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I don't think privacy is a new problem. When my dad died, he left piles of personal pen-and-paper letters from his former wife and girlfriends that they probabl

I don't think privacy is a new problem. When my dad died, he left piles of personal pen-and-paper letters from his former wife and girlfriends that they probably would have preferred strangers didn't read. He was a therapist and also left confidential client information containing, for instance, interviews with child sex abuse victims for court cases. This is a problem in general when you trust something to someone to keep confidential. When they die, it becomes part of their estate and it's not confidential anymore. I don't see why data stored in online services should be any different from data stored on your computer in your house. With the cloud, it's sometimes not clear where it's being stored anyway.

TimPC 9y ago
The problem as a whole isn't new, but it's ramped up to a new level and applied more broadly. If your estate doesn't have provisions for handling your Facebook account in it, it will get left up on the Interwebs. And some of the distant friends who forget because of old age or were so distant they never really knew the person past away will continue to write happy birthday wishes, year after year. Those wishes will end up being seen by people directly affected by the death, year after year. It's not a desirable experience. I think the big challenge here is at the intersection of how we'd like the privacy of data to change on passing for data that was previously semi-public or widely shared which is new (In some sense the data is out there and can't be changed but platforms often govern how we experience the interactions around it). The problem you describe is kind of the opposite -- how does confidential data stay confidential. The other direction is sort of new, and isn't as much a data/information problem as an interaction one.
- ch4ch4 9y ago
  I don't understand this desire to make the Internet a "Safe Space" which doesn't offend anyone. The Internet is inherently "unsafe". If you can't stomach the thought of someone wishing a happy birthday to a dead dude, why not just let them know that the person is deceased? As for confidential data, it should be encrypted at rest, so that the decryption key disappears along with the deceased. No estate or court order can decrypt that data.
  - mmcwilliams 9y ago
    I don't think what you're responding to is a desire to create a "safe space", but is actually pointing out a bad user experience. If an unintended consequence of your product is that it reminds users of deceased friends and relatives at inopportune times or in uncomfortable ways, I think it's worth exploring solutions to that.
  - will_brown 9y ago
    >As for confidential data, it should be encrypted at rest, so that the decryption key disappears along with the deceased. That is not an answer solution to many issues. For example, I am an attorney and sole practitioner, if I were to die unexpectedly my clients would be entitled to get their case files, confidential/privileged/work product documentation can't just disappear upon my death and as others have suggested my estate could be liable for that just as likely as my estate could be liable for the same documents being release to any 3rd party. Separate and apart from liability I could simply prejudice my clients case in the instance of litigation either due loss of documentation or disclosure of the same to 3rd parties. And these are not just hypotheticals, I worked in an office building where another attorney died unexpectedly of a heart attacker while driving, and there was no real procedure in place, simply many in the building rallied and took the case files and helped his clients, but who knows what documentation was lost and never recovered, alternatively there was very likely all kinds of breaches of professional responsibility and liability exposure, despite the realities of the legal community rallying and doing their best in a bad situation.
    - Razengan 9y ago
      >As for confidential data, it should be encrypted at rest, so that the decryption key disappears along with the deceased. > That is not an answer solution to many issues. What happens to memory in our brain when we die? What about the things that only we know and never tell anyone else? Isn't that a problem? Should we make an attempt to recover a person's memories from their corpse? We've been dealing with irrevocable losses upon death ever since humans started doing other things besides eating and reproducing. Our online passwords and porn stashes are, generally, just another item on the list of things that die with us. ---- My aunt, who was very much like a foster mother to me, died this year after spending 4 months in a comatose/vegetative state. Before that she had suffered a stroke which rendered her unable to write anything. So for the last couple years of her life, she was unable to leave behind her thoughts (I deeply regret not helping her use her iPad for that), and not even able to tell her family anything in the last few months, despite being able to see us and hear us. We don't even have any recent pictures of her, let alone videos. I'm thinking of contacting her phone company and requesting if they could provide us with a recording from a random call, just so we can listen to her voice, but I doubt they will oblige.
