Safety Of Information
Today it is possible to download an application that tells you the name and address of sex offenders in your local area. While this information has always been available, Jono Bacon and Stuart ‘Aq’ Langridge explore whether the fact that technology makes it easier to access and visualize is causing safety concerns that were outside the scope of expectations when the information decided to be made publicly available.
Of course, we are the very start of the conversation! What do you think? Do you think we need to reflect on the access to information? Do you think that we need more information or less available to us? How do you think we can mitigate safety concerns? Share your thoughts in the shot comments!
24 Comments to “Safety Of Information”
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This app is such a predictably dangerous idea that I’m genuinely slightly appalled that the developer went ahead.
As much as freedom of information is the very definition of a public good, sometimes the interests of people as a whole are served best when the information is shared in non-obvious ways. It’s a very British compromise, but one that works well with ASBO convictions, for example.
I’d have a lot less issues with this application if it said ‘there are x sex offenders within 10 km of you, please contact the police for further details if required’. Quite apart from anything else, I’m not sure that further socially marginalising people who often have considerable trauma in their past by antagonising the local community is the best way to prevent reoffending.
The trouble is that – here comes a bastardised version of one of Aq’s favourite quotes – you can’t enshrine “Don’t be a tool” in any kind of data legislation. Just isn’t possible.
If the data are public, someone, somewhere, will abuse that data, or at least use it for questionable purposes. This is pretty much a given, since the same thing happens even when the data are supposedly private (employees using company payment records to steal credit card information, for example).
However, you can enshrine “don’t distribute dickish applications” in whatever guidlines reviewers of apps to be distributed through a marketplace go by. Problem is, of course, that you then have to deal with issues of walled gardens. Moreover, in our free and open source world people are perfectly free to go and download dickish applications either because they want to do harm with them or because they’re just curious, like our own Mr Bacon.
I’m not sure we can do anything about it short of trying to legislate against it, and we all know that trying to legislate against using technology in a certain way is nearly always doomed to either a) complete failure or b) pushing the use of technology underground in such a way that it’s very hard to police.
The other option, of course, is to stop making the data publicly available. But then you have to deal with the press crying “think of the children” and with the people who can’t think for themselves and let the press do their thinking for them raising hell. And no politician worth their salt is going to vote for something that protects child abusers.
The best thing we can do, I think, is to educate people not to be dicks. Of course, that’s a pretty long-term goal.
Hear, hear! All the way through this episode I kept thinking that education is the only reasonable way to handle this situation.
The information should be available, I’m very happy for that, and people should be educated about what it means. Importantly, if a registered sex offender is living in the area, then they’ve completed whatever gaol term they had (if they have one) and are still (certainly in Australia) living under very severe constraints – my point is that they’ve done their time. If you, as an interested party, think they should still be in gaol, then lobby the lawmakers to make the pentalties stronger.
Education is the only viable option, and it’s easy for politicians to ignore because it doesn’t smack of “I’m tough on lawbreakers!” to their voters.
Hear, hear! All the way through this episode I kept thinking that education is the only reasonable way to handle this situation.
The information should be available, I’m very happy for that, and people should be educated about what it means. Importantly, if a registered sex offender is living in the area, then they’ve completed whatever gaol term they had (if they have one) and are still (certainly in Australia) living under very severe constraints – my point is that they’ve done their time. If you, as an interested party, think they should still be in gaol, then lobby the lawmakers to make the penalties stronger.
Education is the only viable option, and it’s easy for politicians to ignore because it doesn’t smack of “I’m tough on lawbreakers!” to their voters.
I don’t live in the US, but based on things I’ve heard (from NoAgendaShow.com and other American sources) it doesn’t take much to become a “sex offender” in certain states. I’ve heard of people peeing in the park, or teenagers sexting each other being labeled as such.
Obviously, this is a problem with law enforcement and / or the legal system, not with freedom of information; but if this indeed is the case, then bringing any kind of attention to the people on these lists seems like a bad idea.
