Update: since I posted this, someone (hat tip to @andrewjburgess ) decided to ruin the spotting game but made it probably a bit more accurate: see voting results hereunder (go to pg 19 of the document):

Download (PDF, 540KB)

So voted in favour of ACTA:

ALDE: Newton Dunn, Takkula
EFD: Allam, Provera, Tzavela
PPE: Audy, Bendtsen, Berra, Cadec, Casini, Dantin, Dati, Deß, Florenz, Gahler, Gallo, Gauzès, Grossetête, Hortefeux, Juvin, Lamassoure, Langen, Le Brun, Le Grip, Lehne, Mathieu, Morin-Chartier, Motti, Ponga, Posselt, Proust, Quisthoudt-Rowohl, Riquet, Rivellini, Roatta, Sanchez-Schmid, Vlasto, Weber Manfred
S&D: Moreira

****************************

As there always is a bit of a lag between the actual votes in the European Parliament and the publication of the roll-call results (i.e. who voted what), we thought it might be useful to encourage you to play a little game of ‘Spot-the-green-dot-and-give-it-a-name’.

So please find hereunder a screen shot of the actual vote on ACTA that took place today, as well as the European Parliament plenary seating map, order a pizza, invite some friends, and go for it!

Screenshot of the vote results

Download (PDF, 694KB)

How do MEPs Vote after Lisbon? VoteWatch.eu tries to shed light on this question in their third six-monthly report on the voting behaviour of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and their political groups. Dr Sara Hagemann and Simon Hix, respectively, Executive Director and Chairman of VoteWatch.eu, from the London School of Economics presented the insights of the report during its launch last Wednesday the 26th of January at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS). The discussants for this event were MEPs Isabelle Durant (Greens/EFA), Diana Wallis (ALDE), Rafal Trzaskowski (EPP), as well as former MEP Michiel van Hulten.

On 26 Jan at CEPS VoteWatch.eu presented its latest report on the European Parliament. See the EUX.tv coverage... http://fb.me/Tc5Bfsd4

27/01/2011 12:15 am via FacebookReplyRetweetFavorite

@CEPS_thinktank

CEPS

The report (p. 03) notes that in the 7th European Parliament:

• MEPs still vote more along transnational party than national lines;
• The political groups gained greater internal cohesion;
• The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the largest group, dominates most votes, but not all;
• The competition between centre-left and -right groups becomes noticeable in areas such as civil liberties, environment, development and gender equality; and,
• The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) has a pivotal role as it holds the balance of power, but with a strong cohesion the EPP is still able to win against a defective coalition between the ALDE and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats (S&D).

(c) VoteWatch.eu

MEPs Voting Behaviour: ‘Winning Sides and Grand Coalitions’?

These findings are derived from the 1.351 roll-call votes (RCV) during the plenary sessions of the first 18 months – from July 2009 till December 2010 – of this Parliament.

The report (p. 4-5) marks ALDE as the ‘winning side’, voting around 88% of the time in line the majority. But remarks the EPP’s rising dominance during the second half of 2010. This is being ascribed, on the one hand, to a growing number of votes related to economic and monetary affairs and, on the other hand, to an effective mobilisation – high cohesion and attendance – of their members.

Votewatch.eu report also shows that #ALDE group is on the winning side of votes more than any other group in the #EP

26/01/2011 2:46 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@PlaceLuxEU

Michiel van Hulten

The S&D, ALDE, and EPP ‘grand coalition’ dominates 63% of the votes. While the rest of the time there’s a left-right split between S&D and EPP, for example on justice matters. Interesting to note is that ALDE, holding the balance of power, joins forces more often with S&D.

One of the case studies in the report (p. 08) is the recent vote on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) resolution where the centre-right won. But in order to do so, the EPP and the European Conservatives and Reformist’s Group (ECR) first had to reject the centre-left’s joint motion for a resolution. It succeeded in doing so, as 24 MEPs defecting overthrew the S&D and ALDE centre-left coalition.

