Op/Ed: Privacy Please
by Jessica Holyoke on 31/01/08 at 11:50 pm
by Jessica Holyoke
When talking about avatar or human rights, one right that is often ignored is the right to privacy. While this right led to reproductive rights in the US, its erosion in the virtual world needs to be halted.
Privacy policies usually revolve around the use and sale of personal information. And Linden Lab has such a policy where they will not sell your personal information unless they go bankrupt. Then your information is an asset to be sold. http://secondlife.com/corporate/privacy.php
But this is not the main assault on privacy. The privacy of our electronic communications is not protected. In the US, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Stored Communications Act both protect privacy, but that protection can be waived. Second Life, There, World of Warcraft and certain aspects of Yahoo all ask that this protection is waived. The businesses mentioned retain the right to monitor and record communications for law enforcement requests, business reasons, fraud prevention, abuse report follow-up and other reasons. Red Light Center goes one better and says that no communication is private, but that they will not go through what is recorded without good reason.
One of the negatives that came out of Bragg v. Linden was the reliance on chat logs in the course of the litigation. Both sides encouraged their publication. But in part, Linden Lab used a resident’s private communications against them. And the Terms of Service to an extent gives them this right.
When it was suggested that Tizzer Foxchase’s chat logs were published after she was permabanned, it was implied that their publication was not against the ToS because she was no longer a resident. But the privacy of the chat logs should not change because of the use of Second Life. That would suggest that if an account was deleted, then all of the user’s chat logs were fair game for publication. The same standard of privacy protection applies while on Second Life or when a user has left Second Life.
In this way, the Lab gets privacy wrong. When the community needs information, they do not receive it. I asked Lewis PR and Robin Linden, what, if any, criminal sanctions were applied to the two bank heisters as reported in the Herald. Robin Linden’s response was that their privacy had to be respected. When the community needs privacy, there are no guarantees, other than voice. There is no reasonably posted policy on how long chat logs are kept or how they are accessed or by who.
For a business platform, there is no assurance that trade secrets will not be poached. Attorney/client privilege may be waived even though the two are in IM’s.
A society under constant surveillance by a sometimes adverse party is not free. There must be limits to how long chat logs are retained, if at all, by all virtual worlds. Why should there be uproar over e-mail monitoring and not IM monitoring?
RoFLKOPTr
Feb 1st, 2008
You people seem to forget that Second Life is a business. Not for the “residents”, but for Linden Lab. Second Life may be a community in the eyes of the users, but to Linden Lab, it is an infinite money dispenser. Linden Lab can basically do whatever the fuck they want. Nobody should expect what they say and do in Second Life to be, in any way, private. Apparently, Jessica, you understand why they monitor everything. So why don’t you understand why they monitor everything?!?! Let me quote the article:
“[Linden Lab retains] the right to monitor and record communications for law enforcement requests, business reasons, fraud prevention, abuse report follow-up and other reasons.”
What’s the matter with that? You should be HAPPY that the Lindens are monitoring everything. Why? CP rings, griefers (like me!), and quality assurance, just to name a few. I hate it when people BAWWWWW about their chat being saved. I don’t mind the PATRIOT act. I don’t mind the sudden surge of all these “traffic” cameras appearing all over the place. Do you know why that is? Because I AM NOT DOING ANYTHING THAT ANYBODY WOULD CARE ABOUT. THE LINDENS DON’T GIVE TWO FUCKS ABOUT YOUR CHATLOGS BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT DOING ANYTHING THAT CONCERNS THEM. Get the fucking stick out of your ass and wrap your thick skull around the fact that Second Life is not a democratic state. It is a business owned by an evil corporation. They don’t give a fuck about what you think. They are going to do whatever the hell they want, only changing things when they think they will lose customers over it. Because that’s what you are… a customer… you are not a member of a community… you are a tree from which endless amounts of money falls. And Phillip is there picking up every last cent.
“Why should there be uproar over e-mail monitoring and not IM monitoring?”
