The Economist on Privacy
On June 2, The Economist reported on a ruling by the European Court of Justice regarding transfer of data about airplane passengers to the US. The Court ruled that the data could not be transferred but chose to rule on a legal point rather than address the issue of passengers’ rights to privacy.
The US has traditionally allotted more rights to its citizens and residents than much of the rest of the world, and, correspondingly, limited the power of government over its wards. However, since the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrow Building in 1995 and the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93, the US has been moving away from privacy rights in the name of greater security. The Patriot Act gave broad new powers to law enforcement in the US, something we are just beginning to understand (and which many object to). Europe, which has lived with the reality of terrorist attacks much longer than the US, has increased privacy rights at the same time the US was giving them up.
I find this interesting. How can Europe, with much more experience than we Americans in fighting terror, actually protect its members’ privacy more in the current atmosphere, while the US says that some privacy must be relinquished in the name of safety? Are we in the US exercising prudence, or just reacting like surprised children who have finally learned (as most do around the age of four) that we are not immortal?
Or is the issue here the release of private data by commercial firms, even if to other governments? The EU in 1998 adopted privacy requirements of firms that are very like those already existing in the US. The US government is expanding its suveillance of citizens, residents and visitors, no doubt. And, Americans are becoming uneasy about the power we have granted to the government, albeit somewhat unknowingly. In Europe, it seems, the governments have had surveillance powers much longer than the US government, but they are beginning to restrict the way private firms deal with consumer information. Most consider what is happening a divergence between the US and Europe on privacy matters. I think it may rather be a convergence that is expressed by an expansion of government power in the US, and a limitation of private action in Europe.
Maybe the debate on privacy is mislabeled. Perhaps we need to look to the recipient of private data and the origin of the disclosure to understand the global dynamics.
Susan B. Waters, EDM
June 6th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
The problem is that we all create new and revealing personally identifiable digital information daily, and voluntarily give it to third parties who can then use it in specified ways. Then, take a look at the private legal agreements we assent to as we use reward cards, credit cards, buy airline tickets, and, just about every thing else that we consume, and see how broadly we permit our digital footprints to be legally sent around cyberspace - as a civil society we care less about our privacy and more about our convenience - the growth in e-commerce continues unabated.
And today, when it comes to matters of US national security, the government exercises its power to gather information like passenger lists and phone calls on cell phones and uses of internet sites(legally??? only time and an expensively long and costly political process will tell), and most citizens are willing to live with the intrusions under the impression that there will be no more 9/11s.
As a civil society, unless we want to and then learn how to manage our digital identities, we will leave ourselves open to third parties and governments taking our mostly willfully given digital footprints, and depending upon laws and enforcement to protect our right to privacy. Something tells me that this isn’t going to work. Law enforcers say that most cybercrime originates out of the reach of their enforcement powers, and where the rule of law isn’t present the way we expect it to be.
Understanding our digital identity, how we create it and who gets to see it and use it, and then taking control over it, has greater power to protect our privacy than laws can. Once the data is online out of our control, laws can’t stop it from dispersing just about anywhere. We don’t have to fear that consequence if we judiciously manage the information we create about ourselves in cyberspace.