The NSA scandal which erupted last year has motivated governments to rethink their approach to internet and legislation, at least when it comes to protecting personal information. Let’s take a look at Russia, though. According to a poll conducted by EMC, 92% of Russians support legislation banning companies from processing and sharing information without users agreeing. Listen on air and read more on our daily Runet review '.RU' at the voiceofrussia.com.
Internet is a relatively young phenomenon – an extremely young if we look at the big picture, i.e. the history of humanity. However, it has stormed the world, destroying old paradigms and creating new ones, and the resulting mess cannot be truly comprehended using traditional methods. For example, take national legislation – how exactly should it work? It was pretty much black and white in pre-internet days. You do something on the territory of a country, you follow the laws of this county. But internet blurs national boundaries, with users, routing points, servers and other users scattered across the globe. But that’s, of course, just part of the problems traditional legislation has with the difficult to describe information-based medium. The NSA scandal which erupted last year has motivated governments to rethink their approach to internet and legislation, at least when it comes to protecting personal information. But perhaps it would best to use an international approach? This spring, on the 25 year anniversary of writing the first draft for the first proposal of the world wide web, its author, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, proposed creation of the online Magna Carta – a charter which would protect and safeguard the independence of the digital medium, along with rights of its users to freedom of expression and privacy worldwide. The proposal did not come out of the blue – talks on introducing legal guarantees for internet and its users have been voiced for a while now; proponents of legally established internet freedoms have become increasingly vocal, as I’ve said, after revelations leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Essentially this project is a crowdsourcing effort for all internet users to create a digital bill of rights in each respective country. Berners-Lee said he hoped the intiative would be supported by public institutions, government officials and corporations. Ufortunately, nothing came of it yet. The possible reason for inaction is people simply don’t care much about their online freedoms and privacy – until they’re directly affected, of course.: Here’s an example: in 2012 Facebook tried holding a vote for new user policies, but it failed miserably. The seemingly ever-increasing general dissatisfaction concerning their privacy policy prompted Facebook to announce a massive network-wide vote on privacy. Well, a lot of people simply didn’t know there was a vote going on or didn’t care. The social network stated that 30% turnout was needed in order for the management to adhere to the people’s choice. Well, the final figures are nowhere near. Out of 900 million users the social network had at the time, a mere 342,632 voted on which privacy policy would govern the site. That’s less than 1% of the Facebook userbase. Let’s take a look at Russia, though. According to a poll conducted by EMC, 38% of Russians are ready to provide personal information for better online services. According to EMC Privacy Index, approximately one in four people worldwide care about privacy and are willing to provide information, with Germans being the most proactive – only 12% are ready to share personal data. Maybe it has something to do with experience. 61% of Russian users had to deal with violation of privacy in the past. In fact, 92% of Russians support legislation banning companies from processing and sharing information without users agreeing. Peter Lekarev, Source: The Voice of Russia, Image: pixabay.com under Creative Commons CC0
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