Because e-mails are legally recognized as personal correspondence. They are to be treated with the same amount of care as letters going through the USPS. They are still monitored by the server owners, anyway, so stop crying about it, you stupid mother fuckers.
TL;DR, get your heads out of your asses and realize that Linden Lab is not your friend.
That is all. Now go back to your yiffing, or whatever you kids do these days.
The Grid Live
Feb 1st, 2008
Second Life News for February 1, 2008
From: Challis Hodge’s UXblog MIT Press: The Second Life Herald Quote from the site – When a virtual journalist for a virtual newspaper reporting on the digital world of an online game lands on the real-world front page of the New York Times, it just …
Nobody Fugazi
Feb 1st, 2008
Good post. The contrast is definitely visible, and your point on privacy is something that has lacked this poignancy before. Honestly, you had me look at that section about bankruptcy – and honestly, I think that should actually be in the Terms of Service (like so many other things).
And then your point on voice… with a small twist, it also becomes a matter of people who do not have hearing impairments or speech impediments suddenly have more privacy than people who use voice all the time. That is something to explore as well.
hmmm
Feb 1st, 2008
Boy, what would Prok do if posting chat logs was considered a TOS violation against someones privacy?
Oli
Feb 1st, 2008
lol “Privacy Policy” is 1984ish newspeak for “anything you say may be used against you”… if you really want to say something in private, your best chance is face to face, offline… and even that’s not certain.
anonymous
Feb 1st, 2008
in other words: dont use SL if you value your info.
probably best not to use it at all.
Angel
Feb 1st, 2008
One can ask the other side too;
when a parcel such as Camp Lalinda in Littlefield sim (this is the closed Wonderland group from Nemo sim repoened) is flaunting decency should the Lindens have the right to intercept their deviant IMs looking for paedophillic wrong doings?
Monitoring in the public interest? Homeland Security for SL?
I’d say we must follow Robin Linden’s god driven lead and keep IMs indefinately to ensure that these e-paedophiles can be stopped from corrupting the poor innocent pixel kids!
Prokofy Neva
Feb 1st, 2008
Did you pass the bar yet, Jessica?
By using the term “personal information”, both you and the Lindens raise the specter of privacy invasion in the event of bankruptcy.
But it *is* important to note that this means your name, address, gender, and the last 4 digits of your SS# if you age-verified (a system that is in beta, and doesn’t seem to be functioning yet across the board anyway).
I’m sorry, but a subscription list seems like a reasonable thing for a company to call an “asset” and to sell in the event they must face bankruptcy. And I don’t see that this is the invasion of privacy the Jessica imagines, when understood narrowly as merely a subscription list. My God, it’s not the crown jewels.
The problem is that the language used indeed opens up the possibility that “personal information” could mean all your chatlogs, friendship lists, places visited, landmarks saved, inventory — everything. So people need to work toward closing off these loopholes just as they work for everything else associated with avatar rights.
By invoking evil corporations, evil America, etc. Jessica and other Herald writers just induce apathy, helplessness and spite. Rather than endlessly bask in the self-importance that comes from exposing wrongs, they should come up with solutions in the JIRA, as maddening as it is (it’s all there is, really) and in blogs and inworld groups to try to change these things about virtual worlds. They will not happen by themselves, or without a struggle.
dandellion Kimban
Feb 1st, 2008
RoFLKOPTr:
The fact that you are not doing anything interesting with your life doesn’t mean that we are all free to be under surveillance. And those cameras are making us less secure, you stupid self-righteous idiot.
No, but it is operating from the state that is (at least it should be) ruled by law.
Snore
Feb 1st, 2008
Yes, but how does this involve Penny?
Spazm
Feb 1st, 2008
Avatar privacy rights? Are you kidding me? If you want even a shred of privacy you should either:
A.] Get out of the house, and go meet REAL people. Theyre more fun than this furry infested shithole you call a community.
