Computers, Privacy & the Constitution

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XiyunYangFirstPaper 4 - 14 Jan 2015 - Main.IanSullivan
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Act V: The Decay of Privacy and the Sprouts of Chinese Democracy

-- By XiyunYang - 04 Mar 2013

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Act V Scene i: Life

Early evening, June 2009. Minhang district, a southwest suburb of Shanghai. Apartment buildings sprout in rows, identical, like corn. A thunderous noise. The ground shakes. Block seven of the Lotus Riverside complex has toppled over like a domino, completely intact. National media descends and begins to ask questions about corruption. Nothing comes of it. But all is not lost. Within a week, someone has exposed officials in the local government land expropriation bureau as shareholders of the construction company, including their addresses and national ID numbers on a popular Internet forum. An investigation ensues.
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<		The digital age created a wave of citizen journalism and internet vigilantism in China. It has created the human flesh search engine. All the pieces of personal information floating on the Internet has dragged corrupt conduct into the light of day. If concepts of privacy are contextual, then in China, there is none. Your secrets belong to the state. But for the first time, they also belong to the public.
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>		The digital age created a wave of citizen journalism and internet vigilantism in China. It has created the human flesh search engine. All the pieces of personal information floating on the Internet has dragged corrupt conduct into the light of day. If concepts of privacy are contextual, then in China, there is none. Your secrets belong to the state. But for the first time, they also belong to the public.
 

Act V Scene ii: Growth

The corpse of privacy has fertilized transparency. In a country where princelings rule and corruption is so atomized that no one has clean hands, the boundary between the public, the private, and the political is permeable and opaque. Why shouldn't the Chinese public dig into the private lives of princelings to expose the lavish lifestyle provided for by their corrupt parents? Why shouldn't villagers dig to expose the webs of personal relationships feeding a culture of bribery and fraud? How can the line between the private and the public be drawn at all?

Revision 4r4 - 14 Jan 2015 - 22:44:39 - IanSullivan
Revision 3r3 - 23 May 2013 - 02:19:00 - XiyunYang
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