Search engines like Google and social media like Facebook are increasingly giving up people’s private, personal data to police and spook agencies who demand it…as well as themselves ‘mining’ it for commercial advantage. We are becoming less an individual and more a cipher, but new products may emerge to allow people to choose greater privacy.
Police, spooks have more access to your data
The Internet Governance Forum, meeting in Nairobi in late September, was told that Internet companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook are increasingly being co-opted for police and spook surveillance work as the information they gather proves irresistible to law enforcement agencies, according to a Reuters report.
Although such companies try to keep their users’ information private, their business models depend on exploiting it to sell targeted advertising, and when governments demand they hand it over, they have little choice but to comply, Georgina Prodhan reported.
It was ironic that the 27-30 September meeting of the IGF, its sixth annual gathering, was under a theme which included "freedoms": ‘Internet as a catalyst for change: access, development, freedoms and innovation’.
The Reuters report said that suggestions that BlackBerry maker RIM might give user data to British police after its messenger service was used to coordinate riots earlier in 2011 caused outrage — as has the spying on social media users by more oppressive governments.
But the vast amount of personal information that companies like Google collect to run their businesses has become simply too valuable for police and governments to ignore, IGF delegates said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/30/us-internet-security-idUSTRE78T2GY20110930
In Australia, where federal and state police forces and the nation’s crime and spook agencies can demand data from ISPs and the like, the number of requests for data to the main international search engine companies is not publicly known.
Google reports that requests for data from Australian police and security agencies reduced in the July-December 2010 period, but two things could account for that. Firstly, as Google says, it has changed the way it categorises such requests, and secondly, police and security services may now have more local and direct access to the data they require after new laws passed in Australia allow them to demand ISPs both mandatorily store and immediately grant access to such information.
It will be interesting to see what the Google data requests figure for January-June 2011 in Australia is.
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/governmentrequests/AU/?p=2010-12
"Overall, the alarming reports out of the IGF in Nairobi indicate that there’s a need for a new, more private and secure way for people interact with worldwide data banks and social media sources," CLA CEO Bill Rowlings said. "Look for new providers to emerge over the next few years who offer most of the benefits, with fewer of the risks."