- averagewall 9y ago
  I mean Facebook should treat the account as part of the estate, to be controlled by whoever controls the estate. If you're the heir of all their miscellaneous property, that would mean you get to prove that to Facebook and they hand over the account to you. Maybe Facebook doesn't want to deal with the messy papers and signatures involved in that.
  - abricot 9y ago
    You are essentially advocating that you should be able to inherit the identity of a person, and not just the photos and messages of that person.
    - shagie 9y ago
      Controlled doesn't mean "I am writing as Grandpa" but rather "I am writing on behalf of Grandpa." Part of what needs to be addressed is "is what I write and what I control online part of my _identity_ or part of my _intellectual property_?" No, a person inheriting the estate doesn't have the right to pretend to be Grandpa and collect social security checks or defraud people based on that identity. Yes, a person inheriting the estate does have the right to take the collected poetry and essays that Grandpa wrote and publishing it. ... even if they are published on Facebook. Are Facebook, Twitter, Github etc... in the first category or the second category? Microsoft outlook has a neat feature to "send on behalf of" (account settings, delegate access). Such an approach would be something to consider for an online presence to distinguish who is doing the sending - the deceased or the estate.
    - adventured 9y ago
      > You are essentially advocating that you should be able to inherit the identity of a person Just because eg the person's wallet is now technical property of the estate, doesn't mean the identity information contained within (driver's license, credit cards, etc) now acts as a form of identity inheritance or transferal. That's not how estates work legally.
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    The article states, for example, "... even where it feels right to turn over private messages to family members, laws may prevent us from doing so. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act and Stored Communications Act, for instance, prevent us from relying upon family consent to disclose the contents of a person’s communications." So simply handing over the account isn't a possibility, they'd have to remove the nonpublic communications first.
noncoml 9y ago
The difference being that your dad’s documents ended up with him. Online they end up with FB or Google.
- chii 9y ago
  How is this different from a safety deposit that was owned by a now deceased person? Surely, the same existing laws should apply to physical objects and digital objects.
  - noncoml 9y ago
    I didn’t say it’s much different to what you describe.
lake99 9y ago
> When they die, it becomes part of their estate and it's not confidential anymore. IANAL, but I don't think the law works this way. If you reveal any of that confidential information, you would be as liable to getting sued for breach of confidentiality as your father was. I believe this will be one of those cases where ignorance of the law will not protect you, beause it is common knowledge that what happened between your dad and his clients is confidential information.
- nindalf 9y ago
  Does ignorance of the law ever help you?
  - lake99 9y ago
    I did not say it will help you. But read this anyway http://research.lawyers.com/ignorance-of-the-law-may-be-an-excuse.html http://research.lawyers.com/ignorance-of-the-law-may-be-an-e...
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      Given that statute affecting everyday life has grown to a scale that nobody, not even lawyers or even judges, can study and apply it consistently; it's hard to say how anyone could be expected to apply it. The great majority of laws on the books are not intuitive either. Honestly I end up wondering how the legal system functions at all.
syshum 9y ago
Which is one of the reasons I am a strong advocate for Data Privacy laws. Today most nations including the US already have laws around Medical Records, maybe your father passed before these laws where in place but if his therapist records became "part of the estate" and you released them publicly you likely would be in violation of more than a few federal laws, and if your father stored those records improperly (which based on your description of the records that is likely) he would have also been in violation of Medical Records law. I going to assume his practice predated these laws, but situations like what you described are one of the reasons these laws were created in the first place. Simply because my Doctor dies does not mean my medical information is now public. So no privacy is not a new problem, but it is a problem people need to take more seriously, not take the position you seem to have here which is "well it is always been an issue so lets not worry about it"

