by Jonathan Arogeti
Envision OpenPlanet, a hypothetical program that could patch together every surveillance camera in the world and pair it with Facebook’s facial recognition software to create a perpetual video 
timeline database for each Facebook user. Would this violate the Fourth Amendment as an unreasonable search and seizure?
This question, posed by George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen, represents the crux of the issue explored at a recent forum at American University Washington College of Law titled, “Social Technology and the Threat to Privacy: How Facebook, GPS & Google Are Changing Our Lives.” Click here for video.
Rosen links this question to the 2006 firing of Stacy Snyder, a Pennsylvania woman who was allegedly fired from her teacher training program after a MySpace picture showed her wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” Snyder sued in federal court that the picture was protected speech, but the judge disagreed because it “didn’t relate to matters of public concern.”
Rosen points to law and technology as mechanisms for dealing with this “Stacy Snyder problem.” Europeans are experimenting with le droit a l’oubli, or the right to oblivion, as a mechanism to force online companies to protect the privacy of its customers. Technology, too, can secure customer privacy, and he points to a company that erases text messages after a specific period of time designated by the user.
In light of a nearing settlement between the Federal Trade Commission and Facebook for “misleading” users or data usage, a recent New York Times editorial concluded, “Congress should act on the F.T.C.’s recommendation to establish a system that would allow consumers to effectively opt out of all tracking of their online activities.”
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) , notes a radical shift in the realm of privacy rights as a result of the shift from an analog world to a digital one. “The analog world leaves few traces, few fingerprints,” he says. “The digital world tends to record everything.”
As a byproduct of this recording of “everything,” he points to the case now before the Supreme Court, United States v. Jones. EPIC filed an amicus brief in the case, and Rotenberg believes there should be a “warrant requirement” to place a GPS tracking device on someone’s car.
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