When I talk to people about privacy and the internet, most of the time what I hear is, "Well, if you've got nothing to hide, what's the problem?" And this so misses the point.
Is there no value in privacy? Is there no indignity we won't cheerfully endure, or intimate detail we will not share with the world?
When I was in high school, if you screwed up, you could start over. Off to college you could go, in another state, with a clean slate. Not any more. Our children will get no fresh start. Their mistakes will follow and haunt them forever on the internet, thanks to social media sites like Facebook.
The latest creepy development is Facebook's facial recognition software. Once a person has uploaded a photo and identified you, Facebook can identify you in every photo uploaded by anyone. Watch Nightline's story on it below.
Spend an hour considering the implications of this, and you won't be able to come up with them all.
Imagine your 12-year old son is with a group of other boys and they download something raunchy from Youtube. They're young and dumb and they proudly pose around the computer screen for a picture. Then one of the boys uploads the photo to Facebook and tags all the boys in the photo. Boom. It's there. Forever. And your son can now be identified in any photo posted on Facebook, in perpetuity.
So when your son, older and wiser, applies to theology school? Well, he just might get rejected.
It's true that, at least for now, the only people who can "tag" you -- or so Facebook claims -- are your "friends" (and we all know how fair-weathered friends can be be). But we also know how eager kids (hell, even adults) are to amass more "friends" on their Facebook page. So don't tell me to calm down because only "friends" can "tag" me
As for subpoenas from law enforcement that can require Facebook to hand over every single photo on its massive data base that has your kid's mug in it? Well, don't even get me started.
Facebook, my friends, is the devil
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