that gets them out the door and doing something real to change the world for the better. Garrett has nothing to be embarrassed about.
Agreed --- I found the original email fascinating. It really highlights the disconnect between how issues are marketed by PR professionals in the national media and how they are discussed behind closed doors. Frank coverage like this should be (and isn't) available in any public forum, only in private correspondence.
And won't be available in the future, because there's no way that reporter is being invited back to WEF in the future.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
Since the writer went to the conference as a journalist, she was expected to publish something. With a bit of cleanup, she could have published that as a column. Nobody in Europe would be upset.
The US media is very gentle on the Administration. You don't see publicly in the US media that, to most of the world's elites, Bush and his cronies are viewed as inept and dangerous. "Jesus freaks with nuclear weapons" is a bit harsh, but it's mainstream British opinion.
On the economic front, everybody who can read the numbers knows it's going to be at least a few years before things get better. Whole countries are going bankrupt. IMF policy doesn't work. The bubble in the US still hasn't fully deflated. Japan has been in the tank for a decade, and nobody knows how to fix it.
Again, none of this should surprise anyone other than heavy TV viewers.
I took it all as perfectly correct reporting, without even being run through a 'should I actually publish this' filter. In some ways I'd call that MORE accurate and correct than a more carefully worded story.
Being alarmed about war planning myself, and also very skeptical of the prospects of economic wellness from uncontrolled laissez-faire globalization, I found it incredibly encouraging to learn that yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as Reality.
It's not just that these rich movers and shakers are 'just people'- it's that they're not in control, and that they are capable of recognizing when the policies of those like them lead to olgiarchy and the collapse of the worldwide economy. These aren't a bunch of Socialists but they're not having any of the economic social darwinist garbage- if holding to parody-Libertarian dogma means the poor get poorer and it affects THEIR PROFITS, they'll recognise that relatively quickly and they will do something else! I like that these are pragmatic people. They'll go with what works...
I think that was worth dismaying a journalist, I really do. I think the truth is much more important than her feelings of chagrin at being mocked for spelling mistakes or whatever- some people don't seem to 'get' that her ability to REPORT was terrific and plainly on display, and the news was desperately important.
Oscar Wilde once wrote to a friend, "I am sorry to write you such a long letter. I don't have time to write a short one."
> Who writes such long casual emails (without
> spelling mistakes and grammatical errors) ?
The fact that you can't spell or write doesn't mean nobody else can.
And bear in mind that the writer is supposedly a professional journalist, who may be assumed to *like* writing.
Instead of ranting at the bloggers and posters, Mrs. Garrett should simply have said something along the lines:
"That email was private and intended for a only a few friends. I am sorry it has been exposed to the world, it was never meant as perfectly accurate, peer-reviewed report of the Davos forum, but rather my quick impressions. Please take it as such, and do not base any business or investment decisions on it. Ciao."
The fact is, she was naive and unthinking to fail to realize the possibility that one of her friends may forward it, and that the email would get out. Yes, she should have a right to privacy, but the possibilty certainly exists, and instead of relying upon a nebulous "right", she should have taken steps to minimize or eradicate that possibility instead. Both she and her friend made a mistake, and the email got out into the news-hungry metanet where it snowballed. But ranting at random people for that only made matters worse. Something for us all to keep in mind.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
This long, rambling, long, LawMeme article spends a lot of time huffing and puffing about nothing important. News flash to the writer: "information wants to be free" (a property or quality of information actually).
;-)
The article isn't really worth reading because it's a long, drawn out self-debate about whether people are going to stop using email because there's a chance it'll escape. To most people, nothing they write about is important enough to really make this a serious problem. People like Laurie should be more careful.
There's no great lesson here. But it's obviously a fascinating leaked email
simon
home page
On their website, they've got video/audio, and transcripts of the more important speakers. The C. Powell one is pretty decent.
there is no thing
what else could you want?
Read differently, that makes it sound like the US economy is the primary engine of the global economy.
But this guy went to J-school. Of course he'll slant it the other way.
