Let’s try to look at some phenomena not necessarily consistent with each other, not apparently at least:
– EU, launches, more or less simultaneously, rules for privacy and for cyber security;
– The European Court cancels the Safe Harbour Agreement by replacing de facto the need to manage data and information within EU;
– The recent dispute with Microsoft creates a precedent with direct and precise business and operational impacts on the management of information by companies subjected to US jurisdiction but operating also in Europe;
– Player US companies handling large amounts of data “as a service” from US announced after a long negative period profit outlook in Europe;
– Single countries close to the EU increase the level of control on the privacy and security of data by inserting control obligations at the national level (for example, Switzerland and Russia, but also France and Belgium after the recent tragic events in Paris);
– The needs of intelligence seem to put security and privacy almost in contrast (information security, in statements of intent of the authorities, is a fundamental systemic asset with respect to privacy which maintains a value of individual rights).
Is there is a common factor, in addition to the obvious need to protect the individual, national and supra-national environments and the pressing needs of defence control?
A few random thoughts:
- Technological change tends to radically separate business needs and data access needs: from the old tokens to blockchain the need to read sensitive information actually tends to decrease (do not be deceived by the social media);
- The commercial solutions trace behaviours of clusters rather than individuals, the protection of individual rights is increasingly correlated with mere information security (let’s avoid socio – anthropological discussions in order to understand the asymmetry between the right and its effective exercise, in this case social media adoption could be a useful key of interpretation);
- National control is returning to a seemingly archaic situation (old protectionism) but actually functional to the main purpose: the national controls do not prevent or contradict the supranational policies but facilitate and integrate monitoring models (let’s consider multicurrency eCommerce, mechanisms of Forex, SEPA and the CorssBorder) and the criteria of national delegation in terms of operational performance of the logic of supranational protection;
- The dynamics of intelligence enables the creation of a gear multiplication: wide dissemination of trade and strong protection of individual information, obviously favouring the control strategy but, in fact, protecting the practice of supranational cooperation in protected environments (let’s consider eCommerce and monitoring mechanisms built in controlled areas like EU than in the far west of other areas of the world).
But it is better to investigate further later on…
Solo poche note a commento:
– c’è un conflitto emergente fra la dimensione sovranazionale di internet e la crescente spinta protezionistica a mantenere il controllo sulle informazioni a livello nazionale o di area omogenea (UE).
E’ un tema tutto politico in un’era di nazionalismi crescenti. La tutela dei dati personali paraddossalmente diventa così spesso un argomento al servizio delle logiche protezionistiche (Russia, Safe Harbour) ma proprio per questo può essere anche lo strumento di garanzia necessario per consentire a internet di continuare ad essere sovranazionale.
– l’evoluzione della tecnologia rende sempre più potenti ed abbordabili gli strumenti di controllo analitico anche a livello individuale: per sicurezza ma anche per mktg o per altre ragioni.
Il tema è delicato e non può essere solo la fattibilità tecnico-economica a guidare la realizzazione di soluzioni di sorveglianza generalizzata: anche in questo caso, la normativa sulla tutela dei dati personali, ponendo dei limiti, indica anche, per contrasto, ciò che può essere fatto, contribuendo così ad uno sviluppo sostenibile del mercato.
Just few commets:
– there is an emerging conflict between the supranational dimension of the internet and the growing protectionism aimed to maintaining at national level the control on data.
It’s a political issue in an era where nationalism is growing. Personal data protection is often used to support the emerging protectionism (Russia) but exactly for this reason it can be useful to guarantee the parties and allow the supranationality of internet (and related economy) to be maintained.
– the evolution of the IT makes more and more affordable the ability to develop analytical control tools at individual level: for security but also for mktg or other reasons.
It’s a delicate topic and the mere tech-economic feasibility cannot be the only criteria to allow a generalised surveillance: again, the legislation on data protection establishing some rules and banning some behaviours defines also the field where private inititiative and the market itself can develop.