B.] Run your own private IRC server, and even then depending on how its set up theres a good chance the ISP will at least glance over it.
C.] Quit bawwing and realize you have no freedoms, Linden Labs is not your ally.
RoFLKOPTr
Feb 1st, 2008
@Nobody Fugazi:
“Honestly, you had me look at that section about bankruptcy – and honestly, I think that should actually be in the Terms of Service (like so many other things).”
Honestly?!?!
“And then your point on voice… with a small twist, it also becomes a matter of people who do not have hearing impairments or speech impediments suddenly have more privacy than people who use voice all the time. That is something to explore as well.”
Are you fucking serious? Did you REALLY just bring that up? It’s people like you that make me hate people like you. Voice in SL was actually a major accomplishment, and one that you don’t HAVE to use if you don’t like it. But now having voice in SL is politically incorrect because people with speech and hearing impediments cannot use it as well as those with none? I know, why don’t we just ban speaking across the country? We will just have to write to each other, because using speech as the primary method of face-to-face communication is unfair to the .5% of people who can’t speak, or the 10% of people who have poor hearing. Go ahead and read what you wrote one more time, so you can understand how incredibly stupid you are. And if it’s STILL important enough that un-impaired people are monitored just as much as impaired people, go ahead and start paying an extra $10 a month for your premium subscription, because that’s how much it will cost to pay for the development of a searchable voice record database and the vast amounts of storage space that such a system will require. In case you didn’t know, voice uses more storage space per word than text…. hurrrr
@Prok:
“and the last 4 digits of your SS#”
I’m not going to waste my time with you, but I will say this: Linden Lab says that they do not store that information. That means that they cannot store that information. And if they DO store that information, then the feds will shut them down so fucking fast that they won’t even know what the fuck happened. Stop being so damn paranoid. That is all.
hahah
Feb 1st, 2008
“Rather than endlessly bask in the self-importance that comes from exposing wrongs”
Aaaah, the entire happiness of Prok put into one sentence.
I bet your cats pat you on the back with every AR you file.
janeforyou Barbara
Feb 1st, 2008
Privacy.yes you can have it if : 1. you got your own private Island 2. Use Skype or Google to type or use Voice.Besides LL cant monitor 1 mill ppl or more,, maybe 10 or 15 ppl if thay get a serious Abuse report among the 5000 they get a day!And remember, if you own a company RL and do business with it in SL and you discoverd you are monitored by LL, they break the law, i doubt a IBM meeting or any company in SL will be monitored by LL…lol! If that got out it will be the end of getting on big serious company to SL.
Marc Woebegone
Feb 1st, 2008
There is no right to privacy, or reasonable expectation of privacy in Second Life (BIG PERIOD). The TOS is rampapnt and riddled with provisions which defeat any expectation of privacy between users, or users and the company. As well, the ability to listen, look through virtual “walls”, go anywhere dependingon scripts allowed to be used by the company etc., defeats any expectation the user of an “avatar” could possibly have, if in fact there is any privacy interest that could be remotely defined to attach to what a real person does in a virtual world through its avatar character.
DaveOner
Feb 1st, 2008
The problem is that many of you people see SL as a viable business platform when LL sees it as a game…which it is. You’re stupid if you’re conducting any business that would invoke attorney/client privelage in SL.
As long as your RL info isn’t directly tied to your SL account (like how accounts you set up on amazon.com to buy things for example) then SL will not be a viable business platform. You are a moron to think otherwise and to try to make a living off of a video game.
Could I buy a barrel or two from you, Donkey Kong?
Ouchquack
Feb 1st, 2008
Good discussion, but you assume a bit much.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html
(quote from above link)
The U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy. The Bill of Rights, however, reflects the concern of James Madison and other framers for protecting specific aspects of privacy, such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy of the person and possessions as against unreasonable searches (4th Amendment), and the 5th Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal information. In addition, the Ninth Amendment states that the “enumeration of certain rights” in the Bill of Rights “shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people.” The meaning of the Ninth Amendment is elusive, but some persons (including Justice Goldberg in his Griswold concurrence) have interpreted the Ninth Amendment as justification for broadly reading the Bill of Rights to protect privacy in ways not specifically provided in the first eight amendments.
