There's a general misunderstanding by the hoi polloi (#) about the nature of the Internet.

There is no expectation of privacy online. The Internet is by nature a public place. Everything you post, everything you read, every site you visit is being logged somewhere. Even on Tabulas, although I've disabled access_log (this file tells you who accessed what file at what time), there is a hit tracker program built into the site that lets the site's owner (if they're paid/beta) to see who is visiting what pages from where.

I'm amazed when people find privacy problems with websites they thought were "okay." Amazon remembers every little thing you do on a site.

One of my co-workers came up to me and was talking about how he wouldn't use GMail since it "could be read by Google." Of course, he also mentioned that the NSA actively monitors e-mails. Big surprise. My stance on privacy has not changed for years ... when it comes to e-mails and posting online, I have absolutely no expectation of privacy. If someone wants to read my e-mails, let them.

I've gotten to the point where I'm not bothered by it. I rather that Joe Average not read my e-mail, but if some computer or NSA person wants to read me e-mails, feel free. I have nothing to hide, so I don't particularly care if someone reads my e-mails.

Of course, the funniest part of this whole thing is how hard people try to create privacy on the web. I'm not saying it's a bad thing or that it's not possible ... but so much work is done to "control" who can get what information.

For example, people open up a Tabulas account. Then they de-list it from the search engines. They create a pseudonym. They don't ever mention names. But then someone will inevitably find their site and link to their name and the site, and Google will pick up on this and begin to show their site in the listings. And the whole house of cards comes crumbling down.

What's the point to this article? I'm not criticizing anyone who tries to create privacy on the web in anyway, nor am I condoning the reading of e-mails by the NSA or any other company (as benevolent as they may seem to be) ... my point is simply this: Everything you do on the Internet is inherently public. Have no expectations of privacy

I have a feeling one day someone will take something from this public journal (even if I take it down, I'm sure archive.org has cached it to some degree) and put it completely out of context. But that's all right. I'm putting myself out there ... to be criticized. It's the risks you take in trying to be heard.

As a side note, Korea has blocked access to LiveJournal, BlogSpot, and TypePad due to the Korean beheading thing. This follows directly in the wake of China blocking the same sites... it's ridiculous. For a country that supposedly embraces a lot of democratic ideals, they sure don't like any information critical of their government.

For those of you who are in Korea and are blocked from reading your favorite sites, you can either use RSS to get around the block (use an aggregator to grab the RSS feeds) or use UniPeak, a free online proxy server. I've been using Unipeak to read Blogspot, TypePad, and Livejournal ... (I just found out about this site yesterday).

I also read in the newspaper here that there is still an "official" ban on "red books" (books about Communism). Although you can go and buy these books at any bookstore, there technically is still a law that punishes people who own these books, but the law is only used to go after government critics (does this sound like anything in America? HMMMMM).

Assuming that blogging is closely related to democratization (a far-out assumption, I know), you have to bring a grassroots blogging community to these sites. Nothing as shallow as CYWorld (The Korean equivalent to Xanga on steroids)... but something deeper than that. Do you really think the Korean govt would shut down a profitable blogging division (equivalent to TypePad) of a Korean chaebol?

One of the more fun ideas I've been tossing around in my head (I do too much thinking and not enough programming, dag it!) is to implement advanced user groups on your 'friends' list. It would be in essence taking the concept of friends and expanding it something more than just one-level of privacy.

As it stands, your "friends" can read your "friends-only" posts ... but wouldn't it be cooler if you can specify a sub-group of friends as "Real Close Friends" or "Family?"

You could then set specific privacy levels for each entry or album in your Tabulas that would only be accessible to that select group (or everyone "but" that group and the general public).

I have talked about this idea briefly in the past, and when I did my display engine rewrite, I did keep this in mind when scripting that section. So the architecture of the current engine does allow for this ... (Note that I am actually rewriting the whole display engine anyways).

I know sometimes I just want certain people to be able to see certain posts, but I end up just posting it publicly so everyone can read it. But sometimes you just want to write a post about a certain friend (not in a bad manner) but you don't want him or her to read it. This is where advanced group management would be useful ("Create a group with everyone except X").

And another idea would be to allow some friends of yours to directly edit your posts (mainly for the purpose of correcting your grammatical errors); this would help you in not looking like a retard when you make really bad typos.

But the question is, "Will people be able to remember all their groups?" The UI better be sharp or else it's going to be a big burden (which is why I'm desperately trying to learn DOM Javascript, because that will help a LONG way in creating smooth user interfaces to manage complex data management systems like Tabulas).