TimPC 9y ago

The problem as a whole isn't new, but it's ramped up to a new level and applied more broadly. If your estate doesn't have provisions for handling your Facebook account in it, it will get left up on the Interwebs. And some of the distant friends who forget because of old age or were so distant they never really knew the person past away will continue to write happy birthday wishes, year after year. Those wishes will end up being seen by people directly affected by the death, year after year. It's not a desirable experience. I think the big challenge here is at the intersection of how we'd like the privacy of data to change on passing for data that was previously semi-public or widely shared which is new (In some sense the data is out there and can't be changed but platforms often govern how we experience the interactions around it). The problem you describe is kind of the opposite -- how does confidential data stay confidential. The other direction is sort of new, and isn't as much a data/information problem as an interaction one.

ch4ch4 9y ago
I don't understand this desire to make the Internet a "Safe Space" which doesn't offend anyone. The Internet is inherently "unsafe". If you can't stomach the thought of someone wishing a happy birthday to a dead dude, why not just let them know that the person is deceased? As for confidential data, it should be encrypted at rest, so that the decryption key disappears along with the deceased. No estate or court order can decrypt that data.
- mmcwilliams 9y ago
  I don't think what you're responding to is a desire to create a "safe space", but is actually pointing out a bad user experience. If an unintended consequence of your product is that it reminds users of deceased friends and relatives at inopportune times or in uncomfortable ways, I think it's worth exploring solutions to that.
- will_brown 9y ago
  >As for confidential data, it should be encrypted at rest, so that the decryption key disappears along with the deceased. That is not an answer solution to many issues. For example, I am an attorney and sole practitioner, if I were to die unexpectedly my clients would be entitled to get their case files, confidential/privileged/work product documentation can't just disappear upon my death and as others have suggested my estate could be liable for that just as likely as my estate could be liable for the same documents being release to any 3rd party. Separate and apart from liability I could simply prejudice my clients case in the instance of litigation either due loss of documentation or disclosure of the same to 3rd parties. And these are not just hypotheticals, I worked in an office building where another attorney died unexpectedly of a heart attacker while driving, and there was no real procedure in place, simply many in the building rallied and took the case files and helped his clients, but who knows what documentation was lost and never recovered, alternatively there was very likely all kinds of breaches of professional responsibility and liability exposure, despite the realities of the legal community rallying and doing their best in a bad situation.
  - Razengan 9y ago
    >As for confidential data, it should be encrypted at rest, so that the decryption key disappears along with the deceased. > That is not an answer solution to many issues. What happens to memory in our brain when we die? What about the things that only we know and never tell anyone else? Isn't that a problem? Should we make an attempt to recover a person's memories from their corpse? We've been dealing with irrevocable losses upon death ever since humans started doing other things besides eating and reproducing. Our online passwords and porn stashes are, generally, just another item on the list of things that die with us. ---- My aunt, who was very much like a foster mother to me, died this year after spending 4 months in a comatose/vegetative state. Before that she had suffered a stroke which rendered her unable to write anything. So for the last couple years of her life, she was unable to leave behind her thoughts (I deeply regret not helping her use her iPad for that), and not even able to tell her family anything in the last few months, despite being able to see us and hear us. We don't even have any recent pictures of her, let alone videos. I'm thinking of contacting her phone company and requesting if they could provide us with a recording from a random call, just so we can listen to her voice, but I doubt they will oblige.
averagewall 9y ago
I mean Facebook should treat the account as part of the estate, to be controlled by whoever controls the estate. If you're the heir of all their miscellaneous property, that would mean you get to prove that to Facebook and they hand over the account to you. Maybe Facebook doesn't want to deal with the messy papers and signatures involved in that.
- abricot 9y ago
  You are essentially advocating that you should be able to inherit the identity of a person, and not just the photos and messages of that person.
  - shagie 9y ago
    Controlled doesn't mean "I am writing as Grandpa" but rather "I am writing on behalf of Grandpa." Part of what needs to be addressed is "is what I write and what I control online part of my _identity_ or part of my _intellectual property_?" No, a person inheriting the estate doesn't have the right to pretend to be Grandpa and collect social security checks or defraud people based on that identity. Yes, a person inheriting the estate does have the right to take the collected poetry and essays that Grandpa wrote and publishing it. ... even if they are published on Facebook. Are Facebook, Twitter, Github etc... in the first category or the second category? Microsoft outlook has a neat feature to "send on behalf of" (account settings, delegate access). Such an approach would be something to consider for an online presence to distinguish who is doing the sending - the deceased or the estate.
  - adventured 9y ago
    > You are essentially advocating that you should be able to inherit the identity of a person Just because eg the person's wallet is now technical property of the estate, doesn't mean the identity information contained within (driver's license, credit cards, etc) now acts as a form of identity inheritance or transferal. That's not how estates work legally.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  The article states, for example, "... even where it feels right to turn over private messages to family members, laws may prevent us from doing so. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act and Stored Communications Act, for instance, prevent us from relying upon family consent to disclose the contents of a person’s communications." So simply handing over the account isn't a possibility, they'd have to remove the nonpublic communications first.

noncoml 9y ago

The difference being that your dad’s documents ended up with him. Online they end up with FB or Google.

chii 9y ago
How is this different from a safety deposit that was owned by a now deceased person? Surely, the same existing laws should apply to physical objects and digital objects.
- noncoml 9y ago
  I didn’t say it’s much different to what you describe.

lake99 9y ago

> When they die, it becomes part of their estate and it's not confidential anymore. IANAL, but I don't think the law works this way. If you reveal any of that confidential information, you would be as liable to getting sued for breach of confidentiality as your father was. I believe this will be one of those cases where ignorance of the law will not protect you, beause it is common knowledge that what happened between your dad and his clients is confidential information.

nindalf 9y ago
Does ignorance of the law ever help you?
- lake99 9y ago
  I did not say it will help you. But read this anyway http://research.lawyers.com/ignorance-of-the-law-may-be-an-excuse.html http://research.lawyers.com/ignorance-of-the-law-may-be-an-e...
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    Given that statute affecting everyday life has grown to a scale that nobody, not even lawyers or even judges, can study and apply it consistently; it's hard to say how anyone could be expected to apply it. The great majority of laws on the books are not intuitive either. Honestly I end up wondering how the legal system functions at all.

syshum 9y ago

Which is one of the reasons I am a strong advocate for Data Privacy laws. Today most nations including the US already have laws around Medical Records, maybe your father passed before these laws where in place but if his therapist records became "part of the estate" and you released them publicly you likely would be in violation of more than a few federal laws, and if your father stored those records improperly (which based on your description of the records that is likely) he would have also been in violation of Medical Records law. I going to assume his practice predated these laws, but situations like what you described are one of the reasons these laws were created in the first place. Simply because my Doctor dies does not mean my medical information is now public. So no privacy is not a new problem, but it is a problem people need to take more seriously, not take the position you seem to have here which is "well it is always been an issue so lets not worry about it"