more news today. and these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are on the day. it's seven thirty pm in moscow and this is our two year we've got breaking news this hour a big chunk of russian second city st petersburg has been left without now we're following in algiers and seething traffic lights stopped working and radio

broadcast went off air and central metro stations were also left without electricity they were tracking this story and we'll bring you the latest as and when we get it now in other news this friday a thai court rules alleged russian arms dealer viktor brut be extradited to the u.s. within three months but russia's foreign minister describes the decision as political grounds to bring him back home mr breaux denies accusations from selling. russia's preparing to power up iraq's first nuclear plant on saturday under the observation of the you went and watched all the joint project in which share will be fully operational in and around among. us the debate over the building of a mosque near new york's ground zero site heats up as an ad campaign seen by many as anti muslim is posted on bosses around the city president obama has defended the plan saying all cultures have a right to practice their faith. up next another heated debate with peter lavelle

and his gas from around the world in crosstalk. and you can. follow unwelcome cross-talk on peter lavelle has the age of privacy come to an end internet based social networks are changing the way we live they are also forcing us to think again about the dividing line between what is public and what is private so what is the new world according to facebook. the case. to discuss users as networks i'm joined by and in rome she is the information and privacy commissioner of ontario in washington we have christina garner she's an

intellectual property attorney and in san francisco we cross to ben parr the coeditor of mashable dot com an internet news blog and another member of our crosstalk team on the hunger all right folks cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in interject any time you want first of all i'd like to go to and is the age of privacy coming to to an end we hear that phrase a lot it didn't come from the c.e.o. of facebook but he's it's attributed to him. it's wrong the age of privacy will never come to an end in my view because privacy equals freedom we forget that without privacy the kind of freedom that we enjoy in most of the western world it wouldn't be taking place so you have to have privacy for freedom freedom of choice is essential which implies control over your information your information flows control is absolutely critical and that's why these issues are coming up but even if you look at kids these days they've done a survey recently at university of berkeley california where kids also value

privacy students university students high school students they may have different the concept may have evolved in terms of the exact importance and where it applies and where doesn't between what adults might think but they still value privacy and i will submit to you we will always have a need for privacy so we just need to figure out how to do it but if i if i go to christina the internet age the age of social networks i mean then why use all this talk about the lack of privacy or the crimping of privacy i mean there's been a lot of uproar there's a lot of governments that are angry with facebook there's a lot of even companies are concerned about having their name used if companies like social networks like facebook can't manage their clientele as it were i mean there is a threat out there is it just about regulation. i think the some extent it is about regulation i think specifically when it comes to children referring back to the

conversation about younger people and their use of social networks i think that people are afraid that a company like facebook can arbitrarily change their policies whenever they want and i think we've seen that over the last three years i think that facebook's current move is a response to a push for regulation and facebook wanted to avoid that ok i mean if i could just be kind of cynical if you put something on the internet then it's fair game ok i mean if you put it on maybe not somebody else but you put a picture of yourself or you write a comment you give an opinion i mean it's fair game it's not in the public well and it can be used if you like it or not. actually in a lot of ways i agree with that assessment and so i disagree with the panelists and saying that there's not as much control over privacy anymore there are two things one privacy is a rather new concept in terms of human history it only really became a strong concept during the renaissance and before that it wasn't that strong the other thing i want to note is that now that we have mobile phones now that we have

camera phones and flip cameras and all those kind of things anything you do all it really takes is one person snapping one photo recording one message sending one text and the concept of privacy is gone because it's been sent across the web and so what is happening is that we're trying to adjust as a world as a society to this new era where technology has changed how privacy is done and if we hold on to what we thought of as privacy we're going to be sorely disappointed ok and if i go back to you i mean on santa fe facebook is a business i mean why is a business they're going to take advantage. of it was cynically behind closed doors not their public face but they do take completed vantage of all of the details we can accumulate and sell to other people it's a business it's just not you know it's just not all about friends it's a business matter it's all about as a business they have to be smart in terms of not wanting to lose their users as

a business they depend on their network are growing at sustaining the users you have been adding on new users and they've just incurred the wrath of their users look at why do you think these changes have come about there has been a dramatic response a backlash to their weakening of their privacy controls to their confusion which they've attached to that to their adding a lot of information making public the default instead of private so they have incurred a really significant backlash so to then i would say privacy is not going to go away any time soon and facebook has responded very very. only look at the new controls out there this is a direct response to their public saying their users i want more privacy or i'm going you know i don't believe facebook they don't want that ok. so you point out to everybody the number of people joining facebook is only increasing it's not decreasing even during all of these controversies ben would you like to respond to

