Republic of Tunisia

Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research

University of Manouba
Faculty of Letters, Art and Humanities

Masters in English Literature, Civilization and Linguistics

The Issue of Privacy and Social Media in The U.S: Twitter’s Whistleblower
Hearing? Testimony 2022 as a Case Study

Research Proposal

Submitted by:

Eya Mekni

February 2023
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Introduction:

In this computerizing/ed? and digitalizing era, social media has become the primary
intermediary or portal through which actions ? and communications occur. In effect, online
identity and reality became unequivocally merged and difficult to separate. This research
attempts to address: the issue of privacy leaks via social media platforms that prioritize personal
profit over user security. In this context, this study aims to look over  the management and
regulation measures adopted by Twitter as a platform that hosts a wide range of opinions and
discourses. Important questions are raised, such as how the US government handled the issue of
Twitter users' privacy. And an equally important concern is the Republicans' and Democrats'
perspectives on Twitter's privacy policies?as parties? Government?. To answer these questions,
Twitter whistleblower Pieter Zatko's testimony before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary
will be closely examined using descriptive and analytical methods, as well as Gilbert Weiss and
Ruth Wodak’s critical discourse analysis method (2002).

1. Literature Review:

An overview is necessary of the notions of privacy and data collection through social
media and particularly Twitter. As a result, articles and books will be examined in order to
contextualize the research's history and debate. Style

1.1 The Emergence of the Right to Privacy:

In 1890, a law review article entitled "The Right to Privacy" was published in the
Harvard Law Review. Written by Samuel D. Warren II and Louis Brandeis, the article pried into
the unexplored territory of the right to privacy in the United States in the late 1800s. The first
idea that the authors put forth is that rights have extended their grounds through political,
economic, and social changes, thus entailing that common law must also expand and cover the
growing demands of society (Warren & Brandeis, 1890). In other words, in its early stages, the
law in general reserved its protection for material and tangible situations concerning life and
property. All forms of violation against a person were then recognized under the protection of the
"right to life,"(p. 193) ranging from liberty, as opposed to being restrained, to the right to
property in the context of securing the private possessions of an individual. Subsequently,
feelings, spirituality, and intellect were admitted to be worthy of protection under the law. In a
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sense, common law evolved into an ever-growing tree from which legal rights branched out in a
wide spectrum, where it reached a point beyond survival or basic rights and instead new rights
were introduced to enable citizens to enjoy inclusive civil privileges. This has come to include
the right to privacy, or, as the authors put it, according to a judge named Thomas Cooley, the
right "to be let alone" (p. 195).

Although Warren and Brandeis’ notion of privacy is outdated, in terms of the type of
privacy it sought to cover, it can be applicable to today’s standards of online privacy. The writers
were concerned about old media in particular: newspapers and photographs that circulated
gossip and invaded "the sacred precincts of private and domestic life" (p. 195). However, Warren
and Brandeis also mention how "mechanical devices" would soon be the perpetrators of
widespread gossip and misinformation. So it could be said that their prediction has in many ways
become a modern reality (p. 195).

1.2 Privacy and American Law:

Privacy has a complex nature; it is hard to define it in simple terms. But one of the first
attempts to meticulously define and frame the concept of privacy was made by Alan Westin in
his book Privacy and Freedom (1967). Westin insisted on deconstructing the misconception that
privacy was a modern issue. He credited its existence as a pressing matter all the way back to
"man’s animal origins" (p. 24). Therefore, he saw it as necessary that Americans move on from
the public awareness discussion to a more critical approach to what they can do to protect their
privacy, taking into consideration the many convoluted pressures of new information technology
and society working against it.????

This book? served as one of the leading all-round, crucial works on information privacy.
As a book that was far ahead of its time, it helped contextualize privacy, especially in the late
1960s when Americans became more concerned about preserving their privacy with the new
surveillance technology. This work is also relevant to us, as the concerns expressed by Westin
still hold weight in today’s age. Modern businesses and social platforms, and in our case,
Twitter, collect enormous amounts of personal data. That was indeed a prediction of Westin, and
his book does provide the setting for privacy and American law in their early stages and how to
go from there. ? (Shifts in style from colloquial to complex expressions)
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In order to fully grasp how American law in the mid-1900s implemented its regulations
on privacy concerns through societal changes and technological advances, first there is a need for
a formal definition of privacy. For many years, scholars had struggled to put a defining label on
it, yet in Privacy and Freedom, Westin had sophisticatedly described it as follows:

Privacy is the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves

when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others…

Process in which he (the individual) balances the desire for privacy with the desire for

disclosure and communication of himself to others, in light of the environmental

conditions and social norms set by the society in which he lives.