Cohesion political parties in votes #ep is v high, similar to us congress or national parls, says Votewatch

26/01/2011 12:36 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@mvandenbroeke

M van den Broeke

But in general the political groups show a high internal cohesion, which means that their members vote as a block. The exception seems to be agricultural issues, where national delegations (e.g. the French and Scandinavians) vote along national lines. Faas (2003, p. 856) remarks that certain issues have higher defection rates, but these issues differ by country as well as party.

Coincidence or not, in the evaluation process of the Data Retention Directive (2006/24/EC) the Directorate-General Home Affairs of the European Commission invited all stakeholders to participate on Friday the 3th of December at the 3th Data Retention Conference, themed ‘Taking on the Data Retention Directive’.

Cecilia Malmström, the Swedish European Commissioner for Home Affairs, summarised data retention in her speech as:

‘the mandatory storage of telecommunications traffic and location data for law enforcement purposes’.

The Directive sets out the requirements concerning this retention of electronic communications data, ranging from voice to Internet traffic, at two levels, (1) what data to retain and (2) how to retain it, but remains vague on the purposes for which it can be used and by whom.

It was adopted in 2006 following a knee-jerk reaction by Council to the  Madrid (2004) and London (2005) bombings, and amidst quite some back and forth between the European Parliament and Council.

So what does it mean?

What does it mean for European citizens? Alex Arnbak, speaking on behalf of the European Digital Rights initiative (EDRi) and representing Bits of Freedom, pointed out that in 2010 ‘the average European [had] his traffic and location data logged in a telecommunications database once every six minutes’.

What’s the burden operators have to bear? Deutsche Telekom, for example, collects about 19.5 terabytes of data during the German retention period of 6 months, or not less than 4.85 billion DIN-A4 pages which represents a 25km long paper trail. In the end the operator had to deal in 2009 with 12.891 law enforcement agency requests for fixed telephony data, 6.450 for Internet and 19.466 for mobile telephony. Seeing these figures, and thinking of the number of European operators, it’s not hard to understand that all the associations that represent them have, in a seldom unanimity, urged the Commission to harmonise the focus on voice instead of Internet data.

(c) computing.co.uk - mattbuck.com

So what do stakeholders say?

The Directive faces a barrage of criticism, as Alex Arnbak describes it as ‘the most controversial surveillance measure in Europe’, while Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), refers to it as the ‘most privacy invasive instrument ever adopted by the EU in terms of scale and the number of people it affects’. So from their point of view the Directive needs to be either withdrawn or replaced with a more proportional instrument.

They are supported by civil society, represented through signatories from 106 organisations from all over Europe, which sent a letter on the 27th of July 2010,to Commissioners Malmström, Kroes and Reding to:

‘urge [them] to propose the repeal of the EU requirements regarding data retention in favour of a system of expedited preservation and targeted collection of traffic data as agreed in the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime’.

Answers were, as could be expected, ranged from non-committal (see Malmström and Reding) to polite but slightly dismissive (see Langeheine on behalf of Kroes).

As Net Neutrality seems to be all over the place at the moment, we considered it couldn’t hurt to put together a summary timeline of the Net neutrality debate. It is obviously not exhaustive and biased in the sense that it tries to highlight some key moments in the debate. As always, click on the infographic below to see the picture as a stand alone, and click a second time on the picture to display it in full size.

Update on 25 November 10:41: Following a comment by Dr. Chris Marsden, we have added an item under “1999″. Thx Chris!

Update on 8 December 15:30: Following additional comments, we have added the fact that the Norwegian and Candian regulators issued guidleines in 2009. Grateful for all received comments!

The Hon Ed Vaizey MP, Minister for Culture, Communications  and Creative Industries, remarked in his recent speech at the Financial Times World Telecoms Conference 2010 (16 & 17th November) that:

‘Unlike in the UK, in some parts of the US consumers have no choice which ISP they use because only one offers a service in their area. So the debate has particular resonance there. ISPs could have total control over which services and applications a consumer has access to, and could give preferential treatment to those they favour.’

But in a previous blog post we examined the fact that choice becomes a mere paradox when a behaviour becomes the ‘new normal’ in the market.

