Essay on Can privacy be protected online?
The fundamental human rights – freedom of speech, freedom of access to information, the right to privacy – are virtually unprotected on the Internet. While every year the Internet grows and develops, violations of these rights and freedoms are becoming more frequent and extensive.
In considering this question it must be said about the concept of privacy. The right to privacy is a fundamental human right, together with the right to life and freedom of speech.
In this paper it is necessary to consider the problem of privacy of personal data and communications on the Internet. Issues of privacy and data protection on the Internet is relevant and interesting for many specialists and, therefore, covered in many articles in both scientific and popular press. It is necessary to consider the topic from two perspectives: in popular press and scientific journals. The goal is to find out opinions of the author in different sources on this controversial issue and to compare how the topic is presented.
THE PROBLEM OF PRIVACY ON THE INTERNET AND ITS PROTECTION
The problem of protecting the online privacy is a new phenomenon that is not well understood as this problem occurred only in the late 20th – early 21st century. Therefore, this issue is not only unsolved yet, but becoming more acute with each passing year. This is compounded by the inaccessibility of information about the real extent of violations of privacy, and often the inability to fix the fact of such violations in a timely manner. Also the legal basis of the Internet and personal data protection is very undeveloped.
Many laws and regulations in this sphere do not take into account the specifics of the Global Network, that is why in many cases attempts of the state to take control of the “global network” are not effective, untested, and to some extent inadequate, which causes a very negative response from the public and even resistance. This is confirmed by recent events related to the consideration of bills SOPA / PIPA, which aimed to expend the powers of American law enforcement agencies and rights holders in the fight against illegal content on the Internet, trading of intellectual property, protected by copyright and counterfeiting.
Let’s consider the nature of the problem of privacy and personal data protection. First of all, the problem of handling personal data on the Internet is part of a broader problem of handling personal data in other spheres. In world practice there are two approaches to the regulation of this phenomenon: “American model” with the elements of self-regulation and “European model” – the complex approach, aimed at regulating all the relations connected with the handling of personal data, regardless of their nature, objectives and sources. In the first case, the legislator do not originally formulate the specific requirements for regulation of handling personal data, leaving the matter to the individuals and organizations, who themselves under the influence of market mechanisms and other factors determine the rules for handling personal data – that is “self-regulation.” However, in the case of violation of privacy individuals can protect their interests in court. In some cases, under the American model are taken industry-level standards that regulate handling of personal data in certain areas of civil relations (for example, there may be regulations on financial data or personal data in telecommunication sphere).
The basis for the regulation according to the European model is associated with the Directive95/46/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (October 24, 1995) and earlier Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data of 28 January 1981. According to this model, the universal rules for the protection of personal data are introduced, the actual processing of personal data in both the public and the private sector. Another significant feature of the European approach is presence of supervisory authority which, as a rule, is not directly subordinate to the government, aimed to ensure compliance with legislation in the protection of personal data. The scope of the authority in different countries may be different. “Self-regulation” f market entities in the handling of personal data is also important in the European model, but is inferior to the current legislation.
However, the continuous and fast development of the Internet has led not only to new opportunities, but also to the emergence of new threats to privacy. This issue is relevant in the beginning of the 21 century, as now there are many risks of unauthorized access to electronic correspondence, various text messages, voice data.
Issues of privacy and data protection on the Internet is relevant and interesting for many specialists and, therefore, covered in many articles in both scientific and popular press. In this work it is necessary to consider the topic from two perspectives: in popular press and scientific journals. The goal is to find out opinions of the author in different sources on this controversial issue and to compare how the topic is presented.
- PRIVACY CAN BE PROTECTED ONLINE
The problem of privacy and personal data protection in the Internet has several aspects. We will consider several of them.
