When you don't expect to see yourself on the magazine cover

"How do you define privacy?" This is a very interesting question that I've never thought of. I've always thought that if anyone uses any of my information that makes me uncomfortable, that is an invasion of my privacy. But in our discussion today, I realized the term "privacy" deserves a deeper thought.

The presenting group told us a little story of a couple engaged in some romantic activities in the public and was taken photos of. Those photos later appeared on national magazines, but the couple felt that their privacy had been invaded. I understand why the couple felt that way. If you don't expect to see your photos appear on national magazines, especially photos in which you engaged in romantic activities or pictures that make u look bad, you probably will be shocked and pissed. On the other hand, I totally understand the photographer's point of view of using those photos. People usually do not expose certain parts of life in the public if they don't want other people to see. The photographer's perspective is simple: If you show it to the public, you don't care about letting others know, so it won't be a big deal for me to make use of it.

Well, both are correct, but at the same time, I feel that both parties fail to put themselves in each other's shoes. I would not dig my nose in a department store to begin with if I don't want others to see it. But if I were the photographer, I would at least notify the people that i'm taking pictures of before I use them on magazines.

This reminds me of my experience in China last summer. I went to China with friends. While we were taking photos of the Forbidden City, other Chinese tourists were taking pictures of my white friends. Not "with", but "of" my friends! They didn't come ask us if it's ok. Instead, they just took the pictures right in front of us, and some of them were so close that I was worried their camera would hit our faces. My friends found it interesting of how curious Chinese people were to foreigners. None of them got mad because people were taking pictures of them without asking first, but I believe they would be shocked if they saw their pictures on Chinese national magazines the next day, especially if those pictures made them look bad.

As our guest speaker said today, it's very hard to define privacy. An incident that some people think as an invasion to the privacy might seem just normal to others, just as some couples won't mind their pictures being posted on magazines while some got mad. I'm not an expert of this issue, and I don't know how to give the most complete definition of privacy, but one thing I learned from my experiences is that it's better to ask first than being accused of invasion of others' privacy. As for the difficult part of defining privacy, I'll just leave it to those cybersecurity experts then.