Meghan Markle’s Latest Instagram Video Tests Her Privacy Strategy - Newsweek
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are yet to officially confirm their presence on U.K. soil, but the duchess has posted a series of videos showing their new life in the English countryside, triggering a social media guessing game about where the footage was filmed.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have still said nothing publicly, either themselves or through their spokesperson, about why they chose to relocate to the U.K. after six years in America.
Newsweek has been told this was because a priority for them is privacy and they did not want to invite hypocrisy allegations by talking publicly about a life that they wanted to keep private.
However, Meghan has now published a montage of videos, including a clip shot by one of her children, on Instagram showing their new life and social media users began attempting to identify the location.
Newsweek approached the couple's representatives for comment.
Harry and Meghan's team approached Britain's press regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), to request privacy, particularly around their new home and the school where they are sending their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
There is nothing to say they are living at the location shown in the Instagram videos. Indeed, they may simply have been visiting a friend. However, posting images that can potentially be geolocated appears to have sparked exactly the kind of online scrutiny the couple have sought to avoid.
Newsweek has taken the decision not to identify the property or location speculated on by social media commentators out of respect for the couple's privacy.
The Sussex team has confirmed very little publicly about their move. They have disclosed a program of public visits by Prince Harry taking place in September to outlets including Newsweek, but nothing about their reasons for relocating or the region they are living in.
In fact, Buckingham Palace has done more to confirm the couple's arrival in Britain after King Charles III instructed the head of the Royal Household to send a letter containing guidance for officials, including in Government and the military, confirming the couple are not working royals.
It began: "Following the decision by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to relocate to the U.K., we have received a number of requests for Guidance."
Newsweek has been told the public silence is aimed at avoiding a situation in which the couple would undermine their own requests for privacy.
Meghan posted a series of clips to her social media on Sunday showing the Sussex family enjoying the verdant, if a little damp, English countryside. On top of the footage, she displayed a Union Jack flag and a heart emoji.
One clip showed wellies splashing in the mud and another showed Princess Lilibet riding her bicycle toward a herd of deer as Prince Archie ran alongside her.
There was also footage of the family boating on a lake as well as a clip shot by one of their children showing Meghan and Prince Harry walking hand-in-hand. It is the kind of footage Meghan might have published previously while they were in America, though the location of their home in Montecito, California, was already known, making the issue less charged.
Beyond the privacy question, any public posts that reveal Harry and Meghan's location have the potential to raise security concerns. The method used by social media commentators involved comparing Meghan's videos with publicly available imagery, a process commonly referred to as open-source intelligence, or OSINT.
Alex Bomberg, chief executive of private security firm Intelligent Protection International, told Newsweek: "Social media is a sewer. The trouble is anything Harry and Meghan do is going to get scrutinized.
"People will use OSINT for all sorts of stuff. This is the downside of OSINT tools. Privacy, targeting, people do use those tools all the time and it is easy to use them for malicious purposes. If you post anything on social media nowadays then people can find the location very easily.
"You have got to be very, very careful posting stuff on social media. Internet sleuths will go out of their way to identify using the location, be it a restaurant or a park. That is unfortunate.
"It's okay to post that sort of content if you're not staying there. If you're there for the weekend, post it after the event not while you're there."
He added that "what they posted was fine" as long as they are not living there but said "if they're living there then it's not the best thing to do. Then again, if someone is intent on finding out where they are then they will."
