Facebook posts can be like 'bad tattoos'

The Australian minister in charge of privacy has warned that personal information posted on social networking websites can linger forever "like an ill-considered tattoo".

But John Faulkner said the challenge for legislators was not to protect people from the information they volunteer about themselves but the data collected by others. He called for privacy values to be at the forefront - not an afterthought - when technology was being developed.

"A Facebook posting or a YouTube video, like an ill-considered tattoo, can linger forever," he told a privacy symposium last week. "But while a reckless embrace of the internet's potential for performativity may lead to lingering embarrassment, poor judgment and over-enthusiastic exhibitionism is not the biggest challenge new technology poses to privacy policy.

"Privacy is not about what we voluntarily - however unwisely, as others might see it - disclose of ourselves. Privacy is our right to make that decision for ourselves."

Senator Faulkner said he was concerned that technology such as the internet, camera phones, radio frequency ID tags and the growing use of closed-circuit TV cameras in public spaces had made it "incredibly easy" for others to collect, capture, collate, transfer and publish information.

"Trying to legislate to control technological development or the ways people use technology is not perhaps ordering the tide to not come in, but it is certainly like trying to empty a bathtub with a teaspoon," he said.

Senator Faulkner said there was widespread availability of small, cheap and versatile devices that could record and transfer sound, images and data but very few technology breakthroughs start from the expressed desire to enhance privacy.

"We can hardly be surprised that technological developments often seem to trade privacy for convenience, for profit, for uncensored, unregulated speech, or for efficiency in law enforcement. Too often, privacy is considered at the end of the process, when debate starts about how the technology will be used," he said.

Senator Faulkner said he would like privacy values to be considered at the start of the development of new technology and "hardwired into the hardware".

He posited the idea that data gathered by electronic monitoring and surveillance in public spaces - such as closed-circuit TV footage - could be made to erase itself and be seen by computer programs instead of human eyes.

"Rather than being viewed or recorded, data could be instantly overwritten if it did not match the right criteria - and those criteria would be determined by policy decisions, by social values rather than by technological default. These decisions must be made deliberately."

Convenience, profit, public safety and the efficient delivery of services have been reasons for the use of digital technology but called for a public debate about privacy protection.

The Australian Law Reform Commission recently handed the Government a three-volume, 2694-page report which contains 275 recommendations to improve privacy laws. It is being considered by the Government.

Senator Faulkner said the Government must play a central role in the debate about privacy and technology, otherwise privacy will become a low priority for business, law enforcement and others.

- © Fairfax NZ News