Question of the Week: How Far is Too Far? March 23, 2008
Posted by Kendricke in General Game Concepts, Out of Character.trackback
What would you do if you had private information about a public person in the gaming industry that you thought should be public because it might potentially expose “moral corruption”. Would you release the information and justify if after the fact by claiming it was important for the public to know…or would you sit tight on the information?
How far is too far? What lines shouldn’t be crossed?
Would players feel outraged if a studio’s allowed their moderators to peruse through their private message archives to dig up dirt on potential exploits or cheating? Probably, even though most studios state clearly that they reserve exactly that right. However, would players feel outraged if those same channels were used to start publishing information about players publically – gender, email addresses, lists of characters played, or even more private information?
For reasons which are probably obvious to many of you, I’ve been thinking about these things in general terms quite a bit lately. I started to wonder exactly what information could be gleaned from my own PM archives about myself as a person, or what information could be quickly found out regarding me personally. It’s actually quite easy, though I’m a fairly easy mark – I don’t really hide all that much about myself online. As a former site manager for a couple of gaming news networks, my name is fairly public (and relatively common) and I’ve never taken great pains to hide my current location, either.
So, how hard would it be for someone motivated to find out a lot of information about me quickly? The sad truth: not very hard at all. However, how much is too much? Where does “publically accessible” cross the line into “ethically questionable”. Isn’t that really the point of ethics – to help us answer the questions about when a thing that can be done, should be done?
So I ask again, how far is too far? How far should we game enthusiasts and writers go to uncover the “truth”? When do we sit on a story and when do we go to virtual press? When should we question our own motives – or should we?
What does privacy mean? That’s actually been a question that’s been hot in politics for the past several years and especially after 9/11 inspired laws such as the Patriot Act.
I know you were opening this topic just in light of recent events and how the privacy of forums relate to game players, but that’s just a smaller version of the wider debate and how many of the perceptions relating to privacy (especially privacy online) have bee shaping in the last few years.
I mention one political hot fire event, but really the concepts of privacy and what it means online has been going on longer than that, 9/11 was just an, excuse the expression, explosive catalyst. In the after math of that event, a lot of personal freedoms including privacy related issues were sacrificed in the name of “keeping us safe” or preventing “corruption”. The idea of “you should only want privacy if you have something to hide” came before that, but it really started to gel and become more prevalent and pervasive afterward.
So, should there an expectation of privacy in online communication? Do you expect that your email should be kept in backups by your ISP and given to anyone requesting them (without warrant or even reason)? Do you expect a log of your every click online should be kept by your ISP ready to be handed over at a moment’s notice to anyone who asks? I’m not talking about work email or what you do you your computer at work, your activities on your home PC. But, that is exactly what was part of the original Patriot Act, and, in a smaller form is exactly what occurred on that website forum.
So, should there be no privacy because “only those who have something to hide need privacy”? Should only SOME people have privacy? Who are those SOME? Are you in that SOME? Why should you be? Why shouldn’t someone else be?
It really is that simple, or well, that complex.
Why should your right of privacy be protected (you wouldn’t want your mom to know you went to -that- site would you) but someone else’s shouldn’t?
Are there some places which should be more private than another? Does a “Private Message” carry with it any expectation of privacy?
I know, I know too many rhetorical questions.
I’ve been in online related things since the days of BBSes.
I remember hearing how, in the late 1980s, Steve Jackson Games had been raided by the Secret Service. How when they finally had everything returned (and no charges filed) emails on their BBS (emails between non-employees, customers who had dialed in and sent messages to each other without intervention of any employee) had been accessed and deleted. How little privacy meant to our government on a fishing expedition. (BTW, I knew it was the Secret Service but until trying to look up the date, I hadn’t remembered it was part of the E911 witch hunt, for more info check into the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation: http://www.eff.org/about/history).
I also remember, as a BBS sysop, when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was first making its waves before being gelled into an Act. The definitions of information services and what/how information had to be stored and supplied for law enforcement scared a lot of us even then with its implications toward privacy. Those fears weren’t met with reality until much later, after the concept of online privacy had been steadily eroded.
Right now, that anyone would think it acceptable that the any means of obtaining the “truth” should be allowable is really really frightening.
If privacy at all costs were really a virtue then the Constitution would have never dedicated the second half of the Fourth Amendment to describing the legal way to violate privacy.
This isn’t a general-purpose communications provider or ISP we’re talking about here. The rules for PM’s were undefined by the private site’s rules, and the site was registered to a U.S. citizen and not beholden to the laws of the E.U. There was no Tenth Amendment equivalent in the rules to determine what was by default legit outside of the rules.
I’m not looking just at the issues of that one site, or that one collection of incidents. However, just focusing there, what privacy should something called “private messaging” grant you? Is calling it “private” indicating it isn’t read by the administrators?
In the BBS days, it became well known which boards in a local area would become known for their admins reading emails sent/received on their boards. Those boards would generally become shunned by the local community or used for everything except email or so-called private messages. Yet, now we have individuals being lauded for going through private messages to obtain juicy bits.
