Privacy in the information society

 

Suba, Ferenc

Our privacy has became more and more vulnerable since the end of the 19th century, and especially since the 1970s. European lawmakers tried to address the problem with data protection laws, and the US Supreme Court has elaborated a vast and complex practice on privacy as a constitutional right. But the new challenges of information society pose new threats to privacy. The Big Brother is now accompanied by the Small Brothers: the business players eager to collect more and more information. My aim in this presentation is to summarize these challenges and their possible solutions.

"No one can tell you are a dog in the Internet" - as the saying goes. But the way the architecture of the Internet is built up does not justify this optimistic view: traces, logfiles on web-servers, customer profiles reflecting our habits and preferences, protocols that do not involve necessary security features might ruin our privacy. (Note, however, that in the beginning, several privacy-friendly solutions were invented (ie. the concept of electronic money by Chaum), but these models could not become prevalent. As the experts of this field remark, these factors are strengthened by the fact that legal safeguards can no longer be effectively enforced in this new environment. Data are valuable for the business players, and can be used for effective targeted marketing; spam is a highly cost-effective way of marketing as well; data mining and data warehouses use these data to discover hidden patterns in our attitudes. In the first part of the lecture, examples relating to these characteristics of the relevant technologies shall be given.

How to safeguard our privacy in the information society then, if we are not able to rely on laws? The solution is information security. In this new world, information security is the most effective method of safeguarding privacy. This was one of the motives for the European Union to establish its new agency - European Network and Information Security Agency - with the aim of fostering discussion and new solutions in the field of information security that can make privacy protection more effective as well. In the second part of the lecture, ENISA and its possible role on strengthening privacy shall be outlined as well as the international co-operation to build an effective information security infrastructure in Europe and around the globe.

In the third part of the lecture, a possible concept of the future shall be given and some practical steps for a reasonable internet user to maintain its privacy. This summary shall also concentrate on the available cryptographic methods, the use of digital signatures, as well as the relevant provisions of Hungarian laws dealing with spam and the privacy aspects of information society services.

I hope the lecture shall convince the audience that our privacy can be maintained in the context of information society as well - the solution is public awareness and widespread use of information security solutions.