what ann had to say i was going to say. the user revolt is definitely overblown sour only a few thousand people committed to deleting the facebook and i bet that the facebook has changed privacy settings it didn't make it so that it's more private it just made it so that you had a little bit more control and most people the vast majority are going to keep with it are going to make theirs more public which is just the trend that's going on ok christine is nothing wrong right and i'm going to. go and it's all about it's all about freedom of choice so it's not that i'm telling people you have to protect the information and not release it to everyone i don't care i want you to be able to exercise your choices in a way that enables you to exercise control if you want to do that you know may thirty first was the day that they were talking about in terms of everybody leaving facebook and i'm sure this was orchestrated in advance of that because they don't want to risk losing massive number of users i don't know how many but the point is what they've allowed changes and hence control it enhances control it gives people

the option of making their information much more private and makes the privacy settings much more user friendly that's what it's all about ok if i go to christina right now i mean this deal is this i mean facebook gives their users of free platform you don't have to pay for facebook and in return they give their personal details for continuation of their business model is that a fair deal. i think that in some senses it is i mean facebook does provide resources for you to connect with a variety of people some of whom you never would have connected with in the real time space. but on the on the other hand facebook started as a college community and i remember joining facebook you know and i was part of my college network and it's continued to expand i think that people when they initially joined if you joined a couple years ago you were joining to belong to a specific network and now that's expanded and with the new features that have been really starting with news feed the beacon program and moving forward i think people

don't quite understand in soul there are these big media blowups about facebook that the privacy controls have changed at all so i don't think it's that people don't care about privacy i think that it's a matter of education people don't understand what's going on and i think that although there are you know millions a user leaving facebook right now there are a lot of people who are upset when they hear that their information went public for example and i don't think people understand i think people just want to know what the rules of the game are and they want to know they're not shifting all the time ok ben if i can go to you i mean it seems to me the rules are already known i mean you have to take the time to just read them ok not that that means that i would expect an eleven year old to join facebook and actually read the fine print but most of us don't read the fine print on anything these days i mean they're out there i mean i'm not defending facebook maybe facebook should have been a little bit more. pro active in explaining its changes but they're out there they haven't done anything that would be. openly deceptive. i agree with

that assessment so facebook could have communicated better what they were doing but they took those steps yesterday what you're going to see and i was at facebook headquarters yesterday what you're going to see over the next few weeks is there's going to be a message to the top for any of the facebook for every user saying like here is where you can change your privacy settings here's how it works here's information about how you can change it all in one click or change based on your preferred settings and so really in the end you do have a choice of going back to our panelists you have a choice your choice is really whether to join facebook or not join facebook and but that's but now you have the choice of privacy features as well but if you don't like facebook you don't have to join it it's a choice not a right or responsibility to be on facebook and you want to tell you i can tell you that the times i've talked to mark zuckerberg he wouldn't agree with you in terms of you either take facebook and join it with whatever comes along or you don't join it he wants to attract people to facebook so he wants to make it as attractive as

possible in terms of a website the recent criticisms that have resulted since the changes that happened in december have caused a lot of people to look elsewhere and there's multiple other offerings now coming out dya spore is one for example which is offering complete privacy to people complete control it's attracting a lot of attention so if i was facebook and i've talked to mark about this you guys have done to make it unattractive ok do you want to jump in but there is no there is no real alternative dies for is a is not even built yet it is just a concept that got some funding and the thing is if you look at the stats facebook has been growing faster than ever they're going to break five hundred million users in the next month or two that shows clearly that people aren't as concerned as you believe they are about what's been happening they care more about facebook helping them share their information with their friends than the privacy issues ok what if i get i know it's great i don't have a problem with who. people wanting to share ok christine if i can go i just want

them to be able to have control because you know if i go to you i mean every time we buy something with our credit card for example it's tracked by the credit card company obviously for payment and they sell that information off to other people so they can send you junk mail they can do all these kind of things facebook's going doing no differently on site. i think that the difference is is that you know when you there's transaction costs to everything and i think that's you know ben's alluding to as well i mean there's a transaction cost for joining facebook i mean i do minimal if you want to go in and change all your privacy settings like you are still giving up some information in a same thing when you do a credit card transaction the credit card industry they always have a regulated even though there are those trade offs i think the issue is and my particular concern is going to jump i think i'm going to jump in right now i'm going to let you finish when we get back from the break after a short break we'll continue our discussion on internet privacy stay with us.

