Nothing (well almost) we do is private any longer. It is a lesson that I stress to corporate and nonprofit executives, athletes, city government workers, manufacturers, physicians and educators. Leigh Ann Arthur has a story that illustrates this very point.
We are under video surveillance and drone surveillance. Our mobile devices track us. Our websites and social media accounts are easily hacked and monitored. I could go on, but you get the picture. Speaking of pictures, nothing you do in that universe is 
private either, and when unethical behavior is in play, the results can be highly embarrassing or catastrophic or both.
You have perhaps heard of Leigh Ann Arthur, a teacher in Union, South Carolina. Up until recently, she taught engineering and computer programming at the Union County Career and Technical Center. She should know about digital privacy, perhaps better than most of us.
Not up to us to judge
Ms. Arthur took pictures of herself in the nude. This was to be a present given to her husband on Valentine’s Day. There are all sorts of presents, I suppose. A few days following Valentine’s Day, she left her unlocked mobile phone in her desk drawer.
There was a student who obviously had a problem with Ms. Arthur. He took her phone from her desk, found and copied the nude pictures, and distributed them to the other students.
The student also went up to Ms. Arthur and told her that her “day of reckoning” was coming. The situation “exploded” as the superintendent of the school, David Eubanks (apparently saw the images) and gave the teacher the choice to resign or go through termination procedures.
The student has been charged with “computer crimes and aggravated voyeurism,” which is tantamount to a wrist slap. Perhaps he will get thrown out of school but his life will go on. The teacher will forever live in some small corner of the internet.
While it is a complicated ethical issue the superintendent did concede that although the picture was a private matter, the picture was still inappropriate. The issue itself, could be the subject for an entire ethics presentation.
Interestingly, the students at the school signed a petition to have her get her job back, but it would be an uncomfortable return to say the least. My guess is that she will be teaching somewhere next year – far away.
Legally, she did nothing wrong. There are no laws against taking a nude picture of yourself, on your own mobile device, to send it to your spouse. However, there are always hidden risks associated with such behaviors. I am sorry, but that is just the way it goes in modern society.
In some ways (despite our hyper-sexualized media) we are still emulating the Pilgrims. In other ways, our digital technologies have become so advanced that any image captured will be found somewhere in cyber-space. It is not up to us to judge, it is up to us to point out that nothing is private any longer. Our senses of ethics have not caught up with our technology and out need for privacy.
What we know for now
What we know for now is that (practically) nothing is private. Be very careful what you do and always assume that inappropriate material will be found or repeated, retweeted or regurgitated!
There are some silver linings to this issue. Surveillance cameras, for example, have captured criminals, terrorists and even domestic abusers. The ability to scour the internet has resulted in intercepting serious criminal activities and potential attacks of terrorism.
Times have changed, and like it or not, the same tools we use to capture bad images are sometimes abused to steal or debase the good. If this were in the good old days of 1998 perhaps, the average 16 year-old would have no idea of how to handle this technology. As the technology has changed and people have become more technologically advanced, their abilities to find and distribute images or materials is a very easy, elementary operation.
Despite technology however, we must always remember that no matter what we do online it will never leave us and that human emotions such as embarrassment and shame can follow us for decades.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?
