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*HABEAS DATA: PRESSING FOR A RIGHT TO OBLIVION* | | | | |
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> | I lost a friend of mine about a year ago. Hard experience when you are confronted to death for the first time, but that’s Life. He is gone. But virtually, he is still there.... | | | | |
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< | Search engines sell you're privacy | | | | |
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> | Immortality… and eternal data? | | | | |
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< | Search engines play a big part in the way people use the internet. More often then not a search engine is the intermediar for accessing information on the web. The effectiveness of search engines make them a very useful utility for most internet users. However, the way that most search engines operate, imposes a big threat to the privacy of the person using it. The underlying problem is that the business model of a search engine like google is in a direct conflict of interest with the privacy of it’s users. Google’s ability facilitate targeted advertising (and thereby increasing it’s revenue) competes directly with the methods by which a user can achieve anonymity and preserve whatever little is left of their online privacy | >
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Comments on facebook are regularly left on his wall, friends keep on commenting on his status and on some occasions, they tag him in his loving memory. While some Facebook activists would claim the advantage of making people eternal, other would just consider his page as a modern burial place, where smiley-hearts replace flowers, left ads the tomb, and pokes long prayers and monologues. Some, however, see that as an unacceptable disrespect to the family and their son’s memory. With over 300 million ‘clients’ worldwide, no doubt that facebook users would share one of this stance. From the buildings of Wall Street to the bank of the Nile, Facebook seems also hardly integrating the cultural aspects of its customers, while in fact being the most important cutural imperialist in history. As a non-American I was pretty shocked of this situation, but if you are a US citizen and think there is no issue at all here, keep in mind that in other countries we do not have a culture of personal data transaprency. Names on legal cases in France for example or other civil law countries, are kept anonymous, contrary to common law countries and specifically the US. We also do not have any regulations similar to Megan laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan's_Law, or passenger name’s records http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Name_Record ( which actually led to an intense arm-wrestling with the EU.) etc.. | | | | |
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< | Nothing to hide? | >
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This situation actually confused me, and showed me how important data conservation was and how infringed is our privacy, even when passed away. Facebook is not the only web tools that makes us eternal. Imagine yourselft caught in trouble, and for some reason you have a record. You were young, and now a responsible grown up, you regret it. The person you sent your resume to will also have the regret to learn this little secret when googling you. Or, imagine yourself in Wendy Whitaker’s shoes http://www.theagitator.com/2008/11/23/woman-may-lose-home-over-decade-old-blowjob/, name-listed forever on the web… in a very ungloriously manner. Data are kept, we don’t know where, by who, and how. More worrying, as Eben noted in class, some information given without risk at a point, such as religion, sexual preference etc.. could be used against you later on. Some might argue that this web issue only occurs when bad reports, articles, or facts are spoiling one’s reputation: after all, who has never been sensitive to the positive information people all over the world can find about you on google, facebook etc… However, one would be entitled to be freed on any stigma and not reduced to one’s past, when it applies. More importantly, one should not see his life exposed to the public if not consented…
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< | The strange thing is that most people have a rather indifferent attitude towards this phenonomen. What could be so bad about someone knowing what you search for on the internet? You’ve got nothing to hide right? The weakness in this argument is well illustrated in the essay ‘I’ve got nothing to hide’ by D. J. Solove, associate professor at George Washington University Law School. One of the problems with this argument is that the underlying presumption is that privacy is about hiding things. This is a far to narrow view, which does not take into account that privacy is more about a personal, social value. That the right to privacy is recognizes the sovereignty of the individual. Another issue that is overlooked is that the privacy you give up online is not just the information you disclose, but also the information you deliberately do not disclose. Because of the scale that data about individuals is collected, the data that you do not disclose can be inferred by simply putting you’re data in a pool with millions of other subjects. | | | | |
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> | Legally solving this tension between the right to information and the respect to privacy | | | | |
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< | Why is this problematic? | | | | |
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< | Search engines make detailed profiles about their users which contains anything from their tastes in consumer goods to their sexual orientation and medical issues. The main purpose of this data collection is to sell it for commercial purposes to parties who conduct targeted advertisements. Just the fact that you’re personal information is sold for commercial purposes is a bad thing. Even more worrying though is thinking about these detailed profiles falling in the wrong (or worse) hands. One needs only to look at history to see the devastating consequences that this could have. In my hometown of Amsterdam, Netherlands a disproportionate number of Jews were deported to the concentration camps precisely because there was a very detailed data collection about the inhabitants of the city at that time. | >
> | Pursuant to this confusing situation, some countries have therefore asked Facebook and other social networks to comply with their home legislation. For instance, Canadahttp://www.priv.gc.ca/media/nr-c/2009/nr-c_090827_f.cfm pressed last August Facebook to delete people’s profile within a year after they decease, proposing Facebook users to suppress their accounts- and not solely ‘deactivate’-, or limiting access to personal information by application developers. Good compromise to be applied in my friend’s example, some might say, between the necessity of a common burial place and the respect of one’s privacy life, family’s mourning…and facebook’s reputation. But can we expect the establishment of a general right to oblivion?