I specially liked the way that you started this shot, by not revealing anything about you. Privacy is good.
That was far too subtle for me, well spotted!
I felt quite appaled when I heard about that app. It is a straight fall back into medieval times when people got branded or marked for certain crimes.
This kind of prevention is completely useless for any prevention at all – more than 90 % of child abuses are not committed by some stranger that uses ice cream to lure children into the back of their van, but by people the children trust – family members, friends of the parents, teachers, etc.
Such an app only gives a populist false illusion of safety which is complete bs,, while at the same time creating a constant general atmosphere of fear. Most people are certain that the number of child abuses is much higher than it used to be in the good old days, whereas all statistics prove the opposite. All this neofascist crap (which fits in with “terror level orange”) destroyed any basis of trust that used to exist in society.
Besides that, it is inredibly easy to get on such a list – tranefizzle mentioned examples of people peeing in parks, there are people who are wrongly accused etc. That happens in the judicial system as well, but people can be released from prison and compensated when their innocence is found out.
With such a public list that is absolutely impossible. Once your neighbour has seen you on his Android app, your reputation is forever ruined, even if you’re removed from the list a day later. If you are lucky, noone in your area will ever trust you or even speak to you again. If you are not that lucky, some braindead hillbillies might actually take active measures to remove that shame from their neighborhood.
Even guilty sex offenders have a human dignity – and that means they shouldn’t have fascist assholes with GPS devices stomping through their garden (whereas they might have to be observed by the police). Branding someone for life is barbaric and only fulfills vulgar and voyeuristic desires.
The only good thing is that the average pitchfork thrower is unlikely to have a smart phone…
But it is okay when it is available on a website or from some office freely available?
I don’t think so either and thought that was clear – the problem with this Android app, however, as Jono mentioned on the podcast is that this information is even easier available. A general problem with websites is also that the Internet never forgets (apologies for using such a standard phrase…)
To paraphrase George Washington, it will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive someone of their liberty upon the supposition that they may abuse it. Your suggestion is that the villagers will rise up and mindlessly pillage people they consider guilty. Has this actually happened? And if so, is it due to the availability of this information or this app?
This is precisely the point we were making, indeed. There were cases of mistaken identity from the News of the World (British newspaper) “anti-paedophile” campaign when this information was first made publically available (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_of_the_World#Anti-paedophile_campaign has details, including that of a paediatrician getting her house vandalised). We were very specifically not addressing the question of whether public availability of this information is a good idea: instead, the question posed was “does having an Android app for it make the situation any worse?” There’s obviously a case to be made that the defining moment is publication of the information; after that, making that information available in new formats and locations is irrelevant. There’s also the counter-argument that the issue is not so much publication as it is irresponsible further propagation of that information. Which side do you fall on?
I agree – and even if the villagers don’t go around with torches and pitchforks, your life will probably be ruined when your neighbors see you on their Android app – whether you are guilty or not. Freedom of information is great – but some information just does not belong in the public.
Perhaps it should be a requirement (buggered if I know how you’d enforce it) that the makers of apps like the Sex Offender Search include contextual information, such as that these people have completed their sentences and what kinds of restrictions they live under (types of jobs they can’t apply for and get, how far they need to keep from schools, etc), to provide a bigger picture.
A world in which there are restrictions on what can be in an app is…the iPhone world of pre-approval of apps. The Android team don’t want that. It’d be interesting to know if the app would be approved for the iPhone, and if it wasn’t what the rejection reasons would be. I suspect it’d be approved.
In many respects I guess this particular example is like a journalist (or that paper you mentioned) publishing this information – we expect journalists to be professional enough to provide that contextual information along with the potentially alarming information, whereas we have no expectation of arbitrary app developers to do that.
Tough problem.
Maybe then the developers should be responsible and make the app as useful and as responsible as possible and include all available information.
