Legal expert Woodrow Hartzog weighs in on privacy issues

Woodrow Hartzog, a Samford University professor and expert on privacy law, spoke Monday in Carroll Hall about the flaws surrounding public information in the digital age.

Hartzog, who received his Ph.D. from UNC, said it is common for people today to think that keeping information private is wishful thinking, given the prevalence of the Internet.

“The ‘no privacy in public information’ argument is flawed because we don’t even know what public information means,” he said.

He said what he considers public information differs from the general public’s conception, and he said there should be changes to the way public information is defined.

Cathy Packer, a UNC professor and co-director of the Center for Media Law and Policy, said courts have traditionally said that all information posted online is public.

“People actually don’t feel that way when they put their information on the Internet because they may, for example, adjust their Facebook settings so that only goes to their friends,” she said.

While it’s a common conception that anything Internet users post is public, Hartzog said this concept deserves more explanation.

Hartzog said public information often falls under five categories — information that is accessible; widely known; of interest to society; designated for collection; use and disclosure; and anything not private. But these descriptions, he said, can often be problematic.

Three value judgements, he said, should instead be considered in a revised definition of public information: transaction costs, disclosure relationships and the purpose of restrictions.

He said the role of transaction costs, meaning what it takes to obtain certain information, is often ignored, and there should be a bigger focus on the transaction costs of public records.

Accessibility, he said, claims that if someone has the ability to view the information in any way, then it’s not private. He called it “theoretical accessibility” and said he disagrees.

“If anything is theoretically accessible, then everything is,” he said.

Jim Heavner, president of Chapel Hill-based media and marketing company Vilcom LLC, asked Hartzog if information that’s harder to find is therefore more private.

Hartzog said “obscurity” should replace “privacy.”

“If information is hard to find, it is more obscure. And then I would argue that obscurity is an interest that falls under this kind of large umbrella of things that we consider to be privacy interests.”

Hartzog also said there is an idea that one should not expect privacy if they have disclosed it to a third party, but this is unrealistic.

He said relationships of trust are everywhere, like handing a credit card to a waiter and trusting your information is safe.

“Information relationships also involve trust,” he said. “And it’s the glue that keeps commerce together, it’s the glue that keeps social relationships together, so the third party doctrine almost completely ignores it.”

state@dailytarheel.com