UPON COMPLETION OF THIS WEEK’S
ACTIVITIES, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO:
•Identify and explain several ways antitrust laws
have been applied to online activities.
•Describe laws that protect privacy in
cyberspace.
•Interpret and summarize common security
issues that arise in an e-commerce transaction.
PRIVACY
•Privacy means different things to different individuals and in
different contexts.
•Its importance varies from individual to individual, community to
community, organization to organization and government to
government.
•Technology combined with social, economic and political factors has
raised concerns for those concerned with government, enterprise
and personal freedom.
INFORMATION FREEDOM
•Freedom of expression and communication of ideas has
been deemed a universal human right.
•The right to privacy and the confidentiality of
communications in addition to protection of honor must
also be protected.
•Electronic communication and storage of data have greatly
impacted these rights.
DIGITAL DATA STORAGE
•Gone are the days of paper data storage and
consideration of practicality issues regarding the
amount of room needed to store data.
•Digital Age: data can be stored in operating systems.
•Ease of storage allows public and private bodies to
collect and store a larger amount of data (and
personal information) than ever before.
What is information freedom? Please answer in
1-2 sentences. You have 5-7 minutes to
type your response in the chat box
TWO TYPES OF PRIVACY:
1. Information privacy: refers to the ways in which information is
gathered, recorded, accessed and released.
• The multitude of recording and storage options has become
a serious issue for regulation and control
2. Personal privacy: refers to privacy of the person
• Can be invaded by those seeking to photograph, film and
record in public and private places
Privacy is an aspect of freedom and human rights. The
development of technology together with social economic and
political actors has raised the antennas of those concerned
with interference from governments enterprise and others on
personal freedoms. Historically, governments pursued
increasing and systemic invasions of privacy in the name of law
and order, fighting crime and terrorism.
However, their role is in fact to ensure and balance security
issues and the proper protection of the privacy rights of the
individual.
In the 1990s the Clipper Chip was proposed by the US
government ostensibly for the purpose of allowing the
government to override individual encryption to protect society
from gangsters, terrorists, and drug users. Such a process
would have allowed the government to access and decipher all
encrypted files.
Search engines such as Google use sophisticated programs
called spiders, robots and wanderers to use the internet
gathering data on several billion websites, creating an index
that handles several million enquiries per day. Individuals are
surprised by the digital persona visible when their name is
searched. This challenges notions of fundamental human
rights, including privacy.
What is google? Please answer in 1-2 sentences. You have 5-7
minutes to type your response in the chat box
False, distorted and damaging information may be compiled. A
consequence of this massive index of the internet creates datasurveillance. Privacy is only one attribute of the internet in
which challenges arise for established values.
Organized crime, terrorism, intellectual property rights, the
integrity of financial markets and tax systems and cultural and
sovereign diversity are others.
Information wants to be free-The absence of a controlling and
enforceable law facilitates free expression, the communication
of ideas and notions of individual liberty which are themselves
important human rights
Electronic communication and storage of data have a real
impact on issues of privacy and censorship. Previously, many of
the safeguards of our privacy were in fact only the costs of
retrieving personal information. Retrieving data stored in
hardcopy form involved time and expense.
Data could be lost, destroyed, or misfiled. Hardcopies could
deteriorate. Many data collections were incompatible.
Considerable time could be spent gaining access. Our privacy
was protected only by the fact that methods of data storage were
impractical and inconvenient.
Data is now stored in compatible operating systems. Due to the
ease of storage, bodies both public and private are collecting a
greater amount of personal material than ever before.
What is data? Please answer in 1-2 sentences. You have 5-7
minutes to
type your response in the chat box
This is a side of globalization that is both irreversible and
inevitable. Individuals now have a virtual existence in
cyberspace, a digital persona made up of a collection of
otherwise unconnected and previously un-connectable data,
and the quantity of personal information in cyberspace is likely
to increase.
Privacy and regulation-Privacy can be divided into broad
categories: information privacy and personal privacy.
Information privacy refers to the ways in which information is
gathered, recorded, accessed and released. In the digital age
there are multitudes of records of individuals on databases.
Information privacy-Modern concepts of information privacy
emerged in the late 1970s and the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) set up an international
Experts Group to draft Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy
and Trans-border Flows of Personal Data.
Electronic commerce law is about the need to find solutions for
novel circumstances.
The OECD guidelines noted that it was the increase in
international data transmission that had made it necessary to
address privacy protection in relation to personal data. The
OECD observed that privacy protection laws have been
introduced in many countries.
ELECTRONIC RECORDING AND PRIVACY
REGULATION
•OECD guidelines noted that the increase in international data
transmission has made it necessary to address privacy in relation to
personal data.
•require that personal information cannot be collected unless the
person concerned consents or is informed of why it is being
collected, who will use it, and in what way it will be used.
What is information privacy? Please answer in 1-2 sentences.
You have 5-7 minutes to
type your response in the chat box
The OECD Guidelines require that personal information not be
collected unless the person concerned either consents to its
collection or is informed of why it is being collected and is
informed of who will use it and how the person may access and
correct it.
The Basic Principles of Part Two of the OECD Guidelines
include the following provisions:
(a) Collection Limitation Principle which states that there
should be limits to the collection of
personal data which should be obtained by lawful and fair
means with consent.
(b) Data Quality Principle-Personal data should be relevant to
the purposes for which they are to be used.
(c) Purpose Specification Principle-The purposes for which data
are collected should be specified not later than at the time of
data collection.
DATA PROTECTION
Australian Telecommunications Act 1997 prohibits carriers,
carriage service providers and others of disclosing
information obtained as a result of normal business
activities yet requires carriers to have wiretapping
capabilities in place for ‘lawful’ surveillance.
PRIVACY ABUSE
An increase in the amount of data collected and
stored also leads to an increase in mistakes.
•There have been numerous incidents where privacy
has been invaded and wrongful information made
public at the expense of the individual’s integrity. To
name a few incidents resulting from privacy abuse,
it has caused wrongful lawsuits, loss of
employment, false allegations against reputation.
COOKIES
A process where information from personal computers is
sent to the hosts of websites visited.
• a small text file placed on the user’s hard drive, often
without the user’s knowledge, acting like an
identification card but cannot be executed as code or
transmit viruses.
WEB BUGS
Objects embedded in web pages or email used to
monitor use.
•Provide the IP address of the computer that
procured the web bug, the URL of the web page
with the web bug, the URL of the web bug image
and the date the web bug was viewed in addition
to the type and version of the browser and any
cookie information related to the website where
the bug was located.
As cyberspace grows at a
prodigious rate, so does the
potential for privacy abuse.
What are web bugs? Please answer in 1-2 sentences. You have
5-7 minutes to type your response in the chat box
Minimization of future privacy abuse entails
monitoring changes occurring in national and
international legal environments.
REGULATIONS IN CYBERSPACE
Should progress in a way that includes national
governance with respect to fundamental human
rights. They should also respect human diversity
with respect to global values.