When we talk about Privacy Issues today, it seems we are so consumed by the politically fueled current events of terrorism and the Patriot Act that we forget other dangerously close to home (at your doorstep) reasons to protect each others right to privacy. (I’ll warn you – this isn’t a cheerful post.)

For the most part, we believe in the goodness of other people and we inherently put our faith in that integrity which may or may not exist. It’s easy to get carried away with posting pictures… there’s so many things that make us happy and we desire to joyfully share with others. Acquiring people’s permissions become a fuzzy memory when they wind up in fun snap shots; it is sometimes difficult to reign ourselves in when we might need to double check if we’ll inadvertently provide enough detail to remove or destroy our privacy (or that of others).

I have always been hesitant to post photos online because unlike writing, photos are very tangible things that can easily erase the ability to be anonymous. Perhaps it’s my own experiences with abuse – either directly as a someone who recovered, or indirectly as a protective educator.

When I was a intern teacher in a public school, we had to post pictures and names of students with care. We had a student who was part of a foster family, and several others throughout the school who lived in divorced families. In a library setting, I was approached by a patron who was a foster-care parent. To help insure the privacy and protection of the children in their care, they requested that the children’s last names not be written on the little paper name tags that would be posted on one of the walls inside the library.

It’s a hard reminder that some children are in foster care not because they are orphans, but because they’ve been removed from parents who ought not to be; and there are reasons why some divorced families have a court ruling full custody in favor to one parent.

It’s an incredibly unfortunate thing to think about, but it’s a horrible reality: just as there are many wonderful, loving, caring parents and people in the world, there are unsavory ones as well. Resentful and/or abusive people have used the internet to try to locate minor children and previous spouses for malicious reasons. Finding an identifiable image and/or first and last name of a child on a school or public website may alert such harmful persons to the locale of the people who sought protection against them.

When taking on Privacy Issues from any standpoint -whether Legal, Library, or Activist- it’s important not to forget the ramifications if these invaluable protections were not in place.