Office Politics

September 18, 2008 | Written by

Think of the last 20 emails in your personal email inbox.

Is there anything in there you wouldn’t post publicly? Is there anything in there that could be considered illegal (besides offers to assist in Nigerian wire transfers)?

Well, Sarah Palin’s email was broken into Tuesday night, and hackers posted screenshots of her Yahoo! inbox and address book on Wikileaks.

Now, Palin has been accused of using personal email to conduct state business, possibly with the intention of avoiding Alaskan freedom of information laws. And while I would agree that the hack is a gross invasion of privacy, it’s gotten me to thinking about exactly how open people actually want to be when they trumpet transparency.

As we saw with the Facebook Beacon debacle, people only want to share information about themselves when they have great control over exactly what is shared. The same rules, however, can’t apply for elected officials, who constantly balance their personal and public lives (sort of like celebrities at LAX). Wikileaks forces us to balance our voyeuristic desires with the right to know of wrongdoing, and the cowardice of anonymous snitching.

Chances are you’ll never do anything that would land you on Wikileaks, however, here are three instances when we all might question the value of digital transparency on an everyday basis:

• Fundrace – Thanks to Web 2.0 and disclosure laws, I remember spending hours on Fundrace searching for friends, family and coworkers in 2004 to see who donated to campaigns. A quick spin through Silicon Valley donations this year shows some interesting results, including some that your corporate communications department might not want to be publicly associated with you company. For example, I find it scary how easily you can get the name and address of the only guy at Facebook who gave to a Republican campaign.
• LinkedIn – The New York Times recently explored using LinkedIn as a career safety net. The article appeared the same day that I speculated a client of ours was about to leave their job because their LinkedIn network increased dramatically (they did leave). Does this type of transparency help or hinder your career?
• Business is Personal – probably a more poignant question that my opening one would be to ask the opposite: would you want your work inbox posted publicly? Palin may have tried to escape the limelight by going to Yahoo!, but do you let your Yahoo! get into Outlook?

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