(pp. 24-25)

Westin noted that three major technological advancements of the late nineteenth century
overthrew the balance that was kept between third-party surveillance and private
communications. These three developments consisted of the telephone, the microphone, and
"instantaneous photography" (Westin, p. 230). Then, a parallelism can be noticed between third-
party surveillance and nowadays' social media platforms, which tend? to include the three types
of technological developments mentioned by Westin. In this case, Twitter’s services cover voice
calls, audio messages, photo sharing, and more that fall under the previously indicated
developments. Therefore, Westin’s idea, in highlight? of the dangers of third-party platforms
invading the privacy of informal areas of social interactions and conversation, make it applicable
to this contemporary context. Social media defined as internet based channels according to Caleb
Carr and Rebecca Hayes (2015), “allow users to opportunistically interact and selectively self-
present with both broad and narrow audiences” (Defining, Developing, and Divining, p. 8).
Hence, the line can be blurred between online privacy and social media’s invasion of the lives of
people. Unclear meaning (whole para)

Moreover, these advancements proved too hard to manage? By the laws of the United
States. The privacy of conversation could not be protected by these laws anymore through
physically guarding information. The laws in the United States then needed to distinguish
between the rights to privacy and the conduct of businesses in their personal acts and
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administration. Up until the late 1930s, the Supreme Court adopted the "laissez faire" approach
to businesses and condemned government interference in business affairs (p. 230). This
culminated in the "propertied privacy" concept, which was fostered by the Justices of the U.S. In
other words, the privacy of businesses came first in priority over the general public’s privacy.
However, this era came to an end after five decades in which enterprises enjoyed immunity from
government regulation and scrutiny. In 1937, the federal legislative and executive bodies
launched investigations into business affairs (p. 230). Westin argues that, given the failure of the
law in the United States to manage effectively "the first wave of technological pressure on
privacy," it is safe to assume that the new technological devices to come would leave American
society in "disarray" (p. 236). One of the aims of this present study is to address the development
of the doctrines? adopted by the U.S. judiciary and legislative bodies in managing and regulating
contemporary privacy issues. Using the point of view of the source she is using?

1.3 The Value of Privacy in the Modern Age:

People are now the subject of enormous amounts of data that can be accessed and
examined. And it is much more likely that the new "big data" will be gathered from a wide range
of sources (Privacy, Big Data, and the Public Good, 2014). There has been much discussion of
the practical applications of such data, such as the identification of potential terrorist acts, the
sale of goods and services, and the success of political campaigns (p. 5). As a result, the wide
spectrum of changes in the data world has altered the nature of data producers and collectors.
Therefore, data on people has become less likely to be collected by researchers for the betterment
of life, and governmental organizations are unlikely to hold data with extensive knowledge about
how to protect privacy (p. 12).

Data is more likely to be collected by companies for targeted marketing and such,
through customized emails and social media platforms. Those insights have the power not only
to grant private information but also to control the behavior of people. In Why Privacy Matters
(2021), Neil Richards has suggested a theory in which privacy is a set of rules that needs to be
followed. He argues that it is more important to have privacy laws that are effective in regulating
the flows of information than to have "conceptually beautiful" laws that only focus on trying to
define privacy in a philosophical manner (p. 38).
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Richards insists that privacy is the rules that govern how much personal information is
known or used, with an emphasis on the principles that privacy protection aims to uphold. He
also urges everyone to be mindful of the practical ramifications of those laws and whether the
actual people who are subject to them have the capacity to thrive in those conditions. As a result,
he does not contest the possibility of using data for the benefit of society. For this reason, he
demonstrates the rules in the chapter titled "A Theory of Privacy as Rules", in which, Richards
distinguishes between data collection that is done inadvertently for pragmatic purposes and data
collection that is done proactively for the benefit of research (pp. 62-63).

According to Richards' theory of privacy as rules, privacy in the first place is

fundamentally about power. In the second place, conflicts over privacy are actually conflicts
over the laws that limit the influence that human information has. In the third place, some sort of
privacy rules are unavoidable. And in the last place, privacy should be viewed as a tool to
advance human values. The aim of this theory is to regulate by limiting, prohibiting, or
permitting how much human information is known or used. As a result, privacy laws may forbid
information from being collected in the first place or might have a rule permitting the use of a
specific type of data for service improvement, but prohibiting its use for serving advertisements.
Another way the laws might regulate the use of information is through disclosures. Otherwise,
privacy laws can also control the situations in which personal data about people is gathered (pp.
38–39).

2. Method:
This chapter presents the methods to be used in the study. It also describes the subjects of
the research, the instruments used, the procedure of data gathering, and the statistical treatment
of the data.
This study will determine the Republicans’ and Democrats’ degrees of concern on
online privacy and particularly Twitter’s management of their platform, by comparing their
discourses in the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing.

2.1 Subjects of the Study:

The testimony of Twitter’s whistleblower, Peiter Zatko, before the United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary took place on September 13, 2022. It is a two-hour and a thirty-
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seven minute-long hearing entitled "Data Security at Risk: Testimony from a Twitter
Whistleblower." It has been retrieved from the official government website,
www.judiciary.senate.gov. During the hearing, members of the committee questioned Zatko, a
data security expert and former Twitter head of security, about alleged data security failures,
foreign infiltration, and misrepresentations to regulatory agencies by Twitter. The committee is
consisted of senates ??????from both American political parties, the Republicans and the
Democrats, who will be the subjects of this research as their perspectives, on Twitter’s online
privacy management, construct the primary data for this study.

