e-ignite

Well, it seems that the issue of privacy is becoming more important. Perhaps to set herself as far from the Bush administration as possible, Hillary Clinton has announced that she intends to introduce a “Privacy Bill of Rights” to protect the privacy of American citizens in light of the many surveillance issues introduced during the Bush presidency. I’m not going to take a stance on the forthcoming election and push my political opinion on you all – not being from the USA kind of disqualifies me from doing so anyway! However, this is something that I thought was extremely interesting in terms of global privacy issues. It is a fact that recent “counter-terrorism measures” and other surveillance practices have been steadily eroding the privacy of the general public, and personally, I was worried that once lost, we would never regain our right to privacy in today’s digital world. A recent article I wrote discussed the effects of these new “security” measures and how they have actually taken away our right to privacy. I find it extremely interesting (possibly even heart-warming) that I’m not the only one thinking like this.

Hillary Clinton’s new “Privacy Bill of Rights” is covered in detail in this Wired News article, but it brings up the issue of “opt-in” as opposed to “opt-out” when it comes to privacy: Why should your details be given to just anyone unless you specifically object? In my opinion, your details should be kept in strict privacy until you give permission for them to be given to specific parties.

The actual address to the senate can be seen here, and this gives you a more in-depth view of the proposals. All I can do is hope that now the privacy issue has been brought up in America, politicians in the UK follow suit. As I stated previously, it is a real worry that once certain privacies are removed from you, you will never get them back. Quite often when I speak or write about privacy issues, the standard response is “I don’t have to worry about privacy because I have nothing to hide”. While this is (on the surface) a reasonable point to make, it is the bigger picture that concerns me. Everyone has a right to privacy. Fact. Everyone has issues or secrets that they don’t want just anyone to know, and they always will. It worries me that if we continue with the current attitude towards privacy, it will no longer be possible to keep some things sacred. This may seem like an extreme example, but this rings of ancient practices like witchcraft. Then: This woman can do something we can’t… burn her! Now: This person wants the right to privacy, so they must be up to something… burn them!
With ever-increasing numbers of articles on Slashdot regarding privacy, it’s clear that there are a growing number of internet users who are unhappy with the current state of privacy in the digital age. While this represents a primarily American demographic, there is clearly growing concern in Europe over privacy. For example, there was a political party that ran for office in a European country who had one political standpoint: they would reverse the EU Data Retention laws. Despite citing “no opinion” on other issues, they still managed to get at least some of the vote.

All that we can hope is that by bringing the issue of privacy into the “mainstream”, many more politicians and voters alike will begin to think about privacy and begin to reverse the trend that we are currently experiencing.