Is your life an open book?
You might think you have nothing to hide, but how would you feel if prospective employers sifted through your past emails at a job interview?
One of the problems with the web is that we post in haste and repent at leisure, but fortunately much of it remains relatively private from those who know us. However, according to USA Today, some stateside law enforcement agencies are asking potential recruits to sign waivers allowing investigators access to their Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and other personal spaces.
At the annual conference of the International Association of Police Chiefs, held in Orlando, data was disclosed that showed that of 728 agencies included in a survey, more than a third now perform background checks on applicant's use of social media such as Facebook. Some of the concerns raised included the example of a Massachusetts recruit who was considered psychologically unsuitable when his text messages revealed that he had once threatened suicide. A New Jersey candidate was deemed unsuitable to be a police officer after investigators found pictures of him "posing with scantily clad women".
In Europe, the EU Commissioner is considering including a "Right to be forgotten" in the EU Data Protection directives. Whilst it might seem like a good idea to give people the right to have organisations wipe data about them, there are so many potential pitfalls if such a law comes into force, not least of which is the number of places that data is replicated these days by bloggers. To take one extreme example, if a politician does something embarrassing, can he contact newspapers to exercise his right to be forgotten and have his indiscretions purged from history?
There is also the very real problem that it depends on where this data is stored. Will businesses and social networking sites choose to locate servers in places like the Cayman Islands where they are well beyond the scope of EU law?
In a landmark judgement this month, the High Court ruled that a company publishing information on the internet does so in the country where the server is located, not where the data is read. The case involves the Scottish and English football leagues which both claimed copyright infringement against SportRadar of Switzerland. SportRadar re-publishes information about the matches on a web server, for use by betting companies. Basing his decision on previous rulings concerning satellite TV cases, Judge Justice Floyd said the infringement takes place only in Switzerland and the case cannot be heard in the UK. Whilst the English and Scottish FA has sufficient financial muscle to pursue this case in Switzerland, many smaller organisations and publishers of databases would not have that luxury, and are now left with significantly less protection of their intellectual property.
23rd November 2010
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.