Transparency vs. Privacy
There was a story on NPR yesterday about GIS and the fact that the census is planning to accurately GPS-map the front door at every residence in America two summers from now. A bizarre part of the US Census is that it is data collected by the government using government money (your tax dollars), but the data are also confidential. The arguments go like this:
Privacy: The gov't will get bad data if the respondents aren't assured that the data they present will be confidential. For example, some people sublet garages (!) or hide a second dwelling within a first. My friend Jenny is in a house that has been (legally) converted to this purpose, and a person walking past the house on the street would never realize that the house is now two apartments. Revelations like the number of folks and/or the number of non-citizens living in a house (which might constitute lease violations, misdemeanors, or felonies) should be private so that the Census can at least notice that there's a problem. Also, it's a little scary to think that the gov't can send around an army of volunteer "snitches" to ask lots of personal questions that could later be used to incriminate you.
Transparency: The data are collected at taxpayer expense; all other data collected this way are public domain. The data could be shared with state and local governments to great effect, improving the existing address maps used by MapQuest, Google Earth, and everyone else (currently, those maps get the right street almost every time, but the right location for your house less than 50% of the time). An example from the NPR story was that a geographical data administrator took a flood-plain map, overlaid it on her town's map, and was able to compile a list of addresses likely to be flooded. Within 24 hours the town had notified every endangered resident that he or she should evacuate. This technology would have saved lives in Hurricane Katrina, and we're already planning to spend the money -- but the data won't be available because it's confidential.
Of course, the transparency question gets a little scarier when you realize that if a state or local government can have access to the data, then a corporate entity should be able to FOIA the data. Never mind the police - what if Domino's Pizza got this database? Or Microsoft? Pick your own evil corporation and ponder what evil they could do, but keep in mind that most of it is advertising, which is a nuisance more than anything else. Is the public good served by releasing the data? If "transparency" is good for government (and I firmly believe it is) then why is "privacy" (the opposite, as far as I can tell) good for individuals? Can we have a state with a transparent government and individual privacy? When does the good of the town/state/nation trump the privacy of the individual? Actually, forget those questions. Well, don't forget them, but let's worry about this one:
Assuming government transparency is a Good Thing because the government has an obligation to the citizen, why then is Privacy a good thing for the citizen -- doesn't the citizen also have an obligation to the government?
Privacy: The gov't will get bad data if the respondents aren't assured that the data they present will be confidential. For example, some people sublet garages (!) or hide a second dwelling within a first. My friend Jenny is in a house that has been (legally) converted to this purpose, and a person walking past the house on the street would never realize that the house is now two apartments. Revelations like the number of folks and/or the number of non-citizens living in a house (which might constitute lease violations, misdemeanors, or felonies) should be private so that the Census can at least notice that there's a problem. Also, it's a little scary to think that the gov't can send around an army of volunteer "snitches" to ask lots of personal questions that could later be used to incriminate you.
Transparency: The data are collected at taxpayer expense; all other data collected this way are public domain. The data could be shared with state and local governments to great effect, improving the existing address maps used by MapQuest, Google Earth, and everyone else (currently, those maps get the right street almost every time, but the right location for your house less than 50% of the time). An example from the NPR story was that a geographical data administrator took a flood-plain map, overlaid it on her town's map, and was able to compile a list of addresses likely to be flooded. Within 24 hours the town had notified every endangered resident that he or she should evacuate. This technology would have saved lives in Hurricane Katrina, and we're already planning to spend the money -- but the data won't be available because it's confidential.
Of course, the transparency question gets a little scarier when you realize that if a state or local government can have access to the data, then a corporate entity should be able to FOIA the data. Never mind the police - what if Domino's Pizza got this database? Or Microsoft? Pick your own evil corporation and ponder what evil they could do, but keep in mind that most of it is advertising, which is a nuisance more than anything else. Is the public good served by releasing the data? If "transparency" is good for government (and I firmly believe it is) then why is "privacy" (the opposite, as far as I can tell) good for individuals? Can we have a state with a transparent government and individual privacy? When does the good of the town/state/nation trump the privacy of the individual? Actually, forget those questions. Well, don't forget them, but let's worry about this one:
Assuming government transparency is a Good Thing because the government has an obligation to the citizen, why then is Privacy a good thing for the citizen -- doesn't the citizen also have an obligation to the government?