Privacy in The Digital Age

With University officials' acknowledgment that the Facebook is an aid in the Minuteman speech investigation, Columbia is reinforcing a message that students should have gotten long ago: be careful what you do on the Internet.

Otherwise, you could end up like the 183 people from the Portland, Ore. area whose lives were changed in an instant last month when Jason Fortuny, a Seattle blogger, posted a Craigslist ad posing as a 27-year-old female tennis player. A nude photo of the said woman accompanied the post.

In the course of 24 hours, Fortuny received 183 responses. Many of the e-mails came from easily identifiable personal e-mail accounts. Others came from business accounts, including a few from domains like Microsoft.com.

The responses ran the gamut. About half included pictures-faces, bodies, and penises of all shapes and sizes-from the applicants. Two men looked to be at least 60, and many bragged of being married.

Fortuny took the responses and posted them all to a wiki and invited readers to identify as many as they could. By now, nearly all have been named. Some have had other information about themselves disclosed. The experience has altered the lives of over 100 people on the West coast.

It's not like this incident is isolated. The Internet has a tendency to make public things you wished were private. If you don't believe me, ask some of the students who found footage on YouTube of themselves storming the stage earlier this month at the Minuteman protest.

Columbia affiliates post sexual ads on Craigslist all the time. Students-and more than one person claiming to be a professor-have made posts suggesting getting down in a wide variety of campus locales including Butler Library (obviously), Pupin (watch out for chemicals!), the men's steam room in Dodge Hall, and Morningside Park at 2 a.m. (bring protection).

And as it turns out, items posted to the Internet have a habit of being permanent. About once every six months, I get a request from somebody to take down a Spectator article or a quote from an article that I've written because a subject believes having a publicly accessible record of it may hurt him. For the record, Spectator does not grant such requests.

While Columbia has made the decision to monitor students' Facebook profiles in this case, it appears as though the University does not have an official policy on using the Internet to monitor students-having reported the first Facebook story and searched "Facts About Columbia Essential to Students handbook," I can't find one. That means students don't know if administrators are skimming profiles for instances of underage drinking, running full checks on applicants, or taking Google hits into account when doling out scholarships and awards.

This contrasts with the University's take on inner-network dealings. Columbia officials have stated time and again that the University does not monitor traffic going over its network, though it has placed restrictions on how much bandwidth students can use. This means that, while the Recording Industry Association of America may try to find out if you're sharing music externally, the University isn't telling them when you download the latest Ludacris album and doesn't know when you upload pornographic Craigslist ads.

As privacy issues such as those presented by the investigation of the Minuteman speech are likely to increase, Columbia students are currently left without notice of how their Web trail follows them within the gates.

Josh Hirschland is a Columbia College junior majoring in urban studies.

Technically Speaking runs alternate Wednesdays News@columbiaspectator.com.