One of the problem is privacy protection in social networks. This issue has also been discussed by many experts and critics, especially in recent years. Social network Facebook in particular is often faced with the problems of privacy and information disclosure. Its SEO Mark Zuckerberg made several statements about changes of privacy settings for users of social network data. (Debatin et al., 2009)
The number of Facebook users reaches 800 million people. And almost everyone who is registered in the social network faces the problem of protecting of personal data. The paradox is obvious: on the one hand, one wants to join the virtual community, on the other – he is afraid that his personal information can be used by the third party against him. In any case, social networking means a certain degree of disclosure of personal data. There are people who actively communicate and share all the information about them: their age, work, material prosperity, and even personal problems. (Youn S., 2009)
However, social network has faced with complaints about personal information disclosure policy, without informing users. Administration of the resource was accused of transferring users data to advertising agencies, as well as irregularities in the work with photographs of users.
According to Debatin (2009), the owners of the social network have a powerful bank of information about the private lives of the users, which is of interest for certain public services, and private individuals. And it is almost impossible to prevent the leakage of personal information is, that is why it is better to keep private information in secret.
According to the article in “The Wall Street Journal”, social networking site Facebook in the near future will have to ask permission from users to change the privacy settings. Now there is a dialogue on this issue between the management of social network Facebook and U.S. authorities. The author claims that it is necessary to obtain final approval of the Federal Trade Commission. Once all formalities are settled, the resource will not be able to change the privacy settings, as well as other information without the consent of the participants in a social network. (Raice S. , 2011)
The problem arose after Facebook changed the privacy settings, resulting in some personal details have appeared in the public domain. After that company executives were forced to take this step. At the same time, some users have complained, so that the process of changing the settings of privacy is very complex. Then in May 2010, the programmers of the resource is much simplified mechanism for changing the settings, in particular, they were on a separate page. In August 2011 specialists even more simplified the process of changing the settings of privacy, and now every member of social network can change the personal information directly from the profile page. (Angin J., 2011)
According to the article, Facebook has agreed to settle claims of the U.S. authorities in the pretrial order. Officials of the Federal Trade Commission United States insisted that the administration of the Internet resource was misleading users about the use of their personal data, in particular the privacy settings when you install a social network. Now Faceboook would have to get the consent of users before making changes to the privacy. In addition, over 20 years Facebook will be tested by independent specialists to detect violations. If Facebook violates the agreement, the corporation would have to pay a fine of $ 16,000 per day for each violation. “Facebook is obliged to keep to the promise of privacy policies, which it gave to hundreds of millions of its users” – WSJ quotes the words of Chairman of the U.S. Trade Comission Jon Leibowitz. (Angin J., 2011)
CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg social network acknowledged that the company made a number of “high-profile mistakes”. Facebook promised not to provide personal information to advertisers, but ignored these guarantees. Facebook also shared information about users to third-party application developers, but has promised to limit this sharing.
However, for the protection of privacy in the past 18 months Facebook has released 20 tools in order to give its users more control over personal data. Pre-trial settlement is one of the steps that the U.S. government wants to increase the responsibility of companies for the storage of users’ personal data they collect, store and sell. It is hoped that they will adhere to high standards of privacy protection.
Another aspect of the problem of privacy on the Internet is monitoring of Internet activity of employees by employers (in the case of access to the Internet from the workplace). In legal practice, different countries have different approaches to solving this issue. In American jurisprudence outcome will depend on whether the court considers that the employee had reasonable grounds to expect compliance with privacy by the employer (reasonable expectation of privacy). In France there is a different approach: for example, Supreme Court in a case between Nikon and one of its former employees agreed that employers had no right to view the personal correspondence of employees. In general, the issue of secrecy of private correspondence of employees is addressed in the world practice on the basis of existing legislation without the creation of special regulations. In the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse factsheet we can see that many employees are often monitoring the Internet communications of their subordinates (e-mail, instant messaging, social networks). However, reading of the employee’s personal mail (mail perusal) without the written consent by employer can be seen as violation of the right to privacy. And every employee has the right to privacy of correspondence, telephone conversations, postal, telegraph and other messages. Limitation of this right is allowed only on the basis of the judgment.
