Big brother is watching you
The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee’s report – A Surveillance Society – has rekindled the debate about how much data Government needs to retain on UK citizens.
According to the Information Commissioner in a report from 2006 there are 4.2 million CCTV cameras in the UK – one for every 14 people. When you add in the potential information relating to phone calls, online interactions and information retained on databases by Public Sector agencies, we are all building an ‘electronic footprint’ that provides an increasingly detailed profile of our individual activities.
This in turn raises the question of quis custodiet ipsos custodes, which is is how the Roman poet, Juvenal, described the problem of ‘ who guards the guards’ way back in the 2nd century AD. Due to the interconnected online world we all now inhabit, a surveillance society may be something we all need to live with but we need to have confidence in the CIA factors:
- Confidentiality: Can I trust the keepers of this information to protect my online identity from theft or abuse?
- Integrity: Can I rely on the accuracy of the information that is held by Government on me as an individual?
- Availability: Do I have control over how information is shared between different Government agencies about me?
The whole issue of surveillance of citizens raises a host of questions about trust. Trust is at the core of how much information we as individuals are willing to commit online and, in recognising this, Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing initiative is worth looking at to see how we are tackling the challenge of building user trust in the CIA factors when it comes to the personal data they share online.
Posted by Ian