Internet – Text
Check unknown vocabulary before you read the text:
Affiliate – a person or company that is connected with another
In compliance with – according to certain standards
Farm out – to send to be done by another person
Bidder – someone who makes an offer
Pay-off – the final payment of a debt
Pervasive – widespread
Surveillance – close observation or supervision
Enshrined – held as sacred
Embedded – enclosed firmly
Rub out – to delete
Disguise – to mask
Transient – remaining in a place for a short time
Internet paranoia
The issue of internet privacy has been in the news because Google has changed its rules to allow information to be shared across all its services. Peter Barron at Google emphasises that all personal information is stored safely and, if you do not want to store data, you do not need a Google account to use its search engine. Google provides personal information to its affiliates, in compliance with its privacy policy – which it points out requires the express permission of users for their information to be released. But Google is not the only internet service busy farming out data and this raises the question of the invasion of people's rights.
Companies like Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft are expanding their data collection techniques and they are not telling consumers and citizens why. Increasingly, a system has been created that tracks us wherever we go, whatever we do, and sells us to the highest bidder. Simon McDougall, of the financial service consultants Promontory, thinks it is right that people should be concerned, although switching from Google to another service provider would make little difference. The expansion of data collection systems throughout Europe and the Asian Pacific in the last two years has been stunning.
Many people have used free services on the internet for a very long time and they have not really thought about how that service is being paid for. If you pay money for a product, you get a product. If you do not pay money for a product, you are the product. More people are realising there is a pay-off and some people will be happy with that, whilst some people won't. The issue is about how you pay for online services and whether you are happy to sacrifice privacy in return for getting a service for free.
Our privacy as citizens and users throughout the world is threatened by this powerful pervasive commercial surveillance system that is being created without our awareness and without our consent and that has nothing really to do with paying for online services.
One of the the key battles is between the European and American interpretations of privacy. In Europe, privacy is enshrined as a civil right, based on the experience that happened in Europe with Hitler and with communism, and you have embedded important civil safeguards around privacy that places the system in a balance between the citizen and the corporate sphere and the government. Advertisers can target people according to a profile built up by their personal use of the internet.
In the US, while privacy is a form of a right, it is, in fact, the free market which determines most of the policies when it comes to the internet. It is the Europeans who are driving the policy debate, while the US strategy is to lobby the Europeans to accept the idea that there can be self-regulation, to trust the Googles and Facebooks and let this market grow.
We are already deeply embedded in the digital media systems operating all over the world. The expansion of data collection throughout Europe and the Asian Pacific in the last two years has been stunning. All we can do now is come in after the fact and try to put in place a few safeguards so that our sensitive information is protected.
So, should people really be concerned about releasing a bit of data onto the net?
“Yes! We don't know where all our information is going to end up," says author Frank Ahern, who claims to be able to rub out, or at least disguise, unwanted online identities. A lot of times most people click 'Yes' without reading what the privacy policies are. The users themselves are problems as well. Because they post, blog, tweet and do everything else also.There was a time when people's lives were transient – they left no trace, but now we are all leaving traces constantly. The minute you wake up and turn on the light there is a trace – of electricity. You log onto your computer, you walk out of your building, your building might have a camera; you walk down the street, there is a camera there; you walk into a store, there is a camera there, too.