48 technology
Technology and privacy: only getting more
challenging? Recent headlines in the news have emphasised that we are surely now in an era when it is difficult to achieve real security of your personal data, and so to privacy, while at the same time participating in all aspects of modern technology, writes Andrew Peddie, partner, head of corporate, Pitmans LLP
This is an issue for businesses and government just as much as for individuals, raising questions about how in practice you can protect against loss of personal data and privacy. It is a major legal issue, but completely in the mainstream of public debate. It encompasses questions of data protection, but also cyber security, and privacy law and practice more generally.
We want to have the benefits of convenience and massively increased search capability, but we expect that at the same time our privacy will remain intact, even though we know this is difficult to the point of being entirely unrealistic
The widely quoted suggestion in mid-July 2013 that a security agency of the Kremlin is seeking to buy typewriters so as to create more paper records, and to phase out some of its use of computers, has highlighted some of the issues here. If true (and of course this could just be a story designed to foster Western paranoia in the aftermath of the Edward Snowden “whistle- blowing” incident) it is remarkable. Even if untrue, the fact that we are all opening ourselves to the risk of loss of privacy, and worse to the theft of our personal data, by our reliance on technology is undeniable.
It has been a truism for years that participating in Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks are just some of the many ways that we are all (knowingly and accidentally) giving out information about ourselves. We are doing it on one level simply by placing it in cyber space, where it is relatively easily accessible. This is also opening up that data to being processed in ways that reveal far more than we think. We need to understand that and work out what significance it has for us, our businesses, clients, and counterparties.
The answer cannot realistically be to go back to a pre-technology era. We have all become entirely used to operating online. What is more, we are completely split-minded and irrational when it comes to analysing the risks of organising our lives in this way. We want to have the benefits of convenience and massively increased search capability, but we expect that at the same time our privacy will remain intact, even though we know this is difficult to the point of being entirely unrealistic.
Let us take for granted for the moment that there are large amounts of resource and effort directed within government agencies, and elsewhere, to accessing personal communications. It may be that this is captured wholesale, but for all but legitimate security targets left unexamined, as seems to be the authorities’ suggestion in the face of the Edward Snowden revelations. That still means that our personal electronic communications are accessible. It does not feel like a large step from that to it becoming possible for others (whether institutional or criminal) to use similar techniques to get that data, and/or to analyse it.
www.businessmag.co.uk THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – SEPTEMBER 2013
It is also suggested in the media that the fact of data being encrypted is enough to make traffic more likely to be targeted, so as to allow the national security authorities to examine whether it has been encrypted for criminal purposes. Again, anecdotally some commercially available encryption appears to be relatively easily cracked by the authorities, other forms less so.
While a limited number of individuals take the view that the answer, in light of this, is just to accept that your life has to be lived entirely in public, so that there is nothing to hide which a third party could use against you, that is not really sustainable in terms of financial information, or for information which relates in part to third parties. Morally and legally you are not entitled to take such a blasé attitude to others’ privacy.
This is a debate which is only just getting properly underway. More and better frameworks in terms of the technology, the law, and business and individual behaviours on these issues need to be established before we are anywhere near a permanent solution for some of the problems thrown up in this area. Perhaps some of the recent headlines will push us towards that resolution.
Details: Andrew Peddie 0118-9570321
apeddie@pitmans.com www.pitmans.com
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