Politika - Technology and Protection of Privacy
THREAT OF MISUSE
Experts say that it is possible to find out practically anything about the psychological profile of a person if various data bases were intercrossed.Public opinon polls in the United States show that as many as 80 per cent of Americans considers the right to privacy on of the most important ones, putting it immediately after the right to life and freedom. The right to privacy is regarded in a similar way in most of the countries. Even in the poor ones, those whose citizens are faced with a multitude of egzistential problems, privacy takes the top position the ledder of social values. This is simply a logical result of an ancient, centuries' old, great human desire to be “left alone”.
Together with the new problems and new technologies, modern age has brought along the evolution of the perception of the right to privacy. From a rudimentary right “not to be disturbed” we have come to a complex set of rights to do with the personal data, including, of course, the right to accessibility. Issues concerning lagal protection do not only refer to privacy but also a number of other aspects of protection and conditions and ways of having access to one's personal data. And reasons for efficient protection, although we are not always aware of them, mulitply each day.
About two years ago, an American magazine for politics and culture called, Reason, in co-operation with a distributor of satellite photographs Air Photo US, showed in a truly spectacular way the unsuspected possibilities of (mis)use of personal data. Each of over 40,000 subscribers to the magazine received their own, “personalised” copy - a photograph of the subscriber's immediate neighbourhood was on the cover, with a red circle around the subscriber's house, and a caption “We know where you live”.
On the last page of the magazine there was an advertisement adjusted to the personal characteristics, the occupation and the address of the subscriber. It was all only an intro to the editorial which analysed the availability of personal data and their use and misuse. The action rightfully agitated the public nationwide. Considering that it was executed by using scarce data received when establishing the subscription relatins, the question was what could have happened if the more detailed data bases were used, the ones that certain government and nongovernment organisations have access to.
Such data bases are established on a daily basis, and in this context there are two of them that are particularly important, marketing and security.
Every day, millions of people give various pieces of information about themselves when purchasing things via telemarketing, e-mail or post. The same is done when participating in quizzes, taking loans, and subscribing. More often than not they give out more data than necessary. Experts say that by intercrossing such various data bases it is possible to find out practically everything about a phychological profile of the person the data is about.
At the same time, ever so often, security structures of some countries justifying themselves by, primarily, fight against terrorism, organised and organised crime and insist on introducing biometric identification documents, equipped with electronic chips. This, naturally, implies the establishment and organisation of far more complex data bases. How much can be found out about the profile, inclinations, communication, movement and other details about a person is hard to even guess.
It so happens that a project under which we should all get “smart” IDs is currently underway in our country. This has caused fierce, serious confrontations of opposing views. On the one hand, there is the argument that this is with the aim to fight crime, as well as the advantages of using modern technologies, and othe other hand there are those who believe that this would be a serious infringement of human rights and freedoms in general.
Regardless of which of the positions one may favour, one obvious thing cannot be a subject of debate - with the realisation of the initiated project, Serbia shall join a small group of European countries whose citizens have biometric identification cards, and at the same time it shall remain probably the only country without a modern, with the European standards harmonised Personal Data Protection Act. A bit paradoxical, isn't it? This circumstance alone, without other reasons, is enough to get such a law without further ado.
Of course, such a law would have to recognize the standards and experiences from the legislative practice of the EU and its Member States. In short, it means that the law has to provide for three fundamental goals. First, to establish the right of the person to, in principle, freely decide on what personal information may be processed and used. Second, to prescribe in detail the circumstances and conditions under which personal data can be processed and used without the person's consent. And last, but not least, to establish an efficient mechanism of legal protection in all possible cases of the infringement of the rights.
Information Commissioner
Rodoljub `abi
