What is privacy? Just now the political representatives show the world how protection of privacy looks like in the world's leading Nation. Victim is the President himself who unwillingly has become a benchmark case because of his sexual affairs. Although this is a matter of law, only political strategies are executed. Protection of privacy turns out to be the most important human rights issue in this information technology age. Definition of privacy is difficult. It includes not only data protection; it draws a line at the border where a society is allowed to get concerned about an individual. Louis Brandeis, Member of the Supreme Court, said in 1890: The right for privacy is the right for an individual to live for him/her-self. Protection of privacy includes protection of private information, safety, protection of communication, and protection of territory (house, public space, and work place). Following several articles in American newspapers, privacy at the work place is in great danger. Surveillance is very often made part of the contract with the employer. A Report by the American Management Association says that two thirds of employers are controlling emails and other work at the computer, and are tapping phone calls. Surveillance cameras are used, e.g., to trace movements of employees in company buildings; regular tests for drugs, requests for intimate information and various psychological tests are performed. Many people in the US may believe this is normal. Who tells them that this a violation of privacy rights ? The government ? Bill Gates ? Tim May ? Tim May wrote:
To be more concrete, if I compile lists of who is writing articles on Usenet, I have no obligation to either purge these records or show them to others or not sell them or _anything_. The government cannot get at myrecords except under limited situations.
If companies are using personal data, which they have gathered from open sources, without explicit permission for other purposes than in direct business with that person, then they are violating data protection rules. If the sources are not open, then they are also violating fair competition rules which may be considered to be criminal in some countries. Tim May wrote:
Europe's "data privacy laws," which I have been critical of for more than ten years now, are an abomination. While the laws sound well-intentioned, they effectively give the state the power to sift through filing cabinets and disk drives looking for violations.
Sifting through filing cabinets is also clearly a violation of privacy rights. However, does it mean that privacy is uncontrollable? Alternatively, the only protection is not to put any personal data on a network. Use your pseudonym instead. Strong encryption does not help, because the receiver side may not respect your privacy. Theodor Schlickmann