Comment 1 for bug 460490

The current behavior is a deliberate and publicly-known design choice, so this bug report does not need to be private.

I agree with you that it is a poor design choice, and private-by-default would be better.

Discussions elsewhere:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1210175
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/6106/
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecureHome
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/secure-home