In Australia, Even Private Facebook Photos Are Public

littlekorea writes "Australia's telecommunications regulator has ruled that one of the country's largest broadcasters, Channel 7, did not breach the industry code of conduct by lifting photos of deceased persons and minors from social networking site Facebook. Significantly, the regulator noted that it doesn't have the legal authority to crack down on broadcasters that lift material tagged as 'private,' looking to the Attorney General to provide some legal clarity."

Comments

Good Grief... Not again...

[Frosty Piss]

Again, folks, nothing you post on Facebook is private. Nothing. Seriously, there are simply ***NO*** privacy issues with Facebook, because nothing on Facebook is private.

The rule is simple: If you want to maintain privacy, don't post your "private" material on Facebook or any other "social networking" web site.

 

Bad description = non-story

[Mr_Silver]

So I read the description of the story and thought to myself "this makes no sense, if you posted photos as private or friends only, how on earth did Channel Seven get hold of them?"

So, shockingly, I read the story and it turns out the description is completely wrong. Here are the key parts (bold mine for emphasis):

Australia's communications regulator has ruled that television networks are not breaking the industry's code of practice when publishing photos lifted from a public Facebook profile.

[...]

"The ACMA found that due to the open nature of the tribute page, the absence of privacy settings and the non-sensitive nature of the photographs, Seven did not breach the privacy provisions of the code," the ACMA noted in a press statement.

In short, they lifted photos tagged as public on a public tribute page, littlekorea completely twisted the truth (by mixing up "public" and "private") when submitting the story and timothy didn't do any basic editing.

It'll be interesting to sit back with the popcorn and watch the comments from outraged slashdotters who didn't bother to read the story and the upvotes from those with moderator points who equally didn't bother to read the story ...