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Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Privacy

After discovering that a Fordham Law class had compiled a 15-page dossier on Supreme Court Justice Scalia based on information freely available on the Internet (see here and here), we decided to call up the Supreme Court to find out what the Justice thought about the privacy invasion.

He got back to us (through the Court's Public Information Office) rather quickly. He was not pleased to have his privacy invaded, but stood by his stance on privacy rights: that aggregation of such publicly available data is legal. He argued though that such things should not be done, not for legal reasons but for moral ones.

"It is not a rare phenomenon that what is legal may also be quite irresponsible. That appears in the First Amendment context all the time. What can be said often should not be said," wrote Justice Scalia.

Check out our post over at Above The Law, including Scalia's message in full.

Justice Scalia Responds to Fordham Privacy Invasion! [Above The Law]

Privacy Rights and Wrongs: Fordham Invades Justice Scalia's Privacy

The Privacy Rights and Wrongs conference at Fordham yesterday had many of the heavy hitters thinkers in privacy today, though Daniel Solove, professor at George Washington and author of The Future of Reputation, was the star of the show, in our opinion.

He opined on the meaning of privacy: "It's a concept in disarray. It means so many things that it no longer has a legal meaning," he said, calling the term "vague," "protean," and "suffering from an embarrassment of meanings." It needs a clearer definition in order to guide adjudication and lawmaking, said Solove.

We agree. It's been the most difficult aspect of making "privacy issues" the central theme of our work this year. It extends into everything, and we don't have enough time, skill, or smarts to cover EVERYTHING.

There was one little thing we covered from the conference, over at Above The Law. One of the speakers was a professor from Fordham University who revealed that he tasked the 15 students in his Privacy Information Law class with invading the privacy of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Check out our post on it over at Above The Law.

What Fordham Knows About Justice Scalia [Above The Law]

Headlines Under Surveillance: 04.20.09

* The FBI is adopting the practice of collecting DNA samples from those awaiting trials (who have not actually been proven guilty of anything). The practice is already in place in 15 states; New York is one of them, as we've mentioned before. Privacy advocates are up in arms about this, but we must ask this question. Is DNA fundamentally more private than fingerprints, which are collected on a regular basis? If we had consistent commenters, we would ask you to discuss this in the comments. We imagine a not-so-distant-future world where the collection of DNA samples will be as normal as being fingerprinted currently is. [New York Times]

* A woman suing a debt collector for posting to her MySpace page doesn't address privacy issues in her lawsuit. Her complaint accuses the company of violating collection laws and harassing her with abusive tactics. But privacy concerns leapt to our mind. Social networking sites are increasingly being flooded by those with business interests. Our experiment with signing up for Twitter has led to advertisers (e.g., NYCDailyDeals) outnumbering friends "following" us. Corporate beings getting a hold of our e-mail addresses is fine, but when they're actively trolling and interacting with our social networking profiles, it seems like it's crossing a privacy line. [Courthouse News Service via Threat Level/Wired]

* The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls out Obama for adopting Bush's position on secrecy and wiretapping ordinary Americans. [EFF]

* Even less privacy at the airport. Transportation Security Agency officials plan to replace metal detectors in airports with Total Recall-esque whole-body imaging machines. Screeners may be able to see us naked, but at least we won't have to remove our shoes and belts anymore. [Al's Morning Meeting/Poynter]

* Polls opened last week for Facebook users to determine privacy rights on the site. We wonder whether voter participation on Facebook will be healthier than the anemic participation in American elections. [PCWorld]

* Where we'll be found tomorrow: Privacy Rights and Wrongs: Balancing Moral Priorities for the 21st Century at Fordham University. Deep privacy thinker Daniel Solove of GW will be on the dais. [Danger Room/Wired]

The Villagers Revolt Against Google Street View

When a couple in Pennsylvania objected to Google Street View, they sued. (And lost.) On the other side of the Pond, those upset by the mapping program that provides 360-degree views at street level got physical.

