We've all had moments we'd rather not have become public
knowledge. We've all done things we'd rather our friends
and family — let alone the whole world — never know
about. And there was a time when — except, say, for
celebrities like
Britney Spears — most of us never had to worry about
the humiliation of our worst moments or embarrassing acts
publicized That was, of course, before the web. Maybe it was
before the age of the video camera. No, maybe it was before the
advent of audio recording. Wait. Make that before the dawn of
human speech. Well, maybe even before that.

My point is that public exposure of our human foibles is nothing
new, and certainly wasn't created by the web, but this

tale of a lost cellphone is just the latest in a series of
stories that illustrate how the web, combined with the popularity
of blogging, the ubiquitous nature of videophones, and sites like
YouTube., have brought about
a rebirth of the pillory or the public stockade.

Three weeks ago, Mr. Guttman went on a quest to retrieve a
friend's lost cellphone, a quest that has now ended with the
arrest of a 16-year-old on charges of possessing the missing
gadget, a Sidekick model with a built-in camera that sells for as
much as $350. But before the teenager was arrested, she was
humiliated by Mr. Guttman in front of untold thousands of people
on the Web, an updated version of the elaborate public shamings
common in centuries past.

The tale began when Mr. Guttman's best friend Ivanna left her
cellphone in a taxicab, like thousands of others before her.
After Ivanna got a new Sidekick, she logged on to her account
— and was confronted by pictures of an unfamiliar young
woman and her family, along with the young woman's America
Online screen name.

The 16-year-old, Sasha Gomez, of Corona, Queens, had been using
the Sidekick to take pictures and send instant messages. She
apparently did not know that the company that provided the
phone's service, T-Mobile, automatically backs up such
information on its remote servers. So when Ivanna got back on,
there was Sasha.

Using instant messages, Mr. Guttman tracked down Sasha and asked
her to return it. "Basically, she told me to get lost,"
Mr. Guttman recalled. "That was it."

And in a different time, that might have been it. Outside of a
phone call to the police, and another to T-Mobile, no one would
have heard of the incident that eventually involved thousands of
strangers, the teenager's family, and eventually ended in her
arrest. But the the web page went up, along with pictures of
Sasha and her family for anyone nursing a grudge about a lost or
stolen cellphone to commiserate. And then some.

I was immediately reminded of the now infamous "Bus Uncle"
video that circulated the web after a Hong Kong bus commuter
captured a confrontation over a loud cellphone conversation and
posted it online. Before that there was the even more infamous
"Dog
Poop Girl," so dubbed and made famous by South Korean
bloggers after her dog relieved itself on the subway and her
refusal to clean it up led to a confrontation with fellow
commuters. (A sidekick lost in a taxi cab, a loud cellphone chat
on the bus, and an incontinent pooch on a subway. Does travel or
commuting figure into this phenomenon somehow?)

It's easy to point and laugh at the "stars" of
these now-public dramas, and to nod with judgmental approval at
the consequences they've faced due to exposure: loss of
privacy, loss of jobs, threats, arrest, etc. But from my own
perspective, I can think of some moments I'm glad nobody
whipped out a videophone or camera phone; moments when I morphed
into an irate customer or exasperated parent, for example. The
story could spread around the world, probably without my side
being told or my even knowing about it until the consequences of
exposure started rolling in.

So, looking at it from the other side, there's legitimacy to
concerns that the "smart mob" of online community may
sometimes morph into
a mob of the more old fashioned short.

The Dog Poop Girl case "involves a norm that most people
would seemingly agree to -- clean up after your dog," wrote
Daniel J. Solove, a George Washington University law professor
who specializes in privacy issues, on one blog. "But having
a permanent record of one's norm violations is upping the
sanction to a whole new level . . . allowing bloggers to act as a
cyber-posse, tracking down norm violators and branding them with
digital scarlet letters."

Howard Rheingold, who studies and writes about the impact of
technology on the behavior of groups, said the debate should
begin with an understanding that the rules of privacy have
changed.

"The shadow side of the empowerment that comes with a
billion and a half people being online is the surveillance
aspect," he said. "We used to worry about big brother
-- the state -- but now of course it's our neighbors, or
people on the subway."

With society awash in personal data that is bought and sold
daily, those who would use it as a weapon have few barriers.

And we're more awash in personal information than perhaps
most of us know. AT&T, for example, just changed its privacy
policy to basically make it clear to its customers that
AT&T owns their data, and can do with it as it pleases.
John Aravosis, of Americablog,the blogger who exposed
ex-White House reporter Jeff Gannon, reported how easy it is
to buy just about anyone's phone records, and then went out
and
bought Wesley Clark's records just to prove it. (As a
side note, it's pretty easy
to track your location too, if you carry a cellphone.

Here's how. Here's where. Or here. Or here.)

More recently, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin posted the
phone number of an anti-war student group, resulting in the group
receiving
death threats against its members. The blowback was that
another blogger posted
Malkin's home address and phone number. And then
there's the Comcast technician who fell asleep on a
customer's couch, ended up on
YouTube, and lost
his job.

So, in a way, AT&T is right. Your data and personal
information isn't your own. It's
everybody's. And if that's the case, and stories like
that above are any indication, then the web as public pillory is
here to stay. The stockade is back in the public square, the
public square is the world, and it looks like everyone is
eligible for a turn in the stocks.

Andy Warhol is supposed to have said that in the future we'll
all be famous for 15 minutes. He probably had no idea how right
he was, or just what kind of fame — unsought and unwelcome
— we might all be in line for.