Shockwave Yareach
Feb 1st, 2008
In legal matters, don’t forget one very important detail here. If LL keeps chat logs, they can be demanded by the defense as well – ALL of them. That’s right, if LL submits chatlogs as evidence, then the defense can subponea every chatlog involved. And if the Defense makes a counterclaim that the Lindens are conspiring to act against their client, the defense can demand the chatlogs of the lindens suspected of conspiracy as well.
The law is a double edged sword.
RoFLKOPTr
Feb 1st, 2008
@janeforyou Barbara:
“Privacy.yes you can have it if : 1. you got your own private Island 2. Use Skype or Google to type or use Voice.Besides LL cant monitor 1 mill ppl or more,, maybe 10 or 15 ppl if thay get a serious Abuse report among the 5000 they get a day!And remember, if you own a company RL and do business with it in SL and you discoverd you are monitored by LL, they break the law, i doubt a IBM meeting or any company in SL will be monitored by LL…lol! If that got out it will be the end of getting on big serious company to SL.”
First of all: English mother-fucker! Do you speak it? Now, I will respond to what I think you said. LL monitors everything. Everything. They have a Habbo-esque word flag system. For instance, if you say “Patriotic Nigras”, it will pop up on somebody’s screen, and they will begin to monitor the conversation. If they find griefer activity, then a Linden is basically dispatched. So yes, they do monitor every person that is online. They also listen in on the big companies’ meetings, but no company with intelligent managers will hold a meeting discussing possibly secret things in Second Life. End of story.
Darien Caldwell
Feb 1st, 2008
Yes, and if you say the word ‘bomb’ on the telephone, the CIA will listen in on your phone call. Really, I suppose thats why LL can’t get anything done, if they are so busy monitoring everything everyone says in SL in realtime. It seems highly unlikely.
Cee Ell
Feb 1st, 2008
@RoFLKOPTr says “They [LL] have a Habbo-esque word flag system. For instance, if you say “PN” … , it will pop up on somebody’s screen, and they will begin to monitor the conversation.”
Says who? Just asking…
janeforyou Barbara
Feb 1st, 2008
@RoFLKOPTr
Grow up kid…. lol…no i am Norwegian.
First,, if you do your math 35.000 to 60.000 ppl online 24/7 230 ppl work for LL.. 99% of them develop
Am not shure how many ” Agents” Echo or Robin Linden got on the “”agent” Staff, but as thay them self urge members to ” keep there eyes open” and report CP-ageplay-or any abuse i dobpt thay got time to sit 24/7 and monitor everyone..lol.In all my SIMS ( i got 65 ppl in my own Staff) we banned hudreds of grefers and sendt tons of repports, do you think LL sit and monitor them all??? lololol…There are 12.000 Private Islands and tousends of other SIM that sends abuse repports to LL. Just to get 1% thay will ned a huge staff just on that.But yes thay can monitor you if thay pick just you over a short time.. but to even bother to do it you need to have done somthing wery wery bad!
DaveOner
Feb 1st, 2008
No, they don’t have people monitoring 24/7 in real time but it’s all logged so they can go back to whenever and pull a log. Realistically they don’t follow through on a lot of things so chances are you’ll be safe…especially if you just don’t do bad shit or important shit that they might want to know about in SL! You’d best talk about things you don’t want anyone to know of in group voice chat. Voice isn’t being recorded!
This article is still giving me a chuckle, btw! I imagine attorney/client privelage scenarios in SL and start laughing!
“So you want to sue PN for fursecution FurryBalls Barbosa? That’s unprecedented!”
“I secretly wear a diaper when no one’s looking IRL. I just crapped myself, Dr. Spoonhammer.”
