Outing those in favour of invasion of privacy

Last year, London-based privacy advocacy group Privacy International chose April 1st as the day to hand out its Big Brother Awards to the corporate and government individuals and organisations which it felt laboured hardest to invade the privacy of individuals.

While there was a sense of fun at the awards ceremony, the choice of April Fool's Day was grimly ironic for a set of awards which revealed just how threatening some uses of technology can be. Most awards went to organisations which had found that microprocessors used in one form or another were mighty handy for acquiring information about individuals that those individuals would in most cases prefer they did not have.

This year, the awards found a larger stage. On April 7th, they featured as one of the highlights of the annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, held in Washington, DC. The conference is a must-attend event for those interested in the complex tensions between those who would like to make use of some of the more invasive possibilities that high technology offers versus those who argue for greater individual privacy and control over the flow of information. The awards certainly deserve the higher profile - they are a lively and humorous way of raising awareness about very serious privacy concerns and opening up the debate on the subject.

Some people, of course, won't agree with the awards. In some cases they will be the ones who believe law enforcement should be given broad permission to fight the world's evils with technology, especially in cases where the evildoers might be using technology themselves to evade detection. As this column has pointed out several times before, this argument in most cases has been proven an empty one - more scaremongering than realistic.

Other people who may find the awards annoying or perhaps simply surprising are businesses looking at the Internet as a way of gathering information on customer interests and desires and of selling directly to them. Perhaps that's because many businesses seem unaware that the Web - perhaps the most powerful marketing tool ever - is seen in a different light by consumers than other media.

Many Web users find the Web a more personal, enclosed space. They are offended that information can be gathered about them without their knowledge (a routine practice with some commercial sites, which use electronic means, from registration forms to software programs that log e-mail addresses of visitors). They don't like getting unsolicited email. They often feel as if someone has entered their home without their permission.

Businesses and marketers need to understand the ways in which consumers - and other business partners - want to interact with them through the use of the Web, or they risk damaging their client relationships beyond repair and perhaps even falling outside the still-fuzzy framework of the law. Businesses should understand that the legal parameters for collecting and using information on individuals are worryingly blurred - for example, the European Directive on Data Protection directly clashes with the US on some central privacy concerns and because of this, has not yet been implemented months after it was slated to come into effect. So if you have a business, take the time to inform yourself about privacy issues. At the very least, your online integrity and reputation may depend upon it, but so may the success and even survival of your online venture.

As for the Big Brother Awards, five awards were announced but, as a press release drily states, "most recipients were not on hand to receive them".

Karlin Lillington is at klillington@irish- times.ie