AFP reports the story with the following headline "Angry British villagers stop Google maps car." We love that AFP refers to them as "villagers." It makes us think of the Google Street View car as Frankenstein stumbling into town and the denizens of Broughton, England, warding the car off with torches and pitchforks.

BBC News reports that Paul Jacobs was the man to get the townfolk riled up enough to stand in the street and block the passage of the Google Street Maps car with its huge rooftop-mounted camera:

Resident Paul Jacobs was one of the first residents in the village, which is part of Milton Keynes, to challenge the Google car.

Mr Jacobs said he saw the vehicle driving past his home on Wednesday and his first reaction was one of anger.

"I don't have a problem with Google wanting to promote villages. What I have a problem with is the invasion of privacy, taking pictures directly into the home," he said.

The article goes on to say that there had been three burglaries in the town recently, and that Jacobs and other residents feared Street View photos would help criminals plan future burglaries.

This strikes us as a bit illogical. If the Street View feed were live, it could certainly be argued that it could assist with criminal activity. But it's not. And the photo quality (at this point) is not good enough to allow a user to see into someone's home, and decide whether there are electronics or valuables worth taking.

The "villagers" likely cite safety concerns because it seems like the most sensible argument. But in fact, we suspect the motivation comes from a more basic (and emotional) desire for privacy that we all -- to greater and lesser extents -- have.

Angry British villagers stop Google maps car [AFP]
Residents challenge Google camera [BBC]

Headlines Under Surveillance: 03.31.09

* People are worried about privacy! Or at least they claim they are in this survey. Over 90 percent of TRUSTe survey respondents said online privacy is an important issue to them, but only 28 percent said they were bothered by the tracking of their online behavior for ad-targeting. So what does online privacy mean to them? [New York Times]

* Maybe this is what they are scared of: Electronic Spy Network Focused on Dalai Lama and Embassy Computers. [Threat Level/Wired]

* A judge in Pennsylvania rules that teenage sexting falls within minors' constitutional rights. [Reuters]

* Newsweek Editor and Securing the City author Christopher Dickey (who we saw speak in February) has a self-aggrandizing blog which pointed us to this article on public input being solicited by the NYPD on the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative. [City Limits via The Shadowland Journals]

* Speaking of the LMSI, Brian Lehrer had Ali Winston, the City Limits article author, on his show to talk about the 3,000-security-camera Initiative. [WNYC]

* Yuck. Giving Nudists everywhere a bad name. [St. Petersburg Times]

Privacy Field Trip We'd Like to Take: The National Cryptologic Museum

The January/February issue of The Atlantic Monthly had a two-page spread titled, "Then and Now," a diagram comparing U.S. data from 2000 and 2008. In 2008, we watched 200 hours more television per person than in 2000. Gold was three times as expensive (the price is even higher now). Our credit card debt was 50 percent higher. There were 16.4 percent cell-phone-only households compared to 4.2 percent in 2000. Etc. Etc.

Anyway, lots of alternately depressing and interesting factoids like that. What caught our eye from a privacy perspective was the number of visits to the NSA's Cryptologic Museum. In 2000, 65 school groups paid them a visit, compared to 134 in 2007.

From the museum's website:

The National Cryptologic Museum is the National Security Agency's principal gateway to the public. It shares the Nation's, as well as NSA's, cryptologic legacy and place in world history. Located adjacent to NSA Headquarters, Ft. George G. Meade, Maryland, the Museum houses a collection of thousands of artifacts that collectively serve to sustain the history of the cryptologic profession. Here visitors can catch a glimpse of some of the most dramatic moments in the history of American cryptology: the people who devoted their lives to cryptology and national defense, the machines and devices they developed, the techniques they used, and the places where they worked. For the visitor, some events in American and world history will take on a new meaning. For the cryptologic professional, it is an opportunity to absorb the heritage of the profession.

