Re: CB history and Google's cache

You wouldn't assume anthing uttered in the presence of another human to be secret. The more of those humans you put together, the less seceret it becomes. I've never understood why people think that the CB should be any different. I always consider that what I say can be misrepresented, recorded without my knowledge, and used later agiants my will, and even modified or twisted and used later. You just have to hope in life that people will be smart enough to recognize that certain comments have been taken out of context and don't have the meaning they appear to. If you are afraid that your comments will be misunderstood or taken out of context, then I wonder if you fear everytime you open your mouth in public? By "you" and didn't mean you specificaly EdwardG, I just meant those people who fear long CB history. I understand that people arn't always smart enough to distinguish when comments have been taken out of context, I've heard the stories about comments from the CB being used as evidence in a trial, none of that changes the fact that it IS a public medium and should be treated as such when you use it. Wishing it wasn't, doesn't make it so. I hope this doesn't upset anybody, it represents only my views and thoughts on the matter.

___________
Eric Hodges

Comment on Re: CB history and Google's cache

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Re^2: CB history and Google's cache by herveus (Prior) on Sep 14, 2004 at 13:47 UTC
Howdy! The problem is a social one. Consider going to a party with lots of conversation. Surreptitously record the conversations for future reference. Make use of those recordings. Watch your back. That is the essence of the issue. ChatterBox carries an expectation that the conversation is ephemeral. The FullPage Chat only carries about the last eight to ten minutes, or the last fifteen messages (or so). Anything older is lost, probably by design. Other chat clients and history tools work to try to preserve a larger window, but that simply facilitates putting things into context when the conversation is roaring along. There is no mechanism available to prevent archiving CB traffic for longer periods, save social pressure. I suppose something could be done, with much work, to try to discern monitor-bots from simple CB clients, but I'm not hinting at advocating going there. Google is not systematically archiving the traffic; it happens to catch snippets as it spiders about (so far as I know). It's not a matter of secrecy; it's a matter of social responsibility. yours, Michael	[reply]
Re^3: CB history and Google's cache by eric256 (Parson) on Sep 14, 2004 at 14:12 UTC
My point was that even though people shouldn't record conversations at parties (and maybe therefore the CB), it doesn't mean you should act as if everything you do and say is lost forever 10 minutes later. We may want it to be ephemeral but that doesn't mean you should count on it. The same goes for both cases, it doesn't mean the person doing the recording is right, legal, moral. I just mean that when you open your mouth, or use your fingers you are should take responsibility for what you say, and hope that others will notice out of context recordings (or chat logs) when they see them. ___________ Eric Hodges	[reply]