nation states

Twitter and Privacy in Social Context

/ Christopher Parsons

antitwitter

[Note: this is an early draft of the third section of a paper I’m working on titled ‘Who Gives a Tweet about Privacy’ and builds from an earlier posted sections titled ‘Privacy, Dignity, Copyright and Twitter‘ and ‘Twitter and Statutory Notions of Privacy‘. The final sections will be posted as I draft them.]

Simitis recognizes privacy as an issue concerning all of society. As a consequence, his position on the topic is differentiated from those of Westin, Warren, and Brandeis by asserting that privacy is essential for establishing and maintaining constitutional infrastructures. In this section, we take up the ‘social’ element of privacy, exploring it in more depth and to consider its role in establishing citizen-solidarity. In addition, we consider privacy as a contextualized norm that attaches different expectations of privacy to particular situations and encounters. While social-contextual accounts establish reasonable expectations to privacy in public, our hopefulness surrounding these accounts wears thin because the selected scholars exhibit an under theorized conceptualization of how socio-contextual norms are established. Effectively, without an account of how socio-contextual norms are developed in pluralistic environments we are left with little understanding of how to read privacy norms in public spaces like Twitter. Thus, while understanding privacy as contextual integrity does establish reasonable expectations (note the plural) of privacy, the multiplicity of such instantiations renders such understandings of limited usefulness for juridical application in contemporary pluralistic nation-states. Continue reading →

Who Decides ‘Analogue’ Citizenships?

/ Christopher Parsons

Typically when asked ‘who is responsible for setting citizenship rules’ there are two general answers that fall out. On the one hand we might hear ‘the government is responsible for setting down citizenship regulations,’ and on the other we might hear ‘the people are responsible for establishing membership guidelines.’ The latter explicitly locates power in the hands of the people, whereas the former recognises legitimised political bureaucracies and machinations are responsible for citizenship. In this post, I want to briefly look at some of the processes and theoretical discussions surrounding citizenship and immigration, and in particular how they relate to ‘Fortress Europe’ and a recent British controversy surrounding citizenship tests.

The Boundaries of Citizenship

Western nation-states have developed around liberal conceptions of citizenship. As a consequence, citizenship is associated with a particular legal status that requires members to fulfill a set of legally enforceable requirements. These requirements can include holding a certain amount of money, it may involve active participation as a citizen (i.e. remaining active in communities that one is being naturalised by volunteering, being active in local politics, etc), or being born in a geographic area.

Continue reading →

Global Privacy and the Particular Body Politic

/ Christopher Parsons

Different countries have different privacy laws, and different attitudes towards what should be counted as private information. As Peter Fleischer rightly notes, this often means that citizens of various nation-states are often confused about their digital privacy protections – in part because of the influx of foreign culture (and the presumed privacy standards in those media) – and consequently are unaware of their nation’s privacy resources, or lack thereof.

Google Corporation has recently begun to suggest that a global data protection system has to be implemented. In his private blog (which isn’t necessarily associated with his work with Google) Fleischer notes that,

…citizens lose out because they are unsure about what rights they have given the patchwork of competing regimes, and the cost of compliance for businesses risks chilling economic activity. Governments often struggle to find any clear internationally recognised standards on which to build their privacy legislation.

…

The ultimate goal should be to create minimum standards of privacy protection that meet the expectations and demands of consumers, businesses and governments. Such standards should be relevant today yet flexible enough to meet the needs of an ever changing world. Such standards must also respect the value of privacy as an innate dimension of the individual . . . we should work together to devise a set of standards that reflects the needs of a truly globalised world. That gives each citizen certainty about the rules affecting their data, and the ability to manage their privacy according to their needs. That gives businesses the ability to work within one framework rather than dozens. And that gives governments clear direction about internationally recognised standards, and how they should be applied. (Source)

Continue reading →