The protection of an individual is fundamental to today’s society and business freedom should never come above that of person’s dignity and that is what this trial has shown.

I agree, entirely, with the first part of that statement — but when the prosecutor argues “… and that is what this trial has shown” I have to ask myself: what trial is he talking about? Whose dignity is being protected here? Certainly not the dignity of a wired society who is likely to face greater surveillance and censorship as a result of this irresponsible ruling. And, certainly not the dignity of that poor boy who can not “delete” his memories of that horrible act of violence. Of all the serious privacy issues associated with the practices of corporations like Google (see here) and Facebook (see here), and governments like the U.S. (see here and here) and China (see here), how does this qualify as a triumph for privacy when it has the potential to further erode individual privacy on the Internet?

Peter Fleischer is quoted in the Telegraph as saying he found it ironic that “as privacy director I have been found guilty of breaching privacy.” With respect to Fleischer, that’s not ironic — it’s to be expected that the person in charge of privacy policies for the most prominent global information company would find himself (fairly or unfairly) held accountable for those policies. What’s ironic is that three Google executives were convicted for violating privacy laws in an instance where they actually didn’t violate anyone’s privacy, and that conviction has the potential to further compromise individual privacy. Now, that’s irony.

Labour MP Tom Watson said it best in the Telegraph:

This is the biggest threat to internet freedom we have seen in Europe. The only people who will support this decision are Silvio Berlusconi and the governments of China and Iran. It effectively breaks the internet in Italy.

However, having substantial influence in each of these areas – from medium to message – starts to look a lot like an informational monopoly. After describing the four horizontal layers of the WWW — transmission > hardware > software > content – Tim Burners-Lee describes his concern with “vertical integration“:

I am more concerned about companies trying to take a vertical slice through the layers than creating a monopoly in any one layer. A monopoly is more straight forward; people can see it and feel it, and consumers and regulators can “just say no.” But vertical integration — for example, between the medium and content — affects the quality of information and can be more insidious.

Apple certainly isn’t alone, Google immediately comes to mind . . . and Microsoft, but to a lesser extent since they’re more of a traditional monopoly.

* h/t Michael Oman-Reagan.

The homepage of Pirate Bay disappeared from Google’s search results Friday, after Google allegedly received a DMCA takedown notice targeting the site.

The move is unexpected because, while the Pirate Bay is rife with pirated material, the site’s spare landing page contains no content to speak of — just links, a logo and a search box. By law, DMCA notices are targeted to specific infringing content.

I increasingly hear the students I work with (and a good deal of the faculty) use Google as a synonym for the web, much as how Kleenex is has become another word for tissue. It’s similar with Googling and  surfing (e.g. one might say “I was Googling David Bowie last night” when they were actually surfing Bowie fansites with little or no use of Google). Of course, no such equivalence exists — Google is a gated community. There is a boundary drawn between the regions of the web that Google (and other major search engines) will index, and the regions they won’t. What they don’t index, we likely don’t see.

That there is proprietary decision-making behind what information is — and is not — indexed, and that we — as a society — are increasingly loosing our ability to even recognize this indexing is a cause for great concern. Expecting Google to make their gate keeping an open and transparent process is ludicrous. Google is for profit, and dreaming up a contorted “free-market” rational for how it could be in Google’s best business interest to be transparent is a dead end. Google makes billions by controlling access to information, and they aren’t going to give that up. Why should they?

But what if there were non-profit, or even for profit, search engines that focused on identifying and indexing all the information Google (et al) isn’t? At a minimum, having such options might at least make people conscious of the fact that the web is bigger than Google suggests.

Discussing the recent Google/DoubleClick merger and fears that it will “aggregate too much consumer data in the hands of one company,” the article notes:

Google, under investigation for violating global privacy standards, is calling for international privacy standards,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a critic of the DoubleClick merger. “It’s somewhat like someone being caught for speeding saying there should be a public policy to regulate speeding.

Fleischer’s argument, in its entirety, can be found here. His point that data should be given the same consideration as other global flows in the informational age – namely copyrights, airplanes and pandemics – is certainly worth entertaining.

In today’s inter-connected world, no one country and no one national law by itself can address the global issues of copyright or airplane safety or influenza pandemics. It is time that the most globalised and transportable commodity in the world today, data, was given similar treatment.

Global standards which recognize the right to privacy as a basic human right in the informational age is certainly needed. Additionally, I would argue that the mass collection and aggregation of consumer data should be public record – whether assembled by the State or commerce, information on the public should be public information. Current standards at Google and Microsoft is to anonymize consumer data after 18 months. Once anoymized why not make these data sets public record?

In citing the APEC Privacy Framework, which “suggests that privacy legislation should be primarily aimed at preventing harm to individuals from the wrongful collection and misuse of their information,” Fleischer suggests that the “preventing harm” principle be applied to the proposed global privacy standards. But as the washingtonpost article points out, a focus on “preventing harm” is different than a focus on “privacy as a right.” Whereas a focus on “preventing harm” burdens consumers with the responsibility to prove they have been harmed, a focus on “privacy as a right” implies preventative policies that ensure a consumer or citizen’s right to privacy is not violated. How does a consumer prove they have been harmed let alone prove that their privacy has been violated?

I’m with Fliescher when he says:

Data is flowing across the Internet and across the globe. That’s the reality. The early initiatives to create global privacy standards have become more urgent and more necessary than ever. We must face the challenge together.

But looking at the recent NSA wiretapping fiasco which has allowed the illegal surveillance of innocent citizens, precisely because those spied on have no means to prove they were spied on, alarms me. We know telecommunication companies like at&t participated in government surveillance but because no consumer has yet to demonstrate harm – or even that they specifically were spied on – the surveillance program remains. In my opinion, any global privacy standard must – at a minimum -include the right to privacy.