Privacy settings should not be diminished!

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

I totally disagree with the statement! We all have the right to do as we please. We have strived (or so we thought!) to have a society as free as possible in which we can conduct our private lives in the manner that best suits us. I should not be intimidated into not scratching by butt cheek in my house because I don’t want people to see me. Well, they can’t see me because my house life is private and nobody intrudes in it. Last time I checked…the Inquisition has been long gone with the Spanish empire.

While searching for definitions of privacy and secrecy certain concepts overlap the two. For instance, discreet, of one’s person, and confidential. Even Google definition uses privacy to describe secret (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=oO0&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&defl=en&q=define:secret&sa=X&ei=uaozTf3LE8GC8gat6MXQCA&ved=0CBMQkAE). Jung-at-heart.com describes Privacy as “the state of being unobserved” and Secrecy as “the act of keeping things hidden” (http://www.jung-at-heart.com/jung_at_heart/private-vs-secret-what-is-t.html). The author states that the difference stems from the “act of choosing boundaries”, in the case of privacy, and “hiding from…disclosing something [potentially incriminating]”, in the case of secrecy (http://www.jung-at-heart.com/jung_at_heart/private-vs-secret-what-is-t.html). Thus, while privacy is a way of preserving our boundaries from others for our well-being or comfort, secrecy is keeping things from other people because we fear retaliation.

The internet is far from being a “private” place but the little privacy we do have under our control should not be diminished. For example, I have the right to write a literary discharge against my employer on my blog and I also have the right to keep people from seeing it by keeping my profile private. Yet, I can’t control someone from my private group sharing this. Nonetheless, at least I should keep the ability to keep certain people or the general online public off my blog. The internet can be a place where careers, lives, marriages, etc. can be ruined. Thus, in my hypothetical example, I should understand the responsibility of bashing my employer and the repercussions if the material is leaked. But I should not be condemned to not having the ability to manipulate my privacy.