if you. want. the team that's been to the kaluga me where the car industry is rapidly developing . large egos for the area where the first russian fleet was born. where the indigenous people were the first car dixie's navigator and where russia's glorious history. is still visible. while.

on our keep. you. want to. welcome back to crossfire i'm curious about tree mind you we're talking about privacy in social networks. but before let's see how popular such websites are among russians like everywhere else in the world russia too is dealing with the online privacy versus public transparency issue the internet age has made it possible for people to find thousands of forums full socializing information can be shared lie of websites and social networks more rapidly than ever before but russians are not yet convinced of

social networking xm merits a recent poll conducted by russian public opinion research center found that fifty two percent of russians online use social networks thirty five percent said they do not three percent said they had given up spending time on social networking sites back to you peter. ok christina before we went to the break we were talking about the usage of information and i gave up the gave the example of credit cards and you retorted quite correctly before we went to the break that it's regulated so should facebook and other. social networks be regulated like the anything else would be when it's gathering details on information personal information commercial information financial eccentrics i think that federal trade commission and other regulatory bodies should start explorations into regulation but i think that facebook's behavior does not stand for the rest of the industry and so i'm not going to take a program stance but i do think we have to remember that the law is very behind in

terms of technology as an intellectual property lawyer i see this all the time i think that there's going to be any into right elation i think specifically with children as i was saying before the break i'm more concerned with people ages thirteen to seventeen and packed on their information on facebook versus people that are eighteen and over who can be contractually bound by terms of use so i think that that sort of the group that there needs to be any regulation needs to be focused upon ok what do you think about that ben regulation or can the industry regulated some of this spat that we've recently seen maybe it's been overblown but is it up to facebook and other social networks to regulate themselves and learn from these mistakes and play the add on to that is that we're just trying to keep the legal environment just trying to keep up with the technology or people trying to keep up with the technology who are all trying to keep up the technology changes and evolves so rapidly that i find it difficult for to see government as ation effectively governing social media which is a major concern of mine i think really in the end it shouldn't we who really should

be focusing on facebook regulating itself i wouldn't trust that or government regulating facebook i also don't trust that it's really about us educating ourselves and educating our youth about the benefits of social networking and the drawbacks of social networking and making sure that we know what our kids are doing so it really is the responsibility of the parents in our family. i see you nodding their head yes i actually agree with ben even though in canada and my jurisdiction we do have regulation in this area i in my office there's a term we developed called privacy by design it's about embedding privacy into the design of the new i t computer systems business practices and networked infrastructure and in addition to that i believe so strongly in the need to educate and handsome awareness of the privacy risk associated with various technologies so i totally agree with ben i think people have to take personal responsibility when you use a social networking site especially for kids parents have to be heavily involved

educating we go into schools and universities we talk to people we enhance their understanding of what does it mean when you put this information out there for everyone to see forever we we really tell them you've got to think before you post and here are the concerns you have to just turn your mind to so i urge people to look at the privacy settings and with the changes facebook has just made it's awesome because now what you've got a one click system where you can bring in privacy very strongly there's a global opt out you can say i don't want any of those third parties to access my personal information and the privacy choices you make are now persistent they apply not only retroactively but to any future changes facebook are making these are all very positive developments ok and you you preempted my next question that we have a good answer before asking is who is ultimately responsible for privacy is it the user or is it the these networks these websites who's responsible or is it has to

be symbiotic i'd like to put a ban on that one. i think there is a there has to be a symbiotic this where both sides are working but in the end the ultimate responsibility lies with the user facebook is a corporation and as a corporation their goal is to make money for their shareholders that's just how the world works but the goal of the user and the person it's the individual their goal whether they want to share all their information in order to promote themselves or become more open in the world or whether they want to keep it more private to a close group of friends or not use facebook at all and so i thing in the end it is the users responsibility ok and i asked the same question to christine is that the user is responsibility because again i mean i don't want to defend facebook here but essentially if you'd read the rules in the regulations then a lot of this would have just been wouldn't happen in the first place ok if you just pay attention to what you're working on it's the user that has to be ultimately responsible like i said to beginning the program if you put a picture up you put it up and it's going to be there and people are going to use

