Rethinking privacy to define surveillance

Abstract

I will observe and analyse recent surveillance activities and identify the “new elements” and the consequences for citizens’ “private lives”. I will address the issue of whether security and freedom are more or less protected by the new “technology surveillance” used by governments and the private sector.

Our lives online are data, information and expression. Surveillance on the Internet is easier than ever. Every “key stroke” provides a lot of meaningful data. Two fundamental rights are basic on the Internet: data protection and freedom of information and expression. These digital rights are the “trunk” from which other branches stem. The regulation and protection of these two rights are the initial protection for the others. A new understanding of “data protection” (privacy) is absolutely necessary in order to rethink “surveillance” in the public or private sector. The European law is too rigid and narrow, but the American perspective is too flexible and broad. We need to start again thinking about fundamental rights on the Internet in order to find a new way to provide security that maintains freedom.

This paper will focus on the public sector, i.e. government surveillance. Traditionally governance depends on surveillance in extreme circumstances to protect the rights and freedoms provided in democratic constitutions. We have a long tradition—and many reasons—to accept this kind of surveillance (to protect the country and citizens), but we cannot accept a government that acts as a “Big Brother” with expansive powers without limitation. A Big Brother enabled by “Big Data” can have the opposite result to the reason that traditionally legitimized the government surveillance. Strong fundamental digital rig