That still ignores the possibility that the person reading the message can write the text out on a notepad, and then type it into a Word document and email that to everyone. Or even take pictures with a camera or video with a cam-corder, and show those on a webpage. If a person wants to share a message they received, they will unless they are physically restrained.
Talking of which, I wish someone would put a straight-jacket on my mother, before she sends me more of those chain letters. Sometimes I feel like forwarding them to a spammer address, just so the 800 people shown in the 50 included header segments all get spammed even more. But then I remember it's my mom, and I love her and all that, so I don't.
Do you not come away from /. discussions and other forums more informed than you were before? I know I am more aware of copyright issues and privacy issues than I was three years ago. How is that a waste? If you are going to use such a definition, then any hobby is a waste.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
The most interesting part:
I learned from American security and military speakers that, "We need
to attack Iraq not to punish it for what it might have, but
preemptively, as part of a global war. Iraq is just one piece of a
campaign that will last years, taking out states, cleansing the planet."
The amazing thing is that the White House has been vehemently denying these charges. "Iraq is not the lynchpin of a broader assault on the middle east." says Ari Fleischer...
Are they afraid that if we understand their own true motives and the motives of Arab leaders we might start seeing this war as something bad??
recapture the glory days of 12-13th C Islam. That means
finding tolerance and building great education institutions and places
of learning. The King was passionate on the subject. It also means
freedom of movement and speech within and among the Islamic nations.
Yep, pure evil. I guess the US placed puppets in Afghanistan and Iraq are our last line of defense against free-speech and higher learning.
~Hammy
This incident supports my longstanding theory that hardly anyone possesses any sense of irony, nowadays. (Hey, after watching Norm McDonald's Hasselhoff/Germans thing play out, I decided that I needed a theory, too.)
I'll agree that Garrett should be neither ashamed nor embarrassed by her original email. Yes, it's disappointing to see shoddy language skills from a professional journalist. And yes, it would be nice if a Pulitzer and Peabody Prize winner didn't exhibit such naiveté and ignorance about both the security and the intimacy of the internet. But she's right: The fact that a "Fwd" button simplifies the act of sharing personal correspondence, should not make it less egregious. Someone on Metafilter suggested that, because Garrett didn't specifically write, "Don't pass this along," she couldn't expect the email to remain private. I don't think we've reached that point, in our march toward the erosion of privacy...and I hope we won't.
Having written that: I think Garrett's email to Metafilter is shameful. It's ignorant. She assumes that people discussing her email on Metafilter are unproductive people who neither experience nor contribute to much of life. This ignorant presumption is beneath a professional journalist, and it's certainly beneath a Pulitzer writer. She is obviously angry, and she probably feels violated. This is understandable, and most of us sympathize. But she responds with ad hominem attacks on an entire community, invoking stereotypical references. Cracking on nerds about William Shatner, I guess, is more acceptable than cracking about blacks and fried chicken? Jews and Barbra Streisand?
Garrett was pardoned for this vitriol, by another Metafilter poster, because she was "writing in anger." And that's really the bottom line, here: Has she learned nothing? She's angry because something she wrote off-the-cuff, without the consideration she would give to a professional article, found its way into public consumption. So in response, she types an angry, bitter, off-the-cuff missive, and mails it into a discussion revolving around the incident? Has she NO sense of irony?!?
Garrett remarks that she has learned her lesson: She will no longer email personal messages; because online, "no one can be trusted." Well, as we all say, the only way to truly secure a document is not to write it. But it seems to me that she has missed the larger lesson, here: If your words are unconsidered, don't share them. A personal letter shouldn't require the effort of a professional article, of course. But a personal misunderstanding, stemming from poorly-written thoughts, can be just as damaging as a professional embarrassment.
Privacy is an important concern, and Garrett's was violated. Yes, email simplifies "gossip." Yes, the internet has eroded privacy. But part of that erosion has been incidental: The internet's effect is less upon the privacy of your words, and more upon their permanence. Learn from Garrett's mistake, and remember that permanence every time you type.
crib
Please don't read my journal
Google News is pretty good. It may link to some sugercoated sources, but it will also link to international ones, so it all evens out.
Understanding a Middle East story is only possible after having read both the Israeli and Arab takes on it.
May we never see th