However, employers monitor the Internet communications of their subordinates, control data and network activity of their employees. Most of all employees activities are controlled by banks, insurance, IT-companies, industrial and engineering companies – they are among the first to have introduced the system of control of information. (Privacy Rights Clearinghouse 2009)
And it is important to note that currently there are very few laws that regulate employee monitoring. Such organizations as The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Workplace Fairness, National Work Rights Institute deal with problems of employees privacy. In the whole the factsheet by Privacy Rights Clearinghouse is very informative, it covers all the aspects of the problem.
- PRIVACY CAN NOT BE PROTECTED ONLINE
The development of Internet technology has brought a problem of protection of personal data collection, processing and classification using automated tools. Indeed, given the growing number and availability of information, it would be strange if no one has made efforts to organize all the information from different sources. Merz M. points that this problem has two aspects in the context of use of personal data on the Internet:
– unfair policy of the handling of personal data by the holders (mainly business representatives, as well as by government agencies) who have personal information from citizens;
– collection, organization and dissemination of personal data from different sources, allowing to make the multilateral “profile” of any person: from religious beliefs and character traits to consumer preferences and information about the property.
In world practice, the first part of the problem mentioned earlier is governed by the legislation on the protection of personal data (in the American practice there is a tradition of reasonable expectation of privacy). In European countries, all people who control databases with personal data must notify the appropriate regulatory authorities. A more liberal American tradition is largely inconsistent with the strict European approach, which creates some problems for U.S. businesses interested in the conduct of transnational business associated with the handling of personal data. (Merz 2007)
The second part of the problem is more complex because collection of information about users can be done in different ways. An example is the launch of service Gmail, which provides storage of personal correspondence of users or an unlimited time, as well as the implementation of automated content analysis of letters. As a result, the launch of Gmail was followed by public discontent, some U.S. states introduced new rules to ensure privacy, and in Massachusetts was strengthened law on the protection of privacy. (Miller 2007)
Also noteworthy is initiative by Microsoft to create a single authentication system Passport. It was assumed that the data entered by the user in the system was available to all organizations that have concluded an agreement with Microsoft to use Passport. This initiative caused concerns in the U.S. and Europe. That is, the author of the article covers different aspects of the problem and point numerous ways that privacy can be violated.
The article by Barnett E. in “The Telegraph” covers the problem of privacy in social networks, namely a statement of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about “the end of an era of privacy”, and then the head of Google Eric Schmidt has expressed a similar opinion. Zuckerberg said that people have become much more open on the Internet, they publish personal details on Facebook, Flickr photos and intimate comments on Twitter. The problem is that a company, whose CEO speaks on privacy, earns money by controlling user data: through targeted advertising, cross-sell related services, or simply persuading users to spend more time on the site and invite friends. Thus, these companies are interested in single-step reduction of privacy of their services, while at the same time proclaiming the inevitable erosion of privacy for users and creating the illusion of control.
Thus, the author Miller E. argues that privacy in social networks is not possible. The same opinion is shared by author Angin J. (2011); Debatin, B., Horn, A., Hughes, B., & Lovejoy, J. (2009); Newell, B. (1011) and others.
CONCLUSION
The development of telecommunications not only led to the expansion of human capabilities, but also to the emergence of new threats to privacy. This issue is relevant to the Internet: there is a risk unauthorized access to electronic correspondence, various text messages, voice data. Now almost every user faces the problem of protecting personal data that is especially true for users of social networks.
In this paper, we have considered several articles in both scientific and popular press, which covered the problem of privacy on the Internet. This issue is controversial, and there is still no exact answer to the question whether it is possible to protect the personal data on the Internet. Some authors speak of the need to strengthen monitoring and regulation of privacy, tightening measures. Other authors have expressed the view that it is impossible to control collection and use of personal data, as many parties are interested in it and that is why violate any rules and restrictions. In conclusion it is possible to say that both authors of scientific articles and articles in popular press emphasize the complexity of the issue of protection of privacy on the Internet. And there is still no consensus on how to protect personal information online.
