Nobody seems to have a grip on the issue of privacy and the Internet, most certainly not US Congressman Anthony Weiner who this week took a photo of his crotch and tweeted it to a 21-year-old student only to claim it was all an accident, and that his phone had taken a picture in his pocket and then tweeted it.
This week it was also announced, by technology company Cisco, that the number of Internet-connected mobile devices is set to hit 15 Billion by 2015, alongside other news that the number of Facebook accounts will reach 1 Billion by next year.
This perfect storm will massively increase the potential for more Weinergate scandals and offer serious challenges to privacy and even the way society functions. No longer is it possible to make an ass of oneself on a night out knowing all will be forgotten the next day because someone's going to take your picture and post it on Facebook for everyone to see.
Last week once again showed us that technology and the people who use it can't be governed under old legal systems. John Terry, Andrew Marr and most recently Ryan Giggs have all had their scandals exposed despite hefty legal expenditure on super injunctions or 'anonymised privacy injunctions' as they now should be called.
Giggsy supposedly handed over £150,000 to his lawyers only to receive the risible advice to try and sue Twitter, which has approximately 200 million users worldwide. Footballers are a dim bunch (because they didn't really need to try at school) but you'd have thought that lawyers who charge up to £650 per hour may have realised that this would super-charge the number of mentions of their client's name and make the story go global? It's possible they thought they'd milk the Premier League cash cow for more fees knowing his action was bound to fail, or as seems more likely that lawyers (and judges) simply don't understand that social media allows everyone to publish, and not be damned.
New media guru Dan Gilmour points out that the unusual elements of this situation is not that Twitter has blown away people's right to privacy, rather that this type of injunction has robbed British people of freedoms Americans (among others) take for granted: '…it's an example of the United Kingdom's hostility to norms of free speech that we take for granted…and this situation is especially odious given the injunction's effect: to protect a member of the rich and powerful class."
Most people seem to be in agreement that these sorts of injunctions are unjust and applaud when they're circumvented by social media, but is this the way we should form laws? Especially when issues surrounding privacy and social media are still so confusing.
Away from the lofty legal realm and back to the base level of Weinergate and people's lives, this sort of self shot picture posting is maybe a classic example of a mistake of our times, using social media when drunk, amorous or both. This sort of pitfall illustrates the fundamental oddness of our new era where we share intimate details of our lives online with 'Friends' who are often basically strangers and where we cultivate followers like mini-Messiahs. We've made a short film which takes a lighthearted look at these sorts of issues.
Alongside being capable of humiliating us, and providing predators with a means of targeting the vulnerable it's worth remembering that social media has helped facilitate democracy (partially enabling the Arab Spring for example) and innovation and provides an outlet for expression previously lacking.
However things develop it is clear that technological developments will always outstrip the law and most people's understanding of them.
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