Our Rights to Privacy
Should be Upheld on the Internet
As the world gets increasingly interconnected thorough the world in the 21st century with the internet, our right to personal privacy on the internet has become ever more important. With this new form of instantaneous communications, and massive troves of personal data being transmitted online through social media networks, online data has been described as more valuable than oil. Technology companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Alibaba are among the biggest controllers of internet data. Facebook alone has around 2.41 billion active users in the 1st quarter of 2019 (statista.com 2019).
Our personal data is also been valuable to governments in areas such as national security while certain governments see it to monitor individuals who may have different political views or to monitor behavior to prevent crime. The use of personal data on social media has also recently been revealed to be used as way to help political parties win elections by having target campaign advertisements based on personality profiles created from social media data. This essay argues that the need to sacrifice online privacy for national security is an unfounded argument, and that the lack of data privacy in fact threatens national democracy.
Our rights to privacy on the Internet
To understand what our rights to personal privacy are, we must first understand what the right to personal privacy is. The right to personal privacy as stated by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12 states that:
“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” — Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This means that every individual should have the fundamental right to keep certain personal matters and information away from public view and intrusion. It is the right to be assured that everyone has a space to not be viewed by prying eyes.
On the internet, we as internet users are often leaving digital footprints everywhere as we browse the internet visiting websites, signing up to websites and giving away our email addresses, entering credit card or debit card details, sharing photos, videos and personal messages on social media as well as uploading documents into cloud storage. Often, we regard these data to be our private information that is only meant to be for personal use or shared with friends and family, however how can we be guaranteed that the data that we upload remains private and safe from misuse or hacking?
Currently there are numerous laws around the world to protect individuals from the misuse of personal data on the internet. One such example, is the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) 2010, in Malaysia which regulates the use of personal data for commercial use and against inappropriate use. The law states that users of data are required to comply with 7 Personal Data Protection Principles. Among the seven principles include the need to provide notice and choice where data users are required to notify you of the purpose in which your data is being collected. Another includes disclosure where data users are not allowed to disclose your data to third parties without prior consent. Data users must also take steps to ensure that all personal data is stored securely to prevent personal data from being lost, stolen, modified, destroyed by external factors such as hacking.
Even with such laws, there has massive data breaches in Malaysia. A report by Malaysian news portal Lowyat.net in 2017 revealed that 46.2 Million Malaysian mobile phone numbers was found to have been leaked in 2014. — This has led the Malaysian government to review its data protection laws. Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Minister Gobind Singh Deo said it was important that the law is amended to ensure that it can be up to date with current internet developments.
The use of internet surveillance for national security
In this internet era, many internet users have grown concerned that their online privacy has been breached by not only the use for commercial interests, but also by government surveillance in the interest of national security. In the United Sates, a survey conducted by the Public Affairs Council has shown that Americans value their online privacy over the sake of national security. The survey revealed that while American citizens expect their government to protect them from security related issues such as terrorism, many were not happy National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance program. It showed that 42% are willing to give up some privacy form of privacy to protect national security. 56% stated that it is more important to maintain their personal privacy.
This survey was conducted a year after The Guardian made headlines with a report based on leaked top-secret documents of the United States National Security Agency where it conducted intelligence surveillance on domestic international internet communications. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked over 9,000 to 10,000 documents to The Guardian. The publication of leaked documents revealed previously unknown details of a joint global surveillance operation run by the NSA in the United States together with its partners: the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) in Australia, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in United Kingdom and the Communications Security Establishment (CSEC) in Canada.
The first report detailed about how the NSA ran a telecommunication monitoring database, called Boundless Informant, through a top-secrete court order that required telecommunications company Verizon to hand over millions of daily American phone conversations to the NSA. Other programs that was revealed include PRISM which allowed the NSA to gain access to user’s private data from companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo and YouTube upon approval from the court. Another program known as XKeyscore, was an analytical tool that enabled the NSA to basically have unlimited access to monitor any individual’s private data. (The Guardian, 2013) Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden said in an interview with The Guardian that:
“Any analyst at any time can target anyone… I, sitting at my desk, had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal email.”
The revelation of the extent of the online mass surveillance programs conducted by the United States government and their counterparts, opened new debates about government’s transparency and personal privacy. What led Edward Snowden to reveal thousands of top-secret documents to journalists, was his realisation that the public was unaware of the extent of the government’s surveillance capabilities were and that he wanted the documents to drive debate and the choice of what world they want to live in. It raised the question of whether people agree with what governments can do to gain access to private information. Snowden also said in the interview with The Guardian that:
“My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them. I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”
It could be argued that, these surveillance programs have proved to be effective tools in preventing security threats to countries such as terrorist attacks in the United States. According NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander, more than 50 potential terrorist attacks have been prevented with the aid of the two controversial NSA surveillance programs that tracks phone calls and internet user’s data. “In recent years, these programs, together with other intelligence, have protected the U.S and our allies from terrorist threats across the globe to include helping prevent the potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11.” While it could be argued that it does help governments keep tabs on citizens with ulterior motives, the problem lies with the notion that we have “nothing to hide”.
Oxford Internet Institute researcher and Deputy Director of the Digital Ethics Lab Dr Mariarosaria Taddeo believes that while we may not have anything to hide today, we may have something to hide in the future. She gave an example of how the Jews in Germany did not have to hide before the Nazis came to power in the 1930s. “Jews in Germany didn’t have to hide being Jewish before the Nazi party was in power, but then it became very convenient to hide that information.” It is basically the idea that we would be putting all our trust into the government and hope that in the future, such as 5 to 20 years, circumstances would not change where we may have something to hide from the government.
The Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal
Another revelation of the use of personal data has also emerged in 2018 with the news report by The Guardian, The New York Times and The Observer that a political consulting company, known as Cambridge Analytica. The company retrieved personal data from around 87 million Facebook profiles for targeted political campaigning with Donald Trump’s election campaign during the 2016 United States elections and the 2016 Brexit Campaign for the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union.
In the case with Donald Trump’s US election victory, the use of personal data harvested from Facebook by Cambridge Analytica resulted in a breach of trust between Facebook and its online users In 2013, University of Cambridge psychology professor Dr. Aleksandr Kogan created a third-party survey app called “This is Your Digital Life” which allowed Facebook users to take a personality quiz. Once the app is downloaded on the phone, it would collect the user’s personal Facebook data which includes Facebook likes. It however did not just collect the data of the user that downloads the app, but also the data of the user’s friends’ network.
By getting 270,000 Facebook users to complete the survey, Cambridge Analytica gained access to 87 million Facebook user’s personal data. When a user gave the third-party app permission to their private data, the app also gathered data of the user’s friends list which caused most people to unknowingly give their personal data without consent to Cambridge Analytica. According to Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, the company used the psychological data obtained from the surveys to plan and develop targeted campaign and political messages on Facebook for the Trump campaign to convince the undecided voters to vote in favour of the Republican party.
Following the revelations in 2018, Facebook received significant backlash for allowing Cambridge Analytica to gain access to its user’s data without consent. An online campaign soon started with the hashtag #DeleteFacebook with many users losing trust with Facebook’s handling of personal information. A poll conducted by Reuters on March 25 showed that 41% of Americans trust Facebook to obey US Privacy laws (Reuters 2018).
Facebook had initially denied any wrongdoing with its relations to Cambridge Analytica and had even threatened to sue The Guardian which it later retracted. Facebook’s head of global news partnerships Campbell Brown said — “It was a mistake to not have addressed the data leak then, and if it were me I would not have threatened to sue The Guardian. Probably not our wisest move”. The Cambridge Analytica scandal brought intense political scrutiny on Facebook, where its CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg faced an intense two day US Congressional hearing over the data sharing scandal. Which Mark Zuckerberg eventually apologised for — ““It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.”
Conclusion
With the fallout and revelation of two big breaches of privacy where governments have the capability to monitor and harvest private data online and the fact that some companies can obtain our private data without our consent, it causes us to question if there is enough being done to protect data privacy policies. Governments as well as technology corporations must take bigger and clearer steps to draw out how our private data online can be kept private and secure. To protect our online privacy and dignity, transparency and disclosure over how our data is being used or monitored should be something very important to our right of privacy on the internet. While we may say that we have “nothing to hide”, what if the government determines that certain points of views are deemed a crime? Would you be willing to put full trust on corporations or governments on our internet privacy?
Reference List
Angulo, I. (2018). Facebook: threatening to sue The Guardian over data leak was ‘not our wisest move’. [online] CNBC. Available at: https://cnb.cx/2LkTjpQ [Accessed 29 Aug. 2019].
Chang, A (2018). The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal explained with a simple diagram — Vox News. [online] Available at: https://bit.ly/2pCFpEJ [Accessed 10 Aug. 2019].
Debating Europe. (2017). Would you give up your privacy to improve your safety? — Debating Europe. [online] Available at: https://bit.ly/2HxK44G [Accessed 29 Aug. 2019].
Fauzi, N (2019). Data privacy laws: Malaysia has a long way to go — New Straits Times
[online] Available at: https://bit.ly/2G56IRG [Accessed 7 Aug. 2019].
Greenwald, G., MacAskill, E. and Poitras, L. (2013). Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations. — The Guardian [online]. Available at: https://bit.ly/2j7nGnz
[Accessed 10 Aug. 2019].
John R. Parkinso (2013). NSA: Data Dragnets Foiled Terrorism. — ABC News.
[online] Available at: https://abcn.ws/2w66uGV [Accessed 10 Jul. 2019].
Kerry, C. (2018). Why protecting privacy is a losing game today — and how to change the game. — Brookings
[online] Available at: https://brook.gs/2NizOxv [Accessed 20 Aug. 2019].
Khan, C. Ingram, D (2019). Americans less likely to trust Facebook than rivals on personal… — Reuters
[online] Available at: https://reut.rs/2pEizNP [Accessed 10 Aug. 2019].
Privacy International. (2019). Cambridge Analytica, GDPR — 1 year on — a lot of words and some action. [online] Available at: https://bit.ly/329Tawn [Accessed 1 Aug. 2019].
Public Affairs Council. (2018). Public Values Privacy Over National Security, Cost Savings — Public Affairs Council.
[online] Available at: https://bit.ly/2MJ3Yh8 [Accessed 8 Jul. 2019].
The Star Online. (2019). Gobind: Personal data protection law being reviewed.
[online] Available at: https://bit.ly/2HxhFvB [Accessed 8 Aug. 2019].
Un.org. (2015). Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
[online] Available at: https://bit.ly/1RzXGfX [Accessed 29 Aug. 2019].
Statista. (2019). Facebook users worldwide 2019 — Statista.
[online] Available at: https://bit.ly/2daz7Yr [Accessed 20 Aug. 2019].
