How does this relate to dox?
Let’s say an individual posted identifying or incriminating information online, inadvertently or intentionally, in a public place.
Then a third party decides to store it, and possibly make it accessible to others.
If the original self doxxing user then pulled the original dox, but was unable to scrub the rest, would that information still be considered public, or would it be private? Was it ever truly public? Or private for that matter?
That's a really good question.
In my head, I'm imagining someone early in the morning posting a flyer up on a bulletin board downtown.
Throughout the day many folks walked by and took photos of the flyer with their cell phone.
At the end of the day, the original person came back and removed the flyer.
IMO, at the time that the folks took the photo of the flyer, that flyer was public information. It remains public information even after the flyer is removed[0].
This isn't a great analogy of mine, and has plenty of holes, but was interesting to me after I read your comment. I know it was in the context of doxxing, but I think it's pretty interesting philosophically.
I think something similar applies to photos taken of other people in public spaces. Both the person who took the photo and the subject of the photo are no longer in that physical public space, but the actions took place within that space.
I think something similar applies to digital "public spaces". But what does a public space even mean in the context of walled gardens[1], etc.
[0] you then run into the question of what happens if someone posts non-public information, publicly? [1] are digital walled garden communities that different from physical communities that gate access, whether free or paid. Whether information shared within those contexts are public or private is an interesting thread as well.
If you intentionally post something publicly, it's public. Full stop.
The tricky part is dealing with inadvertent or malicious (i.e. some other party), posting of private information to a public space. That's really hard to deal with on multiple levels.
For one, the archives would retain the information and scrubbing it is effectively impossible.
Secondly, legitimate things which should remain public (i.e. were posted publicly, are of public interest, etc.) can be argued to have been inadvertently or maliciously posted. So you need some way to moderate and create rulings for each individual case, which quickly becomes untenable due to the sheer volume of information being posted and the inordinate amount of time required to investigate vs. post.