If
we are going to create a new Constitution for Ireland let
us create the status of human rights of privacy and copyrights
on the Internet because of
.Birgitta Jónsdóttir's
Twitter account: a US
court has ruled that Twitter must comply with a
Department of Justice demand to release private data held
by the social media company,
which it seeks as part of its investigation into
WikiLeaks. Few realise that foreign governments gain the
right to our personal data when we sign up to social
media. I
didn't think much about what rights I would be signing
off when accepting user agreement in my computer. The
text is usually lengthy, in a legal language that most
people don't understand. Very few people read the user
agreements, and very few understand their legal
implications if someone in the real world would try to
use one against them.Many of us who use the are not aware
that our behavior online is being monitored.
Profiling has become a default with companies such as
Google and Facebook. These companies have huge databases
recording our every move within their environment, in
order to groom advertising to our interests as consumers
We are not regarded as citizens with civic rights. This
notion needs to changeWhat I have learned about my lack
of rights in the last few months is of concern for
everyone who uses the internet and calls for actions to
raise people's awareness about their legal rights and
ways to improve legal guidelines about digital media, be
it locally or globally. The problem and the
dilemma we are facing is that there are no basic
laws in place that deal with the fundamental question:
are we to be treated as consumers or citizens online?
There is no international charter that says we should
have the same civic rights as we have in the offline
world. Our
legal systems are slow compared to the speed of online
development. With the social media explosion, many people
have put into databases very sensitive information about
themselves and others without knowing that they have no
rights to defend themselves against attempts by
governments to obtain that personal data whether
their own local authorities or, as in my case, a foreign
government acting internationally. According
to the ruling of the US federal judge in my Twitter case,
we have fortified those rights of government agencies
when we agreed to the terms and conditions set by the
company hosting our data. So, we have to rely on, for
example, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter to look out
for our interests. But it might not always be in their
interests to look out for us. The
reason we make international treaties and declarations
about human rights is because, somewhere along the line,
we agreed that certain rights are sacred and universal.
We need to make the same principles applicable to our human
rights online, as they are offline. These two worlds
have fused together, and there is no way to define them
as separate anymore.It is too easy for governments to
access the information stored online, It is too easy for
that access to be abused. If someone wanted to go through
all my regular mail, they would have to obtain a search
warrant in advance. No such thing happened in the Twitter
case. I am, according to the US Justice Department, not
under a criminal investigation, yet its officials
demanded Twitter surrender my personal messages and IP
numbers without my knowledge. It has never een so easy
for Big Brother to pry on all our most sacred information
without us ever even knowing.
|