2.2 Methods of Research Used:

In this research, descriptive, analytical and deductive methods will be used. Descriptive
because its main concern is to get the holistic view of the characteristics of the subjects exposed
to online privacy concerns and Twitter’s regulation policies. This study is also analytical because
two sets of subjects (the Republicans and the Democrats) will be compared in terms of their
discourse by using Weiss and Wodak’s framework of critical discourse analysis (2002). Both
quantitative and qualitative research shall be observed as it will elicit opinions and numerical
data through the use of QDA Mining Lite software.

2.3 Procedure of Data Gathering:

This study will consist of three stages. The first stage deals with collecting data. Data will
be collected by extracting the committee members’ inquiries in terms of the diction, themes, and
questions that they employed. The process will consist of gathering the various rhetorical appeals
and stylistic devices utilized by the politicians, such as metaphor, and other linguistic forms that
consist of terms of address and personal reference, as well as modals, pronouns, and lexis. The
second stage consists of putting the collected data through the QDA Mining Lite software to
draw distinctions between the Republican and Democrat members’ discourse and quantify the
data and turn it into numerical statistics. The third stage works on analyzing and blending the
statistical data with the textual one through critical discourse analysis theoretical framework. The
point of this analysis is to link the employment, the frequency and the relationships of linguistic
forms to political messages, ideologies, and moral views on online privacy.

3. Results:
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The expected results for this analysis, highlight the very slow and discrete development
of the U.S. government’s laws concerning, particularly, online privacy. It is also expected to
reveal the attitudes of both parties regarding the issue of online privacy. Differences in urgency
and priority are likely to be deduced. Another result to be expected from this research concerns
the mismanagement and undervaluing of online data privacy in the U.S.

4. Discussion:

Although rights in general are a crucial part of online privacy regulation, they are
frequently asked to perform far more tasks than they are able to. Individuals can only have a
limited amount of power thanks to their rights. In the end, rights can only serve as a supporting
actor or a minor part of a much larger structure. This research will help to solidify the idea that
social media, most crucially, should be regulated and that its users should be safeguarded, as data
security is acknowledged to be an important component of the online experience. It will be easier
to mitigate the effects and maintain continuity in national security if measures are taken to
address current and potential violations on social media platforms. Therefore, the theory of
privacy has so far received little attention on critical political grounds because of its liberal bias.
This blind spot is illuminated in part by this research.

However, it is argued that if done correctly, data collection can significantly improve
business workflow. There can be room for development and improvement for the greater good
when data is thoroughly analyzed and the required steps are taken to identify issues. After all,
every profitable company makes use of data to gain a competitive edge. This may be a limitation
of this research, as well as the idea that privacy rights cannot be guaranteed to all in the same
degree. It is debated whether privacy rights should be differentiated based on where people fall
in the power structure so that surveillance can expose income and wealth disparities and
corporate profits while privacy can shield workers and consumers from capitalist and political
tyranny (Fuchs, 2011).

Conclusion:

In conclusion, this research proposal suggests an approach to studying, qualitatively and

quantitatively, a case in which online privacy in the U.S. is the focal point of its debate. The
U.S. government and its legislative and judicial components are central to my research, as they
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ought to be examined and analyzed to lay out the aim of this paper in discussing online privacy.
Therefore, questions are asked and, in an attempt, ???will be answered within a theoretical
framework.

(This paper was written in APA format 7th edition).

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References

Primary sources:

Data Security at Risk: Testimony from a Twitter Whistleblower | United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary. (2022, September 13). Meeting | Hearings | United States
Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Retrieved November 20, 2022, from
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/data-security-at-risk-testimony-from-a-
twitter-whistleblower

Warren, S. D., & Brandeis, L. D. (1890, December 15). The Right to Privacy. Harvard Law
Review, 4(5), 193. https://doi.org/10.2307/1321160

Privacy, Big Data, and the Public Good. (2014, June 16). J. Lane, V. Stodden, S. Bender, & H.
Nissenbaum (Eds.), Frameworks for Engagement. Cambridge University Press.

Westin, A. F. (2015, November 24). Privacy and Freedom. Ig Publishing.

Richards, N. (2021, November 26). Why Privacy Matters. Oxford University Press.

Secondary sources:

Carr, C.,& Hayes R. (2015, February 6). Social Media: Defining, Developing, and Divining.
Atlantic Journal of Communication, Volume 23(Issue 1: Social Media Circa 2035:
Directions in Social Media Theory), 46–65.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15456870.2015.972282

Fuchs, C. (2011, November 22). Towards an alternative concept of privacy. Journal of

Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 9(4), 220–237.
https://doi.org/10.1108/14779961111191039

Weiss, G., & Wodak, R. (Eds.). (2002). Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and
Interdisciplinarity. Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire.