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<font face="Verdana">Newspaper editorials are saying, which sadly,
the global civil society still remains shy to say .....<br>
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<big><big><b><font size="3"><big><big>The time for global rules on
data usage has
come</big></big></font></b><b>
</b></big></big><br>
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The Independent (London). [Editorial]. 11/06/2013.
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Blanket monitoring of non-US internet activity will not stop
terrorism<br>
<br>
For William Hague, the purpose of yesterday’s House of Commons
statement
was to allay fears that Britain’s security services piggyback on
the privacy
invasions of their less legally circumscribed US counterparts. <br>
<br>
Taking care to give little away, the Foreign Secretary described
such suggestions
as “baseless” and talked convincingly of a system replete with
checks
and balances. <br>
<br>
But even if our own spies are models of integrity, and our own
laws paradigms
of privacy-protection, the less stringent standards in the US are
hardly
less of a cause for concern.<br>
<br>
Yes, we live in a dangerous world. Just weeks after the Woolwich
murder
and the Boston bombing, it would be difficult to maintain
otherwise. A
degree of privacy is therefore compromised, in the interests of
mutual
security. But this is no binary choice, it is a balance to be
struck; and
the latest revelations from the US suggest that the scales have
tipped
too far.<br>
<br>
It is nonsense that the National Security Agency’s blanket
monitoring
of non-US citizens’ internet activity is necessary to combat
terrorism.
The majority of attacks are homegrown. Moreover, the fact that the
same
indiscriminate approach is not applied to US residents indicates
Washington
is well aware how badly such measures play with voters. But while
NSA access
to telephone records raised questions for the US, the Prism
internet surveillance
system raises questions for everyone else. It is also an incidence
of gross
overreach.<br>
<br>
At this stage, there is some dispute about Prism. The companies
involved
– Google, Facebook, Skype et al – deny that the NSA has access to
their
servers. But the broader issue remains pertinent regardless of the
specifics.<br>
<br>
Europe and the US have been at loggerheads over data protection
for more
than a decade. In the past few months alone, EU proposals for new
rules
have provoked a storm of protest from US internet giants and
warnings of
a “trade war” from its diplomats. The latest insights only add
fuel to
the fire, even more so given that talks are set to start on a
groundbreaking
EU/US trade pact next month and American technology companies are
lobbying
for a watering down of the Commission proposals as part of the
deal.<br>
<br>
Much as trade liberalisation is to be welcomed, Brussels must
stick to
its guns on matters of privacy. Data hoards that were troubling
enough
in the context of commercial activity are more unacceptable still
when
potentially accessible by the US government – or, indeed, any
government.
Nor is it enough to claim that the innocent have nothing to fear.
The internet
requires the fundamentals of privacy and ownership to be
re-written. These
new principles must be clarified in law, not allowed to drift,
guided by
considerations of national security alone. Such concerns are
neither wrong,
nor necessarily malevolent; but they are limited.<br>
<br>
Even if enough of an agreement can be reached to allow an EU/US
deal to
go ahead – by drawing a line around matters of national security,
perhaps
– the problem is unlikely to be solved. With US companies so
dominant
online, however, they cannot be fudged forever. Indeed, even as we
are
spooked by foreign ownership of British infrastructure, foreign
ownership
of vast swathes of personal data – the potential uses of which can
barely
be imagined – is going ahead largely unchecked. <br>
<br>
There is, then, a compelling case for global rules on data usage
by which
all internet companies would be bound. Such things take time,
though. In
the meantime, the US must take care not to ruin one of its most
successful
industries. Internet users may flock to Google and the rest now,
but a
non-American, NSA-free rival might find itself with a competitive
advantage.
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