The museum's been around since 1993, but it's kind of in the middle of nowhere as far as D.C. tourist destinations go. Most people do not tend to wander far from the Mall. The Spy Museum is conveniently located near the Verizon Center in tourist central near Gallery Place/Chinatown metro.

So, why did the museum get so popular between 2000 and 2007? The museum's curator, Patrick Weadon, tells us that educational programs only got their start at the museum in 2000:

Over the years we have worked very hard to develop a wide range of cryptology-related classes, scavenger hunts, and briefings to appeal to all age groups. Although we do not formally "advertise" our educational programs, we do reach out to local schools; over time, word has spread about the interesting, unique, educational, and most importantly, FUN programs that we offer.

The museum gets 50,000 to 60,000 visitors a year. We hope to take a field trip there ourselves in the near future. We're not sure what we'll actually find there in terms of exhibits. The museum's website is annoyingly cryptic.

Headlines Under Surveillance: 03.22.09

We're launching a new feature here at the Not-So Private Parts. A weekly round-up of articles that dealt with privacy issues. Here's the first round-up:

* After an evening spent in New York night court last year, we discovered that anyone charged with a felony has to submit a DNA sample to a NYPD database. (Note: Just charged. Not convicted.) That made us want to write an article on DNA privacy... but Jeffrey Rosen beat us to it: "Genetic Surveillance for All: What if the FBI put the family of everyone who has ever been convicted or arrested into a giant DNA database?" [Slate]

* Tim Berners-Lee is having an Oppenheimer moment. Berners-Lee, one of the original founders of the World Wide Web, has concerns about privacy and snooping online. [AFP]

* Google has rolled out a new advertising program: "interested-based advertising." It uses your cookies (the history of sites you have visited) to choose ads keyed to your interests. Privacy advocates don't like sharing their cookies with the Google monster. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has worked with Google to create a program for those who want to keep their cookies in a private cupboard. [EFF Deeplinks]

* Facebook has changed its template again, much to the dismay of just about everyone. Most people are talking about the annoying layout, but the changes go beyond aesthetics. Facebook made a big change in privacy settings. Facebook used to be a world where you had to have a link to someone in order to view their profile-- either you were a friend, alumni of the same school, or living in the same city. There was no way around that. Now Facebook will allow users to drop any semblance of privacy. [Epicenter/Wired]

* Back in February, a government official on the other side of the Pond said of privacy and security: "Finding out other people's secrets is going to involve breaking everyday moral rules." In a recently published public policy paper, former UK security chief Sir David Omand argues that privacy rights in the UK must be sacrificed for security's sake. [Guardian]

Bubba Facebook Update: Bubs Accepted Our Friend Request!

We mentioned in our last post that we had requested Bubba Waring, of fetal Facebook fame, to be our friend on the social networking site. We are excited to report that he confirmed our friendship:

Australia-based Bubs has less than 100 friends on Facebook. We feel honored to be among them, but are surprised that (1) the 1-year-old Bubs already has 95 friends and (2) that he (or more likely, his mom) accepted a friend request from a random 20-something American lady. We can now see photos, status updates, and even his phone number. It's like being invited into the family's virtual living room.

We are happy to see a status update from Bubs that indicates he is recovering from a cold. We're contemplating writing on his wall to say so...

The Little Ones Get Little Privacy

It's hard to find anywhere truly private these days. Even the womb is subject to prying eyes. According to Ubergizmo, 57,000 babies in the UK have their own social networking sites. Parents set up profiles for their children while they are still fetuses in some cases, setting ultrasonic images as their profile pics and updating their statuses as appropriate, e.g., Baby Bubba is kicking.

An Australian couple was one of the first to put their fetus, Bubba Waring, on Facebook back in 2007 and got lots of news coverage.