Much as I respect you guys, and having met you both several times rather like you, I do sometimes wish you’d stick to technology when you take your “Shots”. This week’s show is a case in point – only a tiny proportion of the people on the Sex Offenders Register are there because of sexual abuse of minors.
It’s a catch-all for all kinds of offences, from the most minor and victimless to the absolutely abhorent. For example, two fifteen-year-olds could (and do from time to time) end up on it for having sex before the legal age of consent. It also includes all sorts of practices that are ‘victimless’ as well – gay men having sex in public toilets, doggers etc for example.
What I’m trying to say guys is that if you’re going to have a discussion about a complex and controversial subject, please do some research first… otherwise, well, you come across as ignorant twats, which I know you’re not!
This is the first shot that has prompted me to get off my duff and write. I think you have taken a very one-sided approach to this question.
First, I listened to all the outrage at the vigilante justice meted out in the UK but I didn’t notice anything about justice being visited on those folks who were threatening the lives of the pedophiles and falsely-accused pedophiles. The last I heard that kind of violence was criminal- as is false public accusations (defamation).
Second, I think the question should be “Are we going to regulate things/technologies/information or are we going to regulate people’s behavior?”
If we regulate things, we are talking about restricting the right to own a gun or a dvd drive (for example). If we regulate behavior, we are talking about punishing murderers or movie pirates.
Basically it comes down to what kind of society we want to live in. Either we say that people cannot be trusted to use things/technologies/information properly; or we say that if people misuse them, they should be punished.
I know exactly where I stand on this issue.
I know of NO person who can say with 100% accuracy whether a thing/technology/information is inherently good or bad but almost everyone can identify proper or improper behavior.
I’m afraid that I have to agree with Aq, that the future will have more and more of such information. And we have to learn to adjust to this new future. Unfortunately people will get hurt in the process, because like #gmb says, you can’t legislate/enforce “Thou shall not be a tool.”
Maybe the best thing would be ostracize those who are tools. In the meantime, remember that the world is moving toward a “surveillance” society. So do yourself a favour, consider yourself being watched and don’t do anything you’ll be embarrassed by in the future. And don’t invite an opportunity for trouble. I know that is easier said than done.
This might be a bit of a tangent, but people interested in this shot may be interested in a couple of podcasts I’ve listened to recently on the issue of personal privacy on the web. Although they’re more about things like how much information about you is made public by Facebook, some can be sourced from government departments under certain conditions. In Australia, the Privacy Act (late 90s?) is undergoing revision and has had 2700 pages of recommendations made to bring it up to date in our modern social networking age.
Anyhoo, the first is a doco called “The Privacy Paradox” on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) Radio National http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2010/2896235.htm and it goes for an hour or so. (If you miss out on the audio, I can make it available on request.)
The second is Tim O’Reilly speaking about how the future of IT (ie value in IT) is in data, meaning data like Facebook data, speaking at this year’s MySQL conference, recorded by ITConversations.com: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4484.html
A serendipitous juxtaposition of podcasts in the car for me.
Enjoy!
Oh, btw. Just what particular search terms were you using that night, Jono? Searching for new apps to install on your Android phone.
Information should either be freely available or kept completely private. If a registry such as the list of sex offenders is accessible as a public database, then depending on security through obscurity just doesn’t cut it. People inclined to grab their pitchforks and burn sex offenders won’t sit around waiting for a pretty Android application – a simple web interface is sufficient.
Besides, as the myriad of other comments state, it is impossible to police the production of apps which utilise readily available information. From the perspective of software freedom this is wrong anyway. The real debate is whether the data should be widely accessible in the first place, and if so, how much detail is provided (grouping people who urinate in public with violent sexual predators is just ridiculous).
Just another related audio doco I thought people might be interested in on the related issue of privacy with regard to social media and “sentiment mining”, which is a new term for me.
ABC Radio National’s Background Briefing program from the 27th of June 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2010/2933391.htm