Between users of social networks (In September 2015, Facebook has 1,55 billions of active users per month) and the users tracked by users unknowingly (or not!), the anonymous user becomes more and more isolated. Whereas he aims to hide his habits, this emptiness of information will finally bring him to light as atypical, and thus potentially suspect. The adage “if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.” becomes the rule and the anonymous one then alleged offender.
This situation of voluntary spying is dangerously going close to the “telescreen” described by Georges Orwell in 1984
The digitalisation of our everyday lives, as well as the trivialisation of the “cloud” in our everyday objects (tablets, digital cameras, smartphones), propelled our personal data (identity card, salary slip, photos, films) into the hands of third party actors: internet service providers, storage providers (Google Drive, Apple iCloud), ....
The security of our data therefore no longer depends only on our behaviour, but also on the reliability of each of these players. As many copies circulate without our knowledge (by ignorance or by malice) the sometimes massive theft of personal data has got dramatic consequences for the victims: the recent hack of photos of dozens of celebrities on iCloud in 2015 disclosed hundreds of photos strictly confidential.
Behind the promise of an easier use of the digital world, our personal identifiers and personal data are thus centralized and distributed much more widely than many believe.
The theft of personal data seen before may also be used to usurp the identity of a user to misuse funds or to express on behalf of the victim.
With digital copies of identity cards and address certificates, thieves take out bank loans, then disappear with the capital received. The victim will then receive the payment deadlines.
On the web-mail platforms (Google, Yahoo, Apple, …), hackers use flaws in the password recovery processes which rely on personal information that sometimes the user may have published on their social network sites (mother maiden name, place of birth). Piracy acts ranged from digital data deletion to the emission of wrong information (ex: a hacked Twitter account)
The right to oblivion, also known as the 'right to be forgotten', protects the privacy of individuals, by ignoring outdated facts. It appeared in France with the Landru's case when a former lover of the accused demanded compensation in 1965 after the diffusion of the Claude Chabrol's movie. She wished to keep private this part of her life.
The right to oblivion has never been registered in the law until the judgement on May 13th, 2014 of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Indeed, since the emergence of internet, the right to oblivion is under the spotlight because information never disappear completely even after a long time. The internet can be seen as a space of hypermnesia.
The clearest threat is the “Millstone” effect of a deprecated event that can be broadcast on internet years later outside its original context. Teenagers' mischiefs may have bad consequences for employment recruitment, in the media activities, or in political like, years later. Worse, this amplifies the previous dangers quoted before when this private information was stolen (private conversation, private photos).
Do not forget that there are numerous web sites and, by conception, the internet does not have any “stop” button.
The emergence of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, created a new trend in the right to oblivion because people may now ask for the deletion of contents that they published themselves. This control of the e-reputation requires new tools and new laws to achieve a cyber-cleaning.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/surveillance-you-may-have-nothing-hide