The idea of having your whole life played out on Facebook strikes me as incredibly creepy. I checked Facebook to see what Bubba Waring is up to these days. The profile for "Bubs Waring" is now set to private so I couldn't take a close look at it, but the child in the profile photo looks about 2. He's carrying a red ball. Very cute. I requested to "add as friend."

World Net Daily brings us another more recent privacy issue for the little ones. The privacy of their DNA is not getting the respect it deserves in Minnesota:

Nine families have filed a lawsuit against Minnesota's health department over its practice of collecting DNA from newborns and then keeping and using the private information...

Agency spokesman John Stine said the lawsuit was being reviewed, but he confirmed the department takes the blood samples from about 70,000 infants annually, and unless the parents specifically choose to opt out of the program, their children's DNA is saved...

The case alleges "as of December 31, 2008, Defendant Minnesota Department of Health had stored 819,282 dried blood spot baby samples; had stored 1,567,133 records of the results of newborn genetic screening; and had used 52,519 dried blood spot samples for research."

Our notions of privacy are changing all the time. There is certainly much that is generational and cultural. But if kids today are born to ready-made social networking profiles and their DNA on file, it seems like expectations for some kinds of privacy will be almost nonexistent.

Unborn Have Their Own Social Networking Page [Ubergizmo]
Parents sue state over babies' DNA [World Net Daily]

The Threads of Nudism

One path we've gone down in exploring privacy is the practice of nudism, and the abdication of the physical privacy provided by clothes. In talking to various nudists in New York, we're discovering divisions within the group.

There are the naturalists vs. the nudists. This is a matter of semantics. While some use the terms interchangeably, others feel very strongly about one term or the other. One of our interviewees insists on being called a nudist, because he "hates nature."

There are the nudists vs. the swingers. Much of the media attention received by nudist resorts tends toward the salacious, such as this recent BlackBook Magazine piece by Greg Boose: Hedonism II: The Cave is for Blowjobs. Boose writes:

Nudist resorts, in hopes of lifting up sagging tourism numbers, want to bring back the orgies. But when Claire told me that Hedonism II was one of the resorts we’d be touring in Jamaica while she researched the greening efforts of hotels on the island for an airline’s glossy, I wasn’t really expecting orgies.

But he does find orgies at this particular nudist resort, because in fact, it is a swingers' resort. "Pure" nudists become extremely distressed by the conflation of the two. Nudists celebrate and embrace nudity as non-sexual. The code word for a nudist resort, as opposed to a swinger's nudist resort, is "family friendly."

There are the at-home nudists vs. community nudists. Some nudists want to be naked all the time, and would prefer to conduct daily activities in the buff. These are the type that shed their clothes wherever and whenever they can, and as soon as they get home. However, others only like being nude in groups, and sharing the experience with others. I've interviewed one couple that bridge this divide. The wife enjoys nudist resorts and activities but prefers being clothed at home. Her husbands prefers to be nude as often as possible, including during the course of our interview.

For the community nudist wife, nudism is linked to feminism. She enjoys not being judged on her clothes, or her body parts. "I've never had so many people maintain eye contact with me, as opposed to checking out my body, as at nudist resorts," she said. This, of course, would not be the case at a swinger's resort.

There are other "threads" I am still exploring: the exhibitionists, the narcissists, the individualists, the religious nudists, the thrill-seekers... Who would expect to find that nudists have so many threads?

Hedonism II: The Cave is for Blowjobs [BlackBook Magazine]

More cameras, less cops

New York's not the only city rolling out impressive camera networks, ala the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative. Chicago is getting its CCTV on too, reports the New York Times.

Thanks to a $6-million grant from the Department of Homeland Security, Chicago is rolling out a vast network of public and private cameras to aid in its police and emergency response work. The article from the NYT has the usual structure for these types of stories: an example of the cameras at work -- e.g. capturing a Salvation Army kettle thief-- followed by news of how the system will be bigger and better in the future, with an ACLU spokesperson thrown in at the end to voice privacy concerns.

