[mst]

Once, sat in the audience at OSCON with people I knew, a particularly inappropriate joke occurred to me that I thought the friend sat next to me would appreciate.

I sent it to him via private message using my laptop.

That way, the conversation was -actually- private, rather than 'private plus whoever else sat near me overheard what I said'.

This is not a difficult concept for me, though my primary motivation was 'not distracting the people around me' rather than what they might have thought of the content.

[protomyth]

> That way, the conversation was -actually- private

Except if the person in the seat behind you took a screen shot of you or your friends computer screen and then posted it on twitter. There are enough epic fail photos of people playing games during lectures / senate voting to make that a real possibility.

[mst]

If they lean over my shoulder and read my screen intentionally, they've taken a specific action to do so and I'm comfortable defending myself on the basis that in that case I had an expectation of privacy, and if they were offended by what they read while they were violating it that was their problem.

[protomyth]

As public figures (celebrities, politicians) have found out, once the information is out there, how it was obtained seems to be unimportant except in court. It won't really matter what your expectations were when it goes public.

I do find this tragic but the way it is these days.