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BY Invitation
Internet is a useful resource but can companies manage their responsibility to users?
CHRISTOPHER WOLF
As companies start to look at ways of tapping the vast potential available in the cyber world - and governments on the other hand look at ways to keep a tab on them - there are products being developed by some global internet giants that could be seen as a threat for the privacy of an individual.
Not long ago the governments of Thailand and others in the region were talking about ways to tame the information flow on the various websites across the region for having content that they view as being not appropriate for their populations.
But despite their best efforts they were only able to control parts of the content but that can be seen as just the start of things to come in the future, because, despite the tremendous benefit that the cyber world brings, the drawbacks of uncontrolled databases of information could lead to problems in the future.
It was seen last year when Google's YouTube video website was blocked for breaking Thai law that prohibits insulting the monarchy. Google agreed to work with the Thai government to address its concerns.
But there are new questions over whether Google has the same kind of attitude for the privacy of users of its various online services in Thailand and globally.
There is no doubt that the internet search giant has helped people around the world access useful information. But what if Google's technology was used to keep track of you - your whereabouts and your activities and records were kept of where you have been?
That would be a little worrisome to say the least. And yet that may well be happening. The trouble is the company is not been entirely forthcoming about what exactly is going on.
Google has developed a "geolocation" application for mobile and wireless devices that serves as a complement to its other technologies such as internet search and maps.
According to the company, the technology "obtains a user's current position, watches the user's position as it changes over time, and allows website operators to quickly and cheaply obtain the user's last known position".
The application is designed to let restaurants, salons, malls and other businesses and interested parties advertise to you while you are on the move.
If it sounds like someone is watching you, that's because that may be the case. This raises a host of concerns about privacy and safeguarding personal information.
Google says that it will not directly use the application itself to associate a user's location with personal identifiable information. Despite this promise, it also acknowledges that a website using the geolocation application could collect, store and, later on, use geographically specific information about you for its own purposes.
So while Google itself may not directly collect information on your whereabouts, its various partners may. This is troubling since it has myriad relationships with websites that collect large volumes of data about visitors.
And Google's relationships - which are not just technological but commercial and financial in nature as well - are opaque to internet and wireless users. And in that way, personal data about you could well end up in its hands. We just don't know enough.
Keep in mind that Google already scans and stores mind-boggling amounts of data about its users. For example, it scans all of the e-mails sent with Google applications. One watcher, Michael Zimmer, points out that Google is already "poised to become the perfect all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful force of the 21st Century".
Indeed, the author of an important new book, Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know, pointed out: "There is a problem that Google is acting as a kind of black box, where the data goes in and what happens to it once it's sucked into the Google data centre is something that they do not disclose. They're going to need to change their relationship with their users and become more transparent."
Indeed, Google already has a long way to go to bolster its privacy protections. According to Privacy International, a human rights group, Google ranked dead last out of 23 companies in its 2007 survey on privacy. Google was the only company to earn the bottom ranking for "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy".
To help assuage the concerns that internet users have about their personal privacy online and over wireless channels, it could take some steps to set users' minds at ease. For example, it would be wise to follow the example of some major multinational communications companies, including AT&T, Time-Warner Cable and Verizon.
These firms recently told the US government that any new technologies they develop will provide full disclosure to consumers about how their data are used and would give users real choices to opt out of having their personal information used in a way they do not approve.
All internet and wireless users have an interest in making sure that they feel safe and empowered when using the latest and greatest technologies. Only in this way can internet and wireless users be confident that their forays into cyberspace will not result in compromised privacy.
Christopher Wolf is a privacy lawyer who chairs the Privacy and Data Security Practice Group at Proskauer Rose LLP. He recently presented a paper on Geolocation Tools and Privacy at the annual meeting of the International Bar Association.
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