Professor Economides, from the New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business, describes this situation in a working paper entitled ‘Why Imposing New Tolls on Third-Party Content and Applications Threatens Innovation and will not Improve Broadband Providers’ Investment’ (2010, p.7)

‘every [...] content provider that can afford it will choose to pay to be in the “priority lane.” What is the result? The [...] content of the remaining active firms would all arrive at the same speed as before, competition would remain the same among the firms that can afford the payment, but all these firms would pay a higher price to broadband providers.’

This could be exemplified through the Oxford Street dilemma.

In December 2000, creative minds at advertising agency Tugboat launched ‘The Fast Lane Campaign’, drawing attention to the growing pedestrianisation turning London’s Oxford Street into Europe’s most congested shopping street. The following figures were used as an illustration: at an average 4 miles (+- 6.5 km) per hour, the 1.25 mile (+- 2 km) walk shouldn’t take more than 19 minutes; but practice showed different with 28 minutes in general, up to 38 minutes at peak times and so long as an hour during the Christmas rush. This led them to envisage a ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ lane concept, dividing those ‘windowshoppers’ from the hurried office workers – an idea that seems not to have died out.

Simulation by the BBC

So imagine, for a moment, Oxford Street as a living lab for net neutrality. And imagine the City of London Corporation investing in creating such a ‘fast’ lane, whilst asking a 0.5 GBP fee for passage over it, in an attempt to earn back its investments. Those who can afford it will pay extra – on top of their taxes – to walk faster over the city’s pavements. While the others in the meantime would remain stuck as before between the ‘windowshoppers’. To get more pedestrians on the ‘fast’ lane, the city could attempt to  lure in more tourists to further crowd the ‘slow’ lane.

But as more pedestrians prefer the ‘fast’ lane, this becomes the ‘new normal’ and once it gets as crowed as the ‘slow’ lane, new forms of pedestrian traffic managment need to be put in place to create the illusion of a speed difference between the two lanes – the sine qua non condition to keep the fees flowing in.

Thus linking this back to the Internet, professor Economides remarks in his working paper (p.8) that:

‘If unrestrained, the broadband provider has an incentive to create artificial congestion in the “slow lane” that will make consumers value more the prioritized information packets (in the “fast lane”) and value less the ones that did not pay for prioritized service (in the “slow lane”).’

This leads us to the conclusion Commissioner Kroes reached in her ‘Net neutrality in Europe’ address at the ARCEP conference (13th April 2010), where she stated that:

‘Given that so much of this debate is about different forms of traffic management, let me use a road traffic analogy.  There are many ways to manage traffic: by improving infrastructure, adding tolls, creating junctions or roundabouts to improve bottlenecks. But creating new rules and crowding the street with signs does not automatically help the traffic to flow. Indeed, putting a police officer at a busy corner can often deliver the slowest traffic of all.’

Therefore the question remains how long this vicious spiral can go on before we come to a standstill?

The balance between different rights (e.g. privacy Vs freedom of expression) is a well-known tension. But the creation of new rights that are so-called derivatives from privacy and seem to ignore both that tension and the fact that if you set up a right, it’s always better if it’s enforceable in practice, is a worrying trend. You will have guessed (if only due to the title of this post), that I am referring to the so-called “Right to be forgotten”, or “Droit à l’oubli numérique” in France (where it seems you get rights that apply only to the online world and not the offline one?), defined in the European Commission’s 4 November Communication on Personal Data Protection as:

“the right of individuals to have their data no longer processed and deleted when they are no longer needed for legitimate purposes. This is the case, for example, when processing is based on the person’s consent and when he or she withdraws consent or when the storage period has expired”

This rather succinct provision has raised quite a few reaction, the Wall Street Journal stating “Forget any ‘Right to be Forgotten’”, whilst the Center for Democracy & Technology tries to make the point that “Europe Revisiting Privacy Laws is Opportunity, not Catastrophe” . The CDT links this right to be forgotten to the principle of data minimisation, seeming to imply they are synonymous…but then why would they be quoted in two separate bullet points of the Commission’s Communication? Techdirt also raises some interesting points in terms of unforeseen aspects that can arise with such a right.

