In an article on Cnet News, I learned that amid recent concerns over their newly adopted-then-repealed Terms of Service policy, Facebook has hired an ACLU lawyer to be its new public policy director. The article says that the lawyer, Timothy Sparapani, has "close ties to privacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Center for Digital Democracy." The article also goes on to mention that these are some of the same groups that have raised concern with some of Facebook's advertising and TOS policies in the past.
Certainly this is a good P.R. move on Facebook's part; since one of their men is in with Facebook, these privacy groups are probably less likely to raise a stink about anything that Facebook does. But it could also be a positive from the public's perspective--one would hope that since the lawyer is part of the ACLU, he would act in accordance with the mission to protect and defend the civil liberties of U.S. citizens. And if we want to be really optimistic about all of it, we can propose that Facebook actually wants to protect the privacy of its users without any hidden agenda. When bureaucracy appoints people who may have different ideas of how to run things, it gives me hope that there will be real, positive progress (although it does amuse me too). In a way, it makes me think of the things the President was trying to do when appointing his cabinet and aides.
Information about this appointment at Facebook is also located here, here, and here, as well as various other sites online.
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Hayley, I admit i am somewhat ignorant of why the Facebook privacy issue came up in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI think privacy issues and the online agreements we have to okay, or agree to, have always been a deterrant for me when it comes to participating in social networks. That's why I'm so anti (social) internet social networks. I do not entrust information about me freely with social networks.
However, it must not matter, because even in my reluctance to participate in these venues there is still a lot of information about me online that I did not personally give out. I thought maybe the school information may have come from LinkedIn, but you said you have had no problem with that and you are also a part of LinkdeIn.
It's a mystery to me.
Sparapani is a good name for Facebook to tout. It will be important for Facebook users to keep track of things and make sure that his hiring actually signals something real or if it is just a gesture.
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