Wired noted a few months back that Chicago had hoped to have 2,000 cameras linked up by 2006, but was held back by a shortage of fiber. The city refused to tell the Chicago Sun-Times how many cameras they've got in action now, but officials do say they hope to have a camera on every street corner in Chicago. That sends a mild chill down our spine, bringing back memories of our father telling us as a child to behave because he knew everything that we would do before we even thought about doing it.

Of course, turning to cameras for effective law enforcement in these troubled economic times makes sense. The fiber may be expensive but is probably less in the long run than health benefits and pensions for police officers.

Wired reports that the NYPD is cutting back on officer deployment, but is trying its best to move full-speed ahead with putting 3,000 cameras online in the financial district.

If it'll keep the Salvation Army kettles safe, it can't be a bad thing, right?

Chicago Links Street Cameras to Its 911 Network [New York Times]
Surveillance cams help fight crime, city says [Chicago Sun-Times]
NYPD Cuts Cops, Keeps Spycams for Terror Defense [Danger Room/Wired]

Privacy and The Facebook and The Google

Two important technological events in privacy this week. One has made headlines many times over, and stopped qualifying as "news" about two days ago in the fast-paced Internet echo chamber. Facebook tried to roll out a new Terms of Service that would have given the company ownership over all things posted to the site by its 175 million users. Privacy rights be damned.

Folks weren't too happy to learn of the threat to their ownership of their photos, notes, videos, beings, etc. The mass Internet protests caused CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook to cave. Privacy/ownership rights were reinstated, and a new Bill of Rights will be established for users. Any James Madison version 2.0's should surf over to Facebook and get involved in the drafting of the social networking site's Bill of Rights.

Privacy is still a major issue on Facebook. Check out this guide to privacy settings on All Facebook (The Unofficial Facebook Resource) to make sure that the things you want private stay that way. And the guide doesn't say it, but hide your birth date. Depending on your settings, your friends will still know to write on your wall on the big day, but pseudo-friends and scary strangers won't be able to use your DOB for bad things. (More on that in a future post.)

In privacy ebbing news, a less-reported story is Google's win in a privacy case over its Street View application. The application allows us to map an address and zoom in to street level-- you can see people on the street, the facade of homes, cars parked in front of houses... but not in real time. A couple in Pennsylvania, The Borings, had sued Google Street View for violating their privacy by putting photos of their house online, despite "private road" signs at the end of the street leading to their home. A judge dismissed the case. From CNet:

Google claims to be legally allowed to photograph on private roads, arguing that privacy no longer exists in this age of satellite and aerial imagery.

"Today's satellite-image technology means that...complete privacy does not exist," Google said in its response to the Borings' complaint.

Yep, that's right. The Google won. Because complete privacy does not exist.

Facebook Withdraws Changes in Data Use [New York Times]
10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know [All Facebook]
Google wins Street View privacy suit [CNet]

Data Breaches Galore

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has the following quote leading off its About Us section:

The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through the automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable.
U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission, 1977

Privacy protection is nothing new, but technological advances create many new challenges for protecting that privacy. The Clearinghouse, based in California (of course), is dedicated to raising awareness about the effect of technology on privacy, helping people protect their privacy, and advocating for greater privacy legislatively.

The organization keeps an incredible listing of data breaches, dating back to 2005. The total amount of records breached over the past four years is staggering: 252,387,509.

That includes the "biggest ever data breach" of 100 million credit cards by Heartland Payment Services last month. To see data breaches that have occurred in your state, check out this site.

Why are companies not doing more to protect our privacy and our financial data? We were speaking with a friend in finance in New York yesterday, and he casually said he had the ability to access the social security numbers of any of the clients of the bank that he works for. As do hundreds of his colleagues. And this is a Big Bank, of which you may just be a client.