But quite frankly, my problem with it is simpler than that: it’s bad branding. You can’t make people or machines for that matter forget something that has a chance of being disseminated across the world. Social media have exponentially changed the concepts of Dissemination and Duration of information and unless you kill the Internet (which seems to be one of the pursued options by some), there is no such thing as a right to be forgotten. And please don’t promise or even tell my kids that such a right was promised to them, as it would basically amount to a “Licence to act stupid” online, destroying my painstaking efforts at getting them to behave in a responsible manner both online and offline. There is such a concept as “legitimate expectations” in public law, that basically implies that if a public authority promises something to a citizen, they have the legitimate expection for that authority to deliver…and you can’t deliver on something called “right to be forgotten”…you might on something that’s called “right to have your data deleted” but I guess that doesn’t sound as sexy!

So to make a long story short, I made the “Infographic” (or actually “Storygraphic”) below to set out the type of expectations bad branding of rights can create (click on the image for a full view).

The European Commission and European Parliament organised a one-day Summit on the ‘Open Internet and Net neutrality in Europe’ on the 11th of November following the recent public consultation on this topic. A summit for which Europe – at least according to AT&T – have to be grateful to the Americans.

A tale of gifts…

AT&T bij #summit over #netneutraliteit van de Eur Commissie: "The netneutrality debate is America's gift to the world." :) #nnsummit

11/11/2010 11:01 am via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@bitsoffreedom

Bits of Freedom

But then again, isn’t it the usual line we get from the US anti-net neutrality camp: this is not a European problem, but a US-specific quirk? Could it truly be that an access bottleneck is different from one side of the Atlantic to the other, and if competition was such a success in Europe, why did we adopt a reviewed Telecoms Package in 2009 aimed at ‘ensuring competition’? Moreover, isn’t this gift-giving from the US to be expected, as the Internet (originating from the US military network DARPAnet) was equally ‘America’s gift to the world’. Let’s just hope that this second gift doesn’t annihilate the benefits of the first.

The alleged purpose of the Summit was to ‘give all key stakeholders the opportunity to discuss their views on these issues’. But this raises questions about who these key stakeholders are when the agenda is dominated by the telecoms industry (access and equipment providers mainly, individually or as associations), with only a handful of lone voices (Skype, BBC, the citizens advocacy group La Quadrature du Net, and academic Dr. Chris Marsden) as counterweight.

…monkeys…

#NNsummit [PC pro] "Three wise monkeys" dominate #netneutrality debate http://goo.gl/SDIYb feat. @ChrisTMarsden

11/11/2010 4:21 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Elena2020

Elena

This ‘balanced’ panel led Chris Marsden to make the following remark during his presentation:

“There are three wise monkeys on net neutrality that are seeing no evil, hearing no evil and speaking no evil – and I think you might have heard from many of them today. (…) I used to think that there was no net neutrality problem in Europe until at every meeting I went to on the subject I heard people saying there was no problem, which always makes me suspicious.”

If we follow Dr. Marsden’s line of thought, then maybe we should all need to be suspicious, in light of the sweeping conclusions made by the European Commission in its Net Neutrality Consultation Report (p.2), which states that:

“There appears to be consensus among network operators, internet service providers (ISPs) and infrastructure manufacturers that there are currently no problems with the openness of the internet and net neutrality in the EU. (…) They maintain that there is no evidence that operators are engaging in unfair discrimination in a way that harms consumers or competition.”

Looking at the 318 consultation responses this ‘consensus’ doesn’t hit you in the face, unless it is measured in volume of responses rather than their respresentativity of the different players in the value chain, if you consider that only 6 responses were submitted by  Internet application and content providers versus 33 responses from operators and ISPs – without even talking about equipment manufactures and the different associations representing the telcos and manufacturers in one shape or another.

As explained in my first post on this issue, Privacy is a difficult concept to define in a universal manner, and conceptualising it on a case-by-case basis is simply unworkable in an online environment, both in terms of compliance and enforcement. Telling a company that is active online that it has to uphold a legal concept that is undefined and undefinable (except for some commonalities) is the perfect recipe to legal uncertainty.

This led me to consider that this is why Europe has gone for a protection of personal data, a concept that seems at first glance easier to encompass. After all, how hard can it be to define what data is personal and what isn’t, right?

