Food for thought
From Kevin Schofield’s blog:
Irrational Privacy Discussions
Anyone who knows me, or who has read my blog, knows that I care a lot about privacy issues. But one thing I really think is important is that discussions about privacy deal with facts. It’s really easy to sound the alarm and get lots of people worked up. But we need to keep a firm grounding in what we know to be true.
This kind of article really upsets me, because it outright misrepresents a good piece of research to be something sinister. It’s already been slashdotted, and now it’s getting picked up and re-reported by people who have clearly never read the paper and whose understanding is now so completely divorced from reality that it accomplishes nothing save to fan the flames of people’s worst fears.
[...]
If we’re going to have a rational conversation about protecting people’s privacy we need good research and real facts. Let’s not go around beating up the people who are informing our conversation. And let’s take the time to understand what it is they are telling us.
The entire entry is well worth reading. Kudos to Kevin for trying to stop the media and internet equivalent of the Telephone Game and for pointing out how important it is for people to read the original source before characterizing it or passing along someone else’s impressions of a piece of research.
Thanks for the kind words!