CNN reported that a timely update to his Facebook page provided an alibi for a man accused of a crime 12 miles away. The Facebook records for Rodney Bradford were subpoenaed and they did, indeed, showed Mr. Bradford had just posted a comment about his pregnant girlfriend and her desire for pancakes about one minute before two men 12 miles were being robbed. This information validated Mr. Bradford’s alibi that he did not commit the crime.
While I applaud Mr. Bradford being vindicated for this particular crime (he is still facing a previous indictment for robbery), I can’t help but wonder what this really means for us in terms of privacy. If you carry a cell phone, particularly a “smart phone,” you should have no illusions as to privacy because you can be tracked, GPS’d and followed by satellite easily. Your computer allows on-line stores to recommend products to you based on what you’ve brought or looked at in the past. If you own a home, your property records are in the public domain. If you own a web domain, your street address and phone number are part of the collective knowledge base. Most of the time we willing share our information with the full knowledge of its intended distribution. Sometimes, however, we don’t realize that when we go on-line to get a coupon for something we want to buy, we are giving that vendor the authority, whether we acknowledge it or not, to distribute and sell the info they’ve collected from us as THEY see fit.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not about to start wearing an aluminum foil cap and rubber raincoat when I go out in public to protect myself from the prying eyes of overhead satellites. And I certainly won’t stop using my phone and computer. But to me, the Bradford case is not about rejoicing that technology saved the man from going to prison, but about reflecting on how much collective privacy we’ve lost over the last couple of decades. Privacy that we didn’t know was missing.