And to quote Commissioner Reding on Twitter:

The protection of personal data is a fundamental right. We need clear and consistent data protection rules http://bit.ly/cCKacq

04/11/2010 11:16 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@VivianeRedingEU

Viviane Reding

The Directive is built around a series of concepts (‘personal data’, ‘sensitive data’, ‘consent’, ‘processing’, ‘data controller/subject’, etc.) and sets in place key principles in the area of data protection (for the Geek way of summarising, this, check out this Tech and Law post – For the official version, see here):

• Personal data: any information that relates to an “identified or identifiable natural person.”
• How should data be processed? Personal data must be processed fairly and lawfully, and collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes. They must also be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date.
• When can data processing occur? Only if the data subject has unambiguously given his/her consent or processing is necessary:
  • for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or;
  • for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject or;
  • in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or;
  • for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or;
  • for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller.

• Opt-out and right to object: the data subject should have the right to object, on legitimate grounds, to the processing of data relating to him/her. He/she should also have the right to object, on request and free of charge, to the processing of personal data that the controller anticipates being processed for the purposes of direct marketing. He/she should finally be informed before personal data are disclosed to third parties for the purposes of direct marketing, and be expressly offered the right to object to such disclosures.
• Sensitive data: it is forbidden to process personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership, and the processing of data concerning health or sex life, except under specific circumstances (notably if data subject has given explicit consent or in cases where processing is necessary to protect the vital interests of the data subject or for the purposes of preventive medicine and medical diagnosis).
• Data subject’s right to information and access: data controllers must provide data subjects from whom data are collected with certain information relating to himself/herself (the identity of the controller, the purposes of the processing, recipients of the data etc.) and of the fact that the subject has a right of access to its data that covers:
  • confirmation as to whether or not data relating to him/her are being processed and communication of the data undergoing processing;
  • the rectification, erasure or blocking of data and the notification of these changes to third parties to whom the data have been disclosed.

• Exemptions and restrictions: the principles in the Directive can be disregarded for reasons of national security, defence, public security, the prosecution of criminal offences, an important economic or financial interest of a Member State or of the European Union or the protection of the data subject.

There are also provisions relating to data transferred to third parties (e.g. in case of outsourcing), transborder data flows (an issue that merits a book on its own) and the fact that data controller must notify Data Protection Authorities (DPAs).

So now that we’ve done our little summary of facts & principles, what does all of this mean in an online context? Well, quite frankly, a lot of different things to different people, notably due to the substantial margin of manoeuvre given to Member States as regards transposition of the Directive.

To give only one illustration, personal data, which has been graced by additional guidance from the Art 29 Working Party under the form of an Opinion, but it is still being discussed if, for example, IP adresses should be regarded as personal data under all circumstances. Moreover, the EU DPD provides an exception that may negate the special rules on “sensitive data” in many online contexts, namely that “special treatment” is not required where “the data are manifestly made public by the data subject”.

In a web 2.0 context, things become even more puzzling, as people seem to enjoy posting information online (on social networks but also on blogs, in chat rooms, when posting comments, etc) that they would probably not share with either their mum or their spouse even after too much to drink.

Framing it slightly differently (and more academically), Edwards and Brown point out in their 2010 article on “Data Control and Social Networking” that:

“The future of both law and technology will require reconciling users’ desire to self- disclose information with their simultaneous desire that this information be protected.”

Or at least protected from some people, or instances.

Not being a data protection lawyer, I find that the way I think about sharing personal data online is in four layers: there’s me (or should I say ME), then there’s YOU (and by YOU I mean people I have some form of direct connection with, be it family, friends, colleagues, or even social networks and Internet content providers I subscribe to), then there’s THEM (third party providers, friends of friends, colleagues of colleagues I don’t know directly, law enforcement, justice, etc.) and then there’s IT (not as an acronym for Information Technology, but more for the creepy IT out there I cannot truly define or scope but I am convinced I do not want IT to have access to my personal data). If you click on the image below you will (A) see a larger version and hopefully get a visual of what I mean (B) be able to agree with my teachers at school that drawing would not enable me to make a decent living.

In that layered view, things are not as clear cut as public and private as there are such things as “public to some” I guess, and “private to most”.  Hence their “priblic” nature.