To me, that’s a degeneration and an indication of the degradation of privacy that has occurred in the past several years (I would say “in the past 2 decades” but that would reveal my age *laugh*).
The point I was trying to make, and I think others have touched on it as well is the huge, huge difference between our privacy being invaded by the government and our privacy being invaded by an individual, fan site or company.
I am more than willing to get up and complain about government spying, talk about how bad it is, how much I hate it, and why I end up e-mailing and calling my representatives when the topic comes up in Congress. Yet this isn’t a politics site last time I looked, but a gaming site. So the question becomes how bad is it when gaming companies and fansites and that jerk on your server try to violate your privacy?
Not that bad. It isn’t good by any means either, but I can’t bring up the since of outrage and horror that I would for the previous topic. Just because Game Company A or Fan Site B doesn’t respect my privcay doesn’t mean we are all doomed to complete government surveillance in a few short years, and to even suggest the topics are similar is ludicrous.
Back in the BBS days, I was running a board that was touted as having a proper private message system, Citadel-86k. I do not know if anyone came up with tools to, but it was designed to not allow admins free reign over private messages. True you could probably pick apart the message files and decode any encryption it had, but it was designed to make it really hard for anyone who suddenly had an issue with a user from drudging through old messages and trying to find something embarrassing or taken out of context to use against them.
I feel that being in control of a message system of any sort, should come a great deal of responsibility, and if you allow yourself to fall into the petty trap of trying to get at anyone by any means, you imediately fail the responsibility test. Heck, often getting dragged into such a situation in the first place tends to fail you, if you decide to abuse your powers or not.
I’m sure there are plenty of messages I’ve said in private that might make others feel uncomfortable, I have friends across many spectrums and not all of them jive with each other.
But when you go the step, step over the bounds of your userbase in dredging up private emails and messages only meant for another party, you do not only violate the trust of the two users involved, but everyone else using that system as you state that you can and will for your own petty uses, attempt to bring them harm or shame. Thats when its blatantly obvious that you should not be in that kind of position at all.
“The point I was trying to make, and I think others have touched on it as well is the huge, huge difference between our privacy being invaded by the government and our privacy being invaded by an individual, fan site or company.”
They aren’t really. If you become accustomed to having no expectation of privacy in one “unimportant” realm, why should you be concerned about having it respected in another? Why is it different if, say, Kendricke were to post personal information about Rijacki on the public side of the Legion board from information I put in non-displayed (i.e. private) part of my profile or even from a so-called private message I sent to Xeavn vs if a person from the NSA were to go to Covad (my ISP) and request (without my knowledge or consent or even without a warrant) all logs pertaining to traffic to and from my IP addresses (I have 5 static IPs for my account)? Under the Patriot Act, they could.. even if there is not even a shred of evidence there has been any illegal activity.
Why should my private information in one place be worth less than my privacy elsewhere?
BTW, I do find it rather amusing that most of those who champion the cause of privacy rights tend to be the most “transparent” online and many of those who demand that privacy for certain people shouldn’t be allowed will go to great lengths to hide or obscure their own identity and data. An example of that is the response LFG gave for why his domain is obscured from whois by “domainsbyproxy”, that he guards his online data and online privacy (sorry, don’t have the exact reference, it’s in the 80+ page thread on the SOE board, somewhere around page 85-87).
I am going to have to disagree with you Rijacki, and although I doubt I will convince you differently, I feel I should at least try and explain why I disagree.
The difference for me is the matter of choice. I have the choice to participate in the Legion forum’s and if my PM”s were pulled out and displayed, I have the choice to stop participating. The worst punishment that could be inflicted on me is likely removal from the guild. If I was caught trying to cheat using Sony’s website, the absolute worst they could do is ban me from thier game. They don’t have the ability to cause real harm to me based on my private informaton. Furthermore, I have given them the right to monitor my actions and private communications. It is in the End User Agreement you click I Agree to every time you log into EQ2. I am fairly certian I have probably agreed to similar statements for most of the websites that I use.
When it comes to the government it is a different story. My participation isn’t voluntary. I have to pay taxes, and follow the rules of the state and federal government that I reside in. Sure I could attempt to immigrate to another country, but I still would not be able to do whatever I wanted, I would have just changed the rules that I have to live under. What if the government decides that it is going to monitor my every action and finds something it doesn’t like? Well I may go to jail for a while. I may spend the rest of my life in prison. The fact is that the government not only has the resources to closely monitor our lives, they have the force necessary to back it up.
So banned from EQ2 vs. Life in Prison. Choice vs Law of the Land. I see some rather large differences.
You are right, you choose to go to those locations.
I just don’t think that choice should involve having your privacy violated when there was a statement or indication otherwise (i.e. “Private Messages” labeled exactly as such or the sign-up process indicating “this is private information and will not be posted publically”). If there wasn’t the indication some information is private vs other information being publically available, that would mean I am choosing to have it public.