Of course, it's hard to ask companies to be more careful with our data when we ourselves are so careless about it. Many people we know are happy to pirate wireless connections and surf the Net on a stranger's network. Oblivious to the security of the data they're transmitting.

Hmmm... all of a sudden, we're feeling a strong need to take advantage of our Free Credit Report.

Biggest Ever Credit Card Data Breach [Computerworld]

Privacy Prevails due to NYPD Budget Woes

In our last post, we mentioned the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative. Here are details on the Initiative from the always-helpful Wikipedia:

The New York City Police Department and private companies intend to install over 3,000 new security cameras in Lower Manhattan, as well as 100 license plate-reading devices which are intended to scan plates and compare the numbers with information in a database. Additionally, the activities the cameras are programmed to pick up on include the delivery of packages. Other features of the system include mobile roadblocks, which could swivel into the streets and block traffic, and radiation detectors.

According to police spokesman Paul J. Browne, the footage from the cameras would be monitored from a center staffed by police officers and private employees.

As I understand it, Lower Manhattan=everything below Canal Street.

Though the operation officially launched in November, things are off to a slow start due to a budget shortfall. From Newsday:

The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as it is called, is similar to the so-called Ring of Steel in London, where authorities use a network of cameras, security barriers and officers to guard against attacks by terrorists.

Kelly has warned for some time that budget woes would slow the department's plans to assign 800 cops downtown and to install 3,000 security cameras. About 300 cameras have thus far been installed.

Only 10 percent of the cameras in place. So privacy is still 90 percent intact?

According to an ABC-Washington Post poll [PDF] from 2007, almost three quarters of Americans support surveillance cameras to fight crime. Only one quarter were opposed, presumably for privacy reasons. There was an interesting breakdown for the respondents:

* Seniors are most apt to support the increased use of these cameras.

* Those under 30 are the most likely to oppose cameras.

* Republicans support cameras more than do Democrats.

* Women support cameras more than do men.

* Higher-educated people more than the less educated.

* Whites more than African-Americans.

Hmmmm. Do those who support cameras value privacy less... or trust the government more?

NYPD scales back ground zero security plan [Newsday]

Making the City more secure... but less private

Last Tuesday, we attended a presentation at the NYU Center on Law and Security: Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterrorism Force-- The NYPD, featuring Christopher Dickey, Newsweek editor and author of a recent book by the same name, and moderated by Dina Temple-Raston, NPR's national security correspondent.

Since moderator Temple-Raston covers the FBI, she kept steering the conversation in that direction, which we found a bit annoying, since we wanted to hear more about the NYPD. Given the name, we were hoping for some insight into what the NYPD does to protect the city (and the privacy trade-offs involved). There wasn't a whole lot of discussion of privacy trade-offs per se, but there was a lot of other information of interest to us.

Dickey touched on the NYPD's innovative (and recent) employment of public-private partnerships. One example is the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative (LMSI). Of the 3,000 cameras used to create a CCTV network south of Canal Street, more than half are private cameras, operated by businesses in the area who are now feeding their camera footage to the NYPD.

Dickey chose to focus on the NYPD in his book because it's huge--dwarfing the LAPD, for example-- and because New York has been the focus of "terrorism" for much of its history. The JPMorgan building on Wall Street still bears shrapnel marks from a 1920 anarchist's attack that used explosives on a horse-drawn carriage to kill 33 people, said Dickey.

We had a chance to ask Dickey a question about LMSI and why the camera network launched so recently in New York (it is officially up and running as of November 2008, whereas London's Ring of Steel has been in place since the 1990s). Dickey says common knowledge among experts is that London's system doesn't actually work that well, and has had a minimal effect on crime. New York spent longer on theirs in the hope for a more effective system. The LMSI has all kinds of "razzle-dazzle technology," said Dickey, including software that recognizes packages that sit for too long in one spot and cars that circle an area repeatedly.

Tourists who get lost in Chinatown, beware!