To quote Edwards & Brown again:

“The SNS phenomenon in itself (…) shows a clear shift of values from prizing privacy to prizing disclosure and visibility in the social online space. (Nor is this merely an online phenomenon – observe the rise of the “famous for five minutes” generation, who will reveal anything from their sexuality to their unhappy childhood on shows like Jerry Springer and Big Brother to achieve a soupcon of celebrity.)”

Moreover, I am no longer a spectator on the Internet, but also an actor, through my blogs, my status updates on social networks, my comments, etc. In some cases, what I do would fall under the so-called “household exemption” (whereby I can process personal data for a purely personal or household activity without having to comply with the obligations of a data controller), whereas in others, due to the open nature of the network or the fact that what I do can be considered as falling under my professional activities, I will become a data controller. And that smeans I should be notifying things to my Belgian DPA, I guess, if you consider the Art. 29 WP’s views in this matter. And I’m not even going to try to think about jurisdiction and applicable law issues…

So the European Commission has finally officially released its Communication on a Comprehensive Approach to Data Protection in the European Union on 4 November, the accompanying press release emphasising that it was out to strengthen data protection rules.
This document is supposed to outline the strategy of the Commissioner Reding in this area, and is open for consultation until 15 January 2011.

As Brussels has been expecting it for a few months now, and even Statewatch leaked it a few weeks ago, I have decided to put on my lawyer hat when reading in the evening for the past months, and delve back into the intricacies of academic papers on privacy (scary stuff when you haven’t done it for a while).

My first confused idea was to look for the latest definition of privacy, as this is what the whole strategy is reported to be about.

The funny thing is that having gone through masterful articles and books excerpts by the likes of Solove, I am starting to have a picture of what privacy is not (or not only, or not any more) but it hasn’t truly helped me to figure out what it is.

So Privacy is…

Under European law, Article 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights sets out the right to privacy as follows:

If one were to do statistics, you would notice 6 lines of that Article set out what the right to privacy is,whilst 9 lines set out all the exceptions and limtyations to it…

Looking at everything that has been written about the subject (and if the number of pages were a criterion to attribute a value to a fundamental right than just going through all the pages written on this theme alone would make it a top of the list item), the following emerges:

• To quote Solove in his attempt at “Conceptualising Privacy” (2002):

‘Currently, privacy is a sweeping concept, encompassing (among other things) freedom of thought, control over one’s body, solitude in one’s home, control over information about oneself, freedom from surveillance, protection of one’s reputation, and protection from searches and interrogations (…) The difficulty in articulating what privacy is and why it is important has often made privacy law ineffective and blind to the larger purposes for which it must serve. ‘

• The fact that top down definitions seem unsatisfactory, leads Solove to conclude that conceptualising (and hence defining) privacy requires a bottom up, pragmatic approach , which basically assesses privacy in particular contexts and nearly on a case-by-case basis. Though this may be the right way to look at things from an academic and judicial perspective, it is simply unworkable if you are a company active online that needs to implement procedures, compliance systems and database controls and behaviours upfront (and thus not on a case-by-case basis). But where Solove is absolutely right is the fact that each individual’s understanding of privacy is unique to a certain extent, and shaped by culture and history. To give an example, I have absolutely no problem in sharing my mobile phone number with anyone that asks for it. It could be this is linked to the fact that I work as a freelancer but I don’t think so. In my perception, I have a lot more control over my mobile phone than I do over my fixed line: I switch off my mobile phone much more casually than I would unplug my fixed line, I have caller line identification on my mobile phone but did not take that option on my fixed line, I can easily put my mobile phone on ‘silent’ whereas I would not even know how to do that on my fixed handset…and I basically find it less intrusive to be called on my mobile phone than on my fixed phone. Many other people feel however completely different about sharing their mobile number, and consider it a very private element.
• The public-private distinction is blurring and is certainly not something where two dissociated spheres can be easily identified. Quoting Solove once more:
  

  ‘First, the matters we consider private change over time. Second, although certain matters have moved from being public to being private and vice versa, the change often has been more subtle than a complete transformation from public to private.’

  But I will look more into that issue in a separate blog post.

A good illustration of these diverging answers is set out in the clip below, very aptly named “Is Privacy Dead or Just Very Confused? – SXSWi 2009″