backgrounder: privacy

As nations have a variety of privacy legislation, I will focus on some recent issues raised in Canada, which may help to inform the discussion.

Canada's privacy legislation is modeled on the EU, and Canada has a Privacy Commissioner.

One of the issues the Office of the Privacy Commissioner expressed concerns about recently was Google Street View.

This is an example of how what is normally public information available locally to a limited number of people (the local streetscape) can take on a different aspect when it becomes viewable by millions of people over the Internet.

Google Street View provides the ability to "View street level photographs" (they are not live images, they are gathered by vehicles equipped with special cameras).  These cameras have high enough resolution to capture recognisable images of individuals.

This is an example of an individual's "lifestream" unintentionally being captured and made available.  The concept of "lifestream" is all of the events and activities of someone's life, in their different manifestations, whether its writings, photos, audio, video... But intentionally providing these types of content is an integral aspect of the Participative Web.  How do we balance a desire to share our activities and our creativity with a desire to maintain control over our personal information?

Another example of the unexpected consequences of image sharing and the international nature of the Internet was a Virgin Mobile advertising campaign in Australia, which used images obtained from the photo sharing site Flickr.  In one case, a 16-year-old American girl discovered a photo of herself was being used in their campaign.  The Associated Press reports her family (in the United States) has accused Virgin Mobile (in Australia) of invasion of privacy.

Both of these cases illustrate the policy challenges when legal frameworks that depend on geography or nationality collide with the transborder nature of the participative web.