The room was mainly full of security and counterterrorism experts, so the question at hand was not how privacy was threatened by advances in security technologies but rather how New York's safety is threatened by a lack of greater security measures.

Exhibitionism, 'Sexting' and Teens' Not-So Private Parts

We hope to move on to less salacious topics in the future, but this blog's second post will again touch on the topic of nudity. (What else might one expect from a blog with "private parts" in its title after all?)

The Aiken Standard reports on sex crime charges against two Ohio teens. The crime of one of the teens was taking a photo of herself naked with her cell phone (creation of child pornography) and sending the photo to her boyfriend (distribution of child pornography). The crime of the other teen, her boyfriend, was looking at the photo (consumption of child pornography). Apparently, "sexting" is all the rage at high schools these days. And, judging from the amount of hits resulting from a "sexting" on Google News, prosecuting the crime is all the rage across the country too.

The New York Post is on to the trend and even tracked down an image from a Manhattan teen's cell phone for its readers' viewing pleasure. The media sexting obsession seems to have been spurred by a few cases prosecuted nationwide, but also by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy's study, released last month, which found that 20% of teens have sexted. If we are really in a post-private age where exhibitionism comes naturally, our response is, "Only 20 percent?"

The sexual behavior of the young never ceases to shock the old. What seems novel to the older seasoned generations these days is how teens are using technology to enable their wild and sexually deviant ways. For example, see this recent article on teens and the "faceless and amoral world of cyberspace" in England's Daily Mail: Generation Sex.

That many a teen is hormone-charged and sexually irresponsible is not terribly shocking. That the hormone-charged teen taking a cell phone photo of herself undressed will face criminal charges is a bit shocking.

On the one hand, teens do shed their personal privacy by exposing themselves through naked images sent out into the world via text. But even if these "pornographers" are minors, it's amazing that some kind of privacy/ownership rights do not extend to their self-portraits. In the name of protectionism, authorities intervene, telling the kids, essentially, "It's true. No privacy for you. Those images are not private; they are illegal and prosecutable."

Police shocked by what they find on kids' phones [Aiken Standard]
SEX 'CELLS' FOR NAKED TEENAGERS [New York Post]
How the faceless and amoral world of cyberspace has created a deeply disturbing... generation SEX [Daily Mail]

Reporting on the Private Parts

This blog will track our musings on privacy over the next year as part of a series of articles on The Not-So Private Parts. This project is part of a master's program in journalism at New York University, and will be conducted under the tutelage/editorship of Ted Conover and Rob Boynton as part of NYU's Portfolio program.

A physical entry point into musings on privacy is the topic of nudism. Clothes provide the barrier between the world and those parts of our bodies that are so fundamentally private that they have earned the name "private parts." There are some people who seek to abdicate that privacy and embrace nudism or naturalism. While some feel most comfortable in the buff, it makes others terribly uncomfortable.

A nudist colony has made its way into the news recently, due to the upcoming "Lingerie Bowl," an offshoot of the Super Bowl. The Lingerie Bowl, in its sixth year, had struggled to find a home for a bunch of underwear-clad models to play football. We find this a bit shocking-- we'd think a fraternity somewhere would gladly lend their university's football field, but that's another story...

The league originally planned to play in a vacant lot in Tampa, but local residents complained about skantily-clad women cavorting in their neighborhood. Florida's Caliente Nudist Resort then offered to host the bowl, and all was set for kick-off this Saturday. But now the St. Petersburg Times reports that the game is off. The reason is not entirely clear, but it sounds like the league objected to too many nudists being around and possibly in the audience during broadcasting.

Said the league spokesperson, "we feel ultimately it is in the best interest of the league not to place ourselves in what some would consider a potentially negative environment."

So, in the end, the nudists out-scandalized the partially-nude.

Lingerie Bowl canceled over dispute with Caliente nudist resort [St. Petersburg Times]