it in there's not much you can do about it these days. i think the point i take contention with with facebook is you need to warn users about what's going to happen and it needs to be the big issue is that there's opt in versus opt out and with facebook it's normally when they make changes there's an opt out thing it's a small button that sort of shows up at the top of the news feed or somewhere else and you know you're hoping that people catch that when they're using facebook i know that with instant personalization when it came out i kept trying to avoid having to you know click whether or not i'm going to transition my hobbies and interests into the like function they just introduced i think that responsibility is on behalf of corporations i mean if facebook still growing and people are still opting into it they're still making money then there's no reason why they can't show some responsibility and just warn people adequately about their policy changes but it's also uses responsibility if society does not uphold privacy as a value then that's going to reflect in the way the courts are able to apply

privacy law ok and if i can go to you i mean just the very fact that someone goes on something like facebook you are surrendering your privacy at least in one definition of a no i mean isn't that just something that you know you have to be well prepared for even though you know i'm very familiar with facebook i left it actually but you know who could have access to it i mean your you know sometimes you may have a friend today for that person may not be your friend tomorrow unfortunately that's the way the world works and they may have a lot of access to information about you but you don't want to get out i mean there's really nothing you can do about it so do is this really you have to get used to it environment i mean if if you want to play you can get hurt. look we've been dealing with this problem for many years it's been enhanced now that it's in online social media but you make choices when you disclose information to a personal friend be it online or offline of course that friend can go and tell them one hundred people and there you can have consequences but we choose to

connect connecting is very important so while yes it is a choice you make when you joined facebook your ability to restrict who has access to your information is very important so you go on facebook and you want to connect and you only want your information to be shared with your friends now you can do that you can research information sharing only with your friends or friends or friends or to everyone you have choices it's all about choice and both parties have to enable this happening it's not an all or nothing game it's never a zero sum game ben what about that i mean some women are who do want to get a good. i was going to carry out so that the thing was a point that you made if one friend saves one picture that you share your picture with just your friends one person see if that picture puts on their desktop and then uploads it to the blog because they thought it would be ok and then it spreads everywhere that is a risk you take and you have to be clear about that that's how the world works so i think which is why i keep saying it is in the end the user responsibility and i would live by one simple rule if i do want if i don't post anything on line i

wouldn't want my mother to see. that's a good rule and ban i totally agree with you but facebook can make it easier for people to protect their privacy that's what they've just done these changes before it was so hard peter you said well if they just let people use or just read their privacy rules then i will be fine are you kidding me the privacy policy was longer than the us constitution i think no one's going to do that so you got to simplify that's what they're doing now they're making it easy for people to make choices and that's what i want to enable people to take greater control and as ben said exercise responsibility very important christina is a lawyer and what about that scenario that they disband just gave to a seriously among your friends you have a picture or a friend downloads it puts it up on their blog you see for see legal consequences of something like that even if not today in the immediate future is the technology evolves in law involves. i don't think it's necessarily the friend scenario to be

concerned about but there was a case in texas using the photo sharing application flicker where a company actually took a photo and used a thirteen year old girl in the campaign to get people to sign up for cellular service and she only found out because someone else contacted her to let her know they were using the picture in a campaign in australia so i don't think it's i think that with facebook and i would agree there is some personal responsibility it's obvious you can tag photos on facebook if you're going to share photos and your friends have access to them they might share them elsewhere and i think that's adequately covered in the terms of use to some extent but i do see the potential for a comp. on other social networking applications to be using the photos and that would be a violation of the law so i think that people need to know that those are the sort of things that are happening and they need to monitor their privacy accordingly ok ben what it what what's the future of all of this i mean what did we learn through this what some people would say this facebook fiasco what did we learn and what are the company learn what did the company learn the company learned that it had to be more clear about what it's changing i don't think they're going to be straying away

from their path which is to be a more open social network and to be permeate itself across the web i think we learned that one we need to be more aware of what we're sharing and what sites were using and then the second thing is we have to be aware that in my belief at least that privacy is evolving because of technology because it is easier than ever to share information with large groups of friends and because it's easier than ever to have a picture taken of you to have a phone call or text be sent all those types of things so we have to be aware of what is changing we have to keep educating our society what is changing in terms of privacy because a technology going for that's all the time we have here i want to thank my guests today in rome washington and in san francisco and thanks to our viewers for watching us here darkie see you next time and remember cross talk rules. and.

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