The New York Times convened several tech experts this weekend to debate online privacy and the "overuse of social networking tools." Professor Clay Shirky stole the show, recounting a college tequila run that ended with his hair on fire. That youthful indiscretion was a harmless secret for Shirky, back in the days went you had to be physically present to witness a private event:

Society has always carved out space for young people to misbehave. We used to do this by making a distinction between behavior we couldn’t see, because it was hidden, and behavior we could see, because it was public. That bargain is now broken, because social life increasingly includes a gray area that is publicly available, but not for public consumption.

So nowadays, a tequila flaming head incident cries out for instant memorialization via cell phone, Facebook and YouTube. That may ding some millennial reputations, Shirky contends, but eventually it will recalibrate societal norms to tolerate a greater range of benign misconduct – as long as adults “cut young people some slack.” So if President Clinton dabbled in pot and President Obama once tried some blow, the argument goes, then surely we can chill out on today’s kids:

Just as Bill Clinton destroyed the idea that marijuana use was a disqualifier to serious work, the increasing volume of personal life online will come to mean that, even though there’s a picture from when your head was on fire that one time, you can still get a job.

The arc of social networking does bend towards reality; a society that sees more of itself should eventually discard some delusions about its own behavior and propriety. The examples of Clinton and Obama, however, actually cut in the opposite direction.

The Wilmington, Delaware city council makes audio recordings of its meetings. This Tuesday, the council did something pretty lame: it voted down a measure to post those recordings online. The logic: it's better to keep these inaccessible, for no other reason than to keep people from getting them:

Fastest. Government. Information. Request. Turnaround. Evar.

Okay, so that doesn't really work with six words. But I'm impressed. A few weeks ago, the White House announced that its employees' financial disclosure forms were available to anyone who requested them. The process, however, was prohibitive for the casually curious: print out this form, fill it out, mail it to us, and we'll mail the forms back to you. Willingness to disclose information doesn't count if you make it a pain to access.

Where's the Web-based request form, we all shouted. It arrived today. For a government Web site, this is pretty sleak: fill out the form, click submit, and in ten minutes (at least, that was the case with me), you get an email with your PDFs.

While you can make a good living poking fun at the Texas legislature (just ask the late, great Molly Ivins), apparently the great state of Texas can claim one serious distinction: According to a new survey of state government information online, released for the start of Sunshine Week, Texas is the only state to provide information in twenty key categories. Most states do provide online information on high-profile topics like campaign financing and school test scores. But only nine provide schools' building inspections and/or safety ratings, and only 13 share school bus inspection reports. And the patchwork of disclosure practices is full of contradictions and absurdities:

Back in November, I wrote an update on the saga of the missing White House emails. For some, the Bush administration's reticence to retrieve the missing emails (as requested by an ongoing lawsuit) was emblematic of their lack of transparency and their lack of tech savvy.

On January 21, one day after the inauguration, the Obama administration filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.