Penny Sautereau
Feb 1st, 2008
“Yes, but how does this involve Penny?
Posted by: Snore”
Nooooo, nobody ever mentions me unless I speak first.
*gags*
I rest my case. To the anonymous goon who wasted space on other threads telling me how I should shut up because nobody mentions me unless I’ve said something blah blah ego-stroking etc etc….. You just got pwn’d I believe is the popular l33t term.
Now shut it, so I can get back to work.
TM
Feb 2nd, 2008
I just have to laugh at people who think of themselves as so important that they risk having Linden Lab spy on them for no good reason.
But then again, you jackals probably aren’t really worried (and would likely be the first to cry foul if LL DIDN’T retain logs), it’s just another opportunity for you to bloviate and try to sound like experts.
It’s no wonder that whenever I see SL mentioned on forums that have nothing to do with SL, so many people have such a negative opinion of it. Many of you are self-important blow hards who, when presented with the freedoms SL offers over previous types of entertainment, you get all fucking “important”.
Stop compensating for whatever you lack in RL, you’re an embarrassment to the net, and the human race.
Kalel Venkman
Feb 2nd, 2008
The nature of privacy on Second Life is indeed a tenuous issue to study. In my work, as well as that of my colleagues, we have found, and this has been substantiated by simply asking the Lindens themselves, that the only real expectation of privacy a citizen has in Second Life is privacy from other avatars. As noted here, it is, in fact possible to ignore said expectation of privacy, but this opens the onlooker to abuse reports. If the grid were to be made as locked down as some of the other posters would suggest, the vital work that is undertaken by groups like the JLU, would essentially be rendered unworkable, as every time we post a chat log as is required to file proper abuse reports, or watch griefers behind goatse-inspired walls, we would be in violation of the ToS. The Lindens wisely saw that there had to be some permissible violations of privacy in order for groups like ours to do their jobs. Surely the majority of the Herald’s readers could agree that this is a good thing.
duh
Feb 2nd, 2008
It was meant as a troll, Penny. And you took the bait, just as planned.
You’re so 110% predictable.
Archie Lukas
Feb 2nd, 2008
Quote; “While this right led to reproductive rights in the US,”
Reproductive rights? the right to procreate?
Do you mean Copyright law and intellectual property rights?
Proof readers required.
Apply within…….
Jessica Holyoke
Feb 2nd, 2008
Archie,
Griswold v. Connecticut was where the right to privacy was first invoked to allow married couples to purchase contraception. That court case led to Roe v. Wade establishing the legality of having an abortion. In the US, reproductive rights means being able to chose how and if a person is going to create life and not have that option controlled by the government.
Prok,
Asked and Answered
Curious readers,
Everytime Prok asks “if I passed the bar”, I am responding “asked and answered” because I already gave him an answer to that question and in this context, I’m not practicing law. If you have a specific legal question, you should see your own attorney and not rely on what I say. You might be in another jurisdiction where the answer is different.
Everyone else,
Thanks for coming. I always appreciate your comments.
RoFLKOPTr
Feb 2nd, 2008
@Kalel:
“The nature of privacy on Second Life is indeed a tenuous issue to study.”
Study? lol, fag.
“In my work, as well as that of my colleagues”
Work? Colleagues? lol, fag.
“the vital work that is undertaken by groups like the JLU”
The vital work? You mean yiffing? That is only vital to the destruction of humankind, but okay…
“as every time we post a chat log as is required to file proper abuse reports”
Spamming tens or hundreds of abuse reports is not filing “proper abuse reports”. It is abusing the abuse report system.
“we would be in violation of the ToS”
You ARE in violation of the ToS.
“The Lindens wisely saw that there had to be some permissible violations of privacy in order for groups like ours to do their jobs.”
You don’t have a job. You are a bunch of RP fags that like to fantasize you’re batmans and supermans.
ITT: Focus shifts to Kalel’s false sense of self-importance.