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< | An attempt at regulation by the E.U. | >
> | Habeas data: A relevant concept to apply to the web? | | | | |
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< | So admitting that we have a problem is the first step, but what needs to be done about it? In the E.U., where there is in general a deeper tradition of privacy protection then in the US, legislators have seemed to recognize the issue and have adopted a directive concerning online data protection. The directive (95/46/EC) is an effort to regulate the data collection by search engines. It sets out a number of policy rules, such as that search engines must delete or irreversibly anonymise personal data once they no longer serve the specified and legitimate purpose. They must justify the retention and longentivity of cookies deployed at all time. The consent of the user must be sought and the user must be able to access, inspect or correct their personal data. While this directive is a reasonable effort to stop the uncontrollable data-mining practice of search engines it is not very adequate. To make search engines ‘irreversibly’ anonymise personal data after they no longer serve their ‘specified and legitimate’ purpose, has proven not to be very effective. | >
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> | Going further than considering a right to be virtually left in peace when passed away, I am personally one of those that demand the application of a web right to oblivion.
‘That it is our capacity for forgetfulness, for oblivion, which allows us to be happy. (…) Oblivion "maintains order and etiquette in the household of the psyche; which immediately suggests that there can be no happiness, no serenity, no hope, no pride, no present, without oblivion". Not only reflecting a pilosophical principle- cf Nietzsche, in_ Genealogy_- the right of oblivion also echoes a legal principle that is found in many jurisdictions all over the world. When a reprehensible act is committed by a person, records are made but generally elapse in oblivion throughout a certain amount of time, contrary to the virtual world, which is putting an eternal stigma on people involved on ‘particular’ issues . While in real life a moral statute of limitation applies, this right is not respected virtually, allowing people to get reintegrated to the society thanks to this right of oblivion that has been echoed, in legal matters, through the principles of limitation: the duration of any crime committed is temporaly limited, and one should not be judged all his life on his past errors. Specifically, this right to oblivion would command the suppression of personal data after a certain amount of time, as suggested and already implemented in Canada. | | | | |
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< | Re-identification | >
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< | Several studies have shown that de-identified information can be re-identified very accurately in almost every case. A persons search inquiries might contain their own name, neighbourhood, neighbourhood etc, making it fairly easy to link them to a specific, identifiable user. Clearly the anonymization of the IP address does not at all solve the problem. Another thing that the directive wants to achieve is to give the users of the search engines the right to access, inspect and correct the private data that has been collected. I agree that this type of transparency would contribute to better online privacy. If users are aware of what data is being collected they can make more conscious decisions about the way they use search engines. | >
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< | What should users do? | >
> | The necessity to be global
Facebook does not know any borders, and it would be hard to apply a specific body of laws that would be in force in a particular country. People need, therefore, to rely on domestic agencies to protect the right to privacy, which more often than are insufficient. Through the 4th Internet Forum Governance http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/, the recent talks that were under the UN supervizion were to explore this issue. Participating countries came up with an unsatisfactory agreement on a charter establishing international standards on data protection and privacy life. Nowhere can be found any trace of right to oblivion, an issue the French secretary of state http://www.sciences-po.fr/portail/fr-fr/actualites.html?mode=show&id=338 to Internet and new technologies made her priority. Shocking, I thought. But understandable, when you look closer to the funding contributors list. http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/funding
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< | In absence of adequate regulation users of search engines should look for alternatives to the search engine with the ‘data collecting and selling’ business model. The technology to do encrypted searches on encrypted data is already available, such as PIR (private information retrieval). What needs to be achieved is a mainstream, potent alternative from google and the other commercial search engines. Free (as in freedom) software might be the best way to make such an alternative. We need search engines who do not depend on advertisement for their revenue. The thing that needs to happen then is the public getting more aware of the dreadful situation they are in and turning away from products from google and other companies that pose a threat to privacy. Unfortunately, the data that has already been collected about us is out there and the use of it will depend on commercial companies like google, who’s very existence depend on misusing it. |
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