Privacy, Revisited

Today is Data Privacy Day; Congress voted quietly last year to have the United States join Europe in designating January 28 as an annual, international holiday to raise awareness about the importance of data privacy protection.

Make no mistake: the privacy debate is hotter (and louder) than ever. The recent uproar over Facebook's new Terms of Service—and then, even more recently, Twitter's new service terms—"is all about privacy," says Georgetown University law professor Marc Rotenberg. "It's not the old-fashioned parchment scroll, carried by courier on horseback from the castle to the king's army notion of privacy," says Rotenberg, the director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit he founded in 1994 to address the Internet's impact on society's traditional notions of privacy. "This is "modern-day privacy, about digital identity, the control of personal information, and the brewing battle between what we post and its commercial value." [For more on Rotenberg's views, see his essay that ran recently in The Huffington Post, suggesting that "we give up personal information all the time but that doesn't (nor should) end the discussion over privacy." That, says Rotenberg, is where the discussion begins.]

Just don't tell the social media executives meeting in Davos this week. There, halfway 'round the world from Rotenberg's Washington, D.C., office—and while Rotenberg was commemorating Data Privacy Day in press briefings and other talks elsewhere—the chiefs of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Ning and LinkedIn squeezed into a small, packed anteroom at the World Economic Forum to share their predictions for social networks, discuss their impact on society (for better or worse) and ponder why their companies hadn't yet figured out a way to make big money off their subscriber's digital social connections.

Tim Berners-Lee, the British physicist who invented the World Wide Web, told the Davos gathering that "little changes in how your treat privacy can dramatically affect the way a social network works." He said that in eBay's case, for example, the site has increased privacy in some areas as the online auction site has matured. The site now hides the identity of people bidding against each other. Younger users, though, seem far more open to revealing personal details about themselves.

Then it was Reid Hoffman's turn. The executive chairman and founder of LinkedIn told the group: "All these concerns about privacy tend to be old people's issues." Transparency and accessibility are two reasons, he said, that so many younger users—teenagers and young adults—put their mobile phones on Facebook or MySpace. "The value of being connected and transparent is so great," Hoffman said, that privacy is not a concern but a hindrance.

Rotenberg wasn't present. But Don Tapscott, author of books on the so-called Net Generation and the need for corporate transparency in the Digital Age, took Hoffman on. Social networking, Tapscott said, would become what "we want it to be" over time, meaning that if we wish to build civic values into social network sites, we will—and should. "[The Internet] has an awesome neutrality and we need to build into it basic human values," Tapscott said. "...And one of those values is the right to informational privacy and the right to be left alone. I completely reject this view that privacy is dead. It's in deep trouble, it needs to be saved and everyone needs to get involved to protect their own information."

Indeed. [Says Rotenberg: "I smile every time someone says privacy is dead or the Facebook generation doesn't care about privacy. If there is one issue that people feel passioantely about today, that literally unites everyone who goes on line, it is the interest in privacy. And the battle is just beginning."]

What do you think? Is privacy an "old people's issue" or more about civil liberties in the 21st century? Let us hear from you.

—Marcia Stepanek

(Illustration: istock.com)

Davos, Reset

The annual World Economic Forum got under way today in Davos, with 2,500 of the world's business and political elite gathering at the famed Swiss mountain resort under the apt new theme, "Rethink, Redesign, and Rebuild." It is a chastened crowd: WEF Founder Klaus Schwab told reporters the Forum is being held this year "in a mood of reflection" and that the global economic crisis "is really reflective of a deeper crisis of values, overall."

Indeed, there is much talk in Davos this year about the need to fast-forward social enterprise and social innovation, and to more urgently use social media to crowdsource new solutions for many of society's ills—whether in Haiti or closer to home.

There also is a hunger among attendees for examples of social innovation that works, and with them, the reassurance that change-for-good can be replicated and scaled globally. Indeed, the sense of euphoria about globalization that has marked Davos for years has been muted by the global financial crisis, making the 2010 gathering a call for a more civic global society to insure the sustainability and advancement of global leadership. Some people have returned to Davos this year, says writer David Ignatius of The Washington Post, "because with something as ephemeral as globalization, I think there's a desire to actually touch it, feel it, stand next to its fellow members in line for a cup of coffee or the men's and ladies' rooms. Floating in a networked world, you want to believe that there are real people with hands on the controls, a real place, anchored in the snow and ice each January..."

Cause Global will be providing only limited coverage, and mostly in the form of wrap-ups on select social innovation news. Highlights so far include:

* A meeting of Young Global Leaders, one of WEF's 16 communities holding gatherings this week in Davos, cited three cause-activism trends to watch in 2010. First, given Haiti aid groups' success, expect a surge in the NGO and nonprofit use of mobile and text-messaging applications to raise fast money for a cause. Second, watch for a continued rise in "slacktivism" -- the use of easy, click-to-donate and online volunteering tools by micro-donors to battle social problems. Third, expect to see more nonprofits and social enterprises using "crowdsourced philanthropy" in the form of recent contests such as the Chase Community Challenge, the Pepsi Refresh Project, and the American Express Members project.

* A dinner meeting of 30 top social entrepreneurs urged more coordinated efforts to solve global problems and educate people in developing countries how to use technology to better their lives. Dinner attendees included Martin Fisher of KickStart, who noted that technology innovations don't tend to be adopted by poor rural farmers, so time-limited "smart subsidies" might be used, instead, to encourage the adoption of these innovations until the commercial markets can take over. Also attending were Harish Hande of Selco of India, and Andreas Heinecke of Dialogue in the Dark, a social enterprise that employs blind people to host exhibits and business workshops in total darkness, where participants learn new communications perspectives.

* Nike formally launched GreenXchange at a CEO breakfast. The Xchange is a Web-based marketplace where companies can collaborate and share intellectual property, which can lead to new sustainability business models and innovation. Ten organizations have already signed on; we'll be looking more closely at this group in a future post.

Watch this space for updates.

— Marcia Stepanek

(Photo illustration courtesy of World Economic Forum by permission)

Davos Daze

The World Economic Forum got under way today in Davos, Switzerland. The theme this year is, fittingly, the global economic crisis. "The level of global wealth has changed," Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1997 through 2006, told an opening press conference kicking off the conference. "The question is, are we capable of changing or adapting fast enough to save our planet? That is the challenge."

For the first time—perhaps to ease public ire over this year's sinking global economy—Davos organizers have agreed to let bloggers and other social media types tweet and blog the otherwise venerable proceedings. Among them will be 24-year-old Pablo Camacho, of Bogota, Colombia, who competed against 250 other YouTube devotees for the honor of covering it all for the video-sharing site. Here's his first dispatch, about philanthropist George Soros' remarks to a luncheon that weren't part of the mainstream fare:



Click here to view WEF's Facebook page. And see below, BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis' invitation to have your say at Davos from the comfort of your own home. The conference ends Sunday.