John Norris
Feb 3rd, 2008
This is a big deal for folks involved in various support and healthcare groups. SL can be quite a help to folks. However, they need to share information to each other in a spirit of trust. With another party listening in, Lyndon Labs, this can put a damper on things.
It is articles like this that help publicize these sorts of issues. This allows participants in the current climate to be more circumspect, and hopefully still derive some benefit.
Melissa Yeuxdoux
Feb 3rd, 2008
“when a parcel such as Camp Lalinda in Littlefield sim (this is the closed Wonderland group from Nemo sim repoened) is flaunting decency…”
How dare they be ostentatiously decent!
anonymous
Feb 3rd, 2008
So what makes you different from other citizens in SL, Kalel, honestly? Just because you wear e-spandex, it gives you special rights? So if I decided to start wearing super hero clothes and claimed to be an anti-griefing group, I could get away with disclosure and harassment as well? or did you suddenly decide you were better than everyone else and told the lindens that you are?
If one person is allowed to go against the law of the land, then everyone else should be able to. After all, I’ve heard that reasoning from LL themselves when it comes to banning people.
Though the problem with SL is the fact technically everyone is breaking the rules and the TOS by simply being on the grid, that the lindens can simple make up reasons at any time they wish. Goes hand in hand with a totalitarian regime, where you have a system made up of nothing but law breakers, it amounts to control over what they do and think.
You help enable this.
Linden Labs is a dirty company, they dont really give a shit about anyone, not even you. They will get rid of you when they see you as a threat to their profit, they also clearly state that if worse comes to worse, they will sell all of your personal info to squeeze some final profit out of their users. They dont say how much of the info they sell either, which is good and bad. good if say, it’s just your real name and birthdate. however we know that data is next to useless. So the bad part is that we do know that they wont be selling that info. Will they be selling your address, Social Security number? or even credit card number? This is why I refuse to give them such information.
Another reason useless features like age verification are shunned by many. When you can block based on payment info and get the same result.
The question is, for you Kalel, and the JLU, why do you defend a system this corrupt, a system that will, in the end, use you, even after you’ve stopped playing? Is it even about that?
Internet Lawyer at LAWL
Feb 3rd, 2008
Privacy does not absolve one of accountability or responsibility, and those who hide behind privacy to avoid such are griefers, and that LL protects the guilty and aids in victimizing the innocent is just as much a violation of the god paradox as helping.
Anybody on SL who is afraid of someone getting pissed off at them enough to troll them or stalk them RL is typically responsible for doing some pretty terrible stuff to people and deserves it. If a few assholes got whats coming to them in RL for shit they pull in SL, that would deter more cowardly assholes from copycatting.
Marc Woebegone
Feb 4th, 2008
Re-read all comments again, and still insist the concept of an inheren right to privacy, like Branstein discussed (http://www.lawrence.edu/fast/boardmaw/Privacy_brand_warr2.html), or embodied in the Constitution as evolving is ridiculous. Avatars are not humans, and less real than actual living things, like animals, have even less legal rights, if any.
We all know the owners of the avatars have privacy interests, but in SL, that right does not cross the electrical membrane between the users keyboard and the company servers to protect the privacy of the user. The simplest example, the known fact that anyone can listen in and view anything that anybody else is doing, (again, forgetting the total obliteration of any reasonable privacy expectation by the TOS), defeats any reasonable expectation the human user could have while acting out as an avatar in SL. I and anyone else can view anybody’s avatar conduct, even record it, or republish it, even if “banned” and neither the avatar or the owner can argue successfully to prohibit it under or seek “damages” under a legal concept of “privacy”.
How absurd SL players can be.
tshirtkikill alias stephane from france
Feb 9th, 2008
hi jessica
nice to meet you in sl. nice project you have !
i’m sorry it’s late in france and i haven’t got the
time to completely read your sentences but i will come
back for it
cheers from france and search LILLE on mappy
best regards from north of france , dear writer
stephane illustrator and realisator of animation movies
c ya