Monitoring Internet content and protecting consumer privacy

The International Chamber of Commerce and the Arab Management Society Conferncee on Meeting the challenges of electronic business held at the Al Bustan Palace Hotel, Muscat, Oman, on 9th and 10th October 2000.

Panel:

• Tony Butler (Internet Watch Foundation)
• David Kett (Advertising Standards Authority)
• Armgard von Reden (IBM)
• Ewan Sutherland (INTUG)

• big businesses
• SMEs
• goivernments
• individuals and family groups

• that it is useful
• that it has a future
• that the risks are understood and limited

Most of the problems are old, some are ancient. For millenia governments have limited the news and knowledge brought within their domains. However, it is very different determining the nature of traffic on a fibre-optic cable is different from searhcing for books and pamphlets at a customs post. It is very much harder to deal with than traditional customs posts, but smuggling is not a new problem.

The dissemination of television around the globe is a problem of at least a decade, with individuals and societies having to decide how to react to channels such as CNN and MTV. Political and cultural sensitivies vary enormously.

Surfing the web and performing transactions on the Internet create transactional data which others can analyse. It is an electornic trail of our movements in physical space and in cyberspace, from cookies, banner advertisements and the like.

The processing of such transaction data was first considered serious in the 1980s. Established prnciples were adopted, for example, in the OECD Guidelines. These laid down the protection of the privacy of the individual through limitations on the processing of data.

The impending introduction of new mobile telecommunications services raises new issues of privacy. These arise largely from the very powerful combination of location to the existing cookie data.

The solutions offered have included codes of conduct and legislation, reflecting perceptions of the importance of the topic and the appropriateness of different measures in getting those with the data to behave in wyas which are transparent and socially acceptable.

The analysis of such data is not inherently wrong, but it is something which must be understood, both individually and as societies..The key historical difference is that analyses which were utterly impractical even a few years ago and now cheap and easy. Moreover, they are often essential to understanding the very rapid evolution of the Internet. Not to analyse such data would be to fail to try to understand how developments were shaping.

An integral part of data protection is security. Without knowing that the data is held securely, then an organisaiton or an individual cannot know that its policies are being applied and are robust. This is true both for storage and for transmission. Consequently, it is essential to have policies for security which are tried and tested.

Without doubt the Internet contains some very dubious material indeed of all sorts. Historically that material has been available only to an extremely limited number of people. It is now available to anyone who can enter a keyword into a search engine. It is also presented to those not seeking it out, but who make a genuine mistake typing in a URL It is also exploited by some, for example www.whitehouse.com is very, very different type of web site from www.whitehouse.gov..

Concern over the appropriateness of content is holding back use of the Internet. Yet use is essential to adoption and innovation. Delay is a price which has to be paid in economic terms from lagging those creating the future. This is not to argue for untrammled access to the Internet nor for unthinking adoption. Rather it is to indicate that there is an economic price, to balance the possible social benefits. The status quo ante ceases to exist.

There are many ways to ensure access to materials is appropriate.

It will never be possible to suppress all objectionable material on the Internet, even if we could agree on what that was. It is certainly possible to provide people with the tools to ensure that they can individually and in their families avoid material when they want to.