Citation
Gorman, G.E. (2014), "Are we gaining control of the web, or is this an impossible dream?", Online Information Review, Vol. 38 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-03-2014-0074
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Are we gaining control of the web, or is this an impossible dream?
Article Type: Editorial From: Online Information Review, Volume 38, Issue 3.
Australian citizens now have the right to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym when interacting with government agencies, private health service providers and large organisations under new privacy laws (Grubb, 2014).
Your Editor, along with many thousands of others, has long worried about the negative features of the Web that taint the undeniable benefits that it brings across societies, nations, professions and the general citizenry. One of the greatest worries has long been the loss of privacy (anonymity), and the ways in which our every move, every search, every communiqué and every taxi ride can be tracked, analysed and used for means that we may never realise or understand. Google is one of the great culprits here, as we all recognise, but perhaps not as great a culprit as governments across the world, as we have discovered of late.
It comes as some surprise, then, that my adopted homeland of Australia, long treated as America’s “Deputy Sheriff” in this part of the world by successive US presidents (only slightly better than a lapdog perhaps), seems to be moving towards giving its citizens on a national level (as distinct from individual states) greater opportunities for privacy. At least this is the intent of a new privacy law in Australia: the new law states that individuals “must have the option of dealing anonymously or by pseudonym” with government, healthcare providers and large corporations (Grubb, 2014).
This is embodied in the 13 Australian Privacy Principles or APPs, which can be read at: www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-resources/privacy-fact-sheets/other/privacy-fact-sheet-17-australian-privacy-principles. The 13 APPs are embedded in “[…] the Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012, which amends the Privacy Act 1988” (Australia, 2014). As this new law came into effect only on 12 March 2014, we will not know for some time how effective this legislation is likely to be.
But we do already know, according to Ben Grubb (2014), that from the outset a number of caveats make the law less than ideal:
For example, an entity is not required to provide anonymity or pseudonymity where they are required or authorised by law to deal with identified individuals and where it is “impracticable” for them to deal with non-identified individuals.
At the same time, however, this revamped privacy legislation contains real teeth for failure to comply: “Companies face fines of up to $1.7 million, sole traders and entities that are not companies face fines of up to $340,000. So these fines are a strong incentive to comply with privacy laws” (Hogben, 2014). There is also now a much stronger right for individuals to access personal information from private entities. Specifically, in addition to existing to existing Freedom of Information legislation, there is a separate right to request information from private corporations and entities that could hold personal information:
An obvious example of this is for companies such as Facebook and Google – in theory you can now find out how much data they hold on you, what format they hold it in, and whether they have disclosed that information to other parties. The entities are obliged to provide the information to you, but can impose some charges if there is a cost to retrieving the information (Farrell, 2014).
Both the substantial fines and the fact that corporates such as Google and Facebook can be called to account by tenacious individuals bodes well. And this is where the Australian legislation articulates with our concerns – privacy on the Internet. Roger Clarke, who chairs the Australian Privacy Foundation, “maintains the new laws applied to web companies such as Google and Facebook […]. The laws apply to anybody who isn’t exempted under the law […]. There are arguments about enforceability internationality – but absolutely it applies to everybody” (Grubb, 2014). Possibly, but the path is fraught with difficulties that we have been unable to overcome to date, including the power of government and its appetite for spying on premiers and the hoi polloi, and the desire of corporate entities to sell our details to advertisers. Will this possibly change with small moves in the right direction through the APPs?
In an interesting piece in InfoToday, Barbie Keiser reflects on the Web after 25 years, and has this to say:
Discussions about the web today have moved beyond access, speed, the digital divide, and the pluses of mobile technology to the more thorny issues concerning privacy, security, reliability, and ownership (Keiser, 2014).
The four issues of privacy, security, reliability and ownership sit before us as they have for nearly three decades, and we will address each of these in future editorials. But for the moment there is a small glimmer of hope regarding privacy – for Australians at least. Let’s hope that the current Australian government does not give up on this and allow the private sector to take greater control.
G.E. Gorman
References
Australia. Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (2014), “Privacy fact sheet 17: Australian privacy principles”, January, available at: www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-resources/privacy-fact-sheets/other/privacy-fact-sheet-17-australian-privacy-principles (accessed 10 February 2014).
Farrell, P. (2014), “Internet privacy: how Australia’s new privacy laws will work”, The Guardian, 3 February, available at: www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/04/internet-privacy-how-new-laws-work (accessed 10 February 2014).
Grubb, B. (2014), “Want to be anonymous? Now you have a right to be”, The Age, 24 March, available at: www.theage.com.au/it-pro/business-it/want-to-be-anonymous-now-you-have-a-right-to-be-20140324-hvly4.html?eid=email:nnn-13omn624-ret_newsl-membereng:nnn-04/11/2013-technology-dom-technology-nnn-age-u&campaign_code=13ITE006&promote_channel=edmail&mbnr=MTA5NjMxMDI (accessed 10 February 2014).
Hogben, U. (2014), “New privacy laws: are you ready?”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 March, available at: www.smh.com.au/small-business/trends/new-privacy-laws-are-you-ready-20140307-34bbq.html (accessed 10 February 2014).
Keiser, B.E. (2014), “Web@25: what’s next?”, InfoToday, 18 March, available at: http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/Web-Whats-Next-95461.asp (accessed 10 February 2014).