Mike Simpson

OH BOTHER, it’s Big Brother! Is Big Brother watching you? Yes, he probably is. Or, at the very least, he knows how to watch you retrospectively if he wants to. By MIKE SIMPSON 5 s anyone who has been following the Oscar Pistorius trial will A know, just about anything that you say, or have said, in the digital and social media world could come back to haunt you later. That dubious website you surfed on your tablet late one evening in the privacy of your hotel room may not be quite so private after all. Neither may that series of intimate messages you shared with your (or someone else’s) partner or spouse. Which, given the lessons of the Pistorius trial, could presumably lead to such PC and non-committal love chats as: “Dear Mrs Smith, Mr Smith hereby declares his affection for you and fondness for certain elements of your character and anatomy. He looks forward to discussing these further at your earliest convenience.” Such could be the expressions of undying love in the age of digital communication and digital spying … The British have their own experience of this via the phone-tapping scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World tabloid newspaper and criminal proceedings against several executives and journalists. Subsequent tell-all books by former staff members also lifted the lid on just how easy it was for the newspaper and its support cast of private detectives to obtain the personal details of virtually anyone – from royal family members to sports stars and politicians – and then tap into their phone conversations or voicemail messages. This situation came to a head when the activities of the dirty tricks operatives 6 TAP to read more Are you happy to be snapped? were found to have compromised the investigation into a murdered schoolgirl. Are you happy to be snapped? You’re walking hand-in-hand down the street with your dearly beloved and a photographer happens to take your picture. Is this legal? The simple answer is, yes. By appearing in public you are essentially waiving your right to privacy. But should you move on to a place where you could reasonably expect privacy – such as a private home, a public restroom or a medical facility – then you have a greater level of protection. If the photograph was taken in a shopping mall, private residential estate, or even an entire private mixed-use precinct like Melrose Arch in Johannesburg, then the photographer would probably need management’s permission and you could take up the matter with them if you were unhappy. However, it would be management’s responsibility to ask the intrusive photographer to leave on the basis of trespass. Under no circumstances can photographic equipment be confiscated or images destroyed, as the breaking of the law relates to the act of trespass and not to the legal act of taking an image. If the photographer intends using the photograph of you for commercial gain – such as in an advertisement, brochure or for a professional photo library – then your consent is required. 7 New law a social media game changer TAP to read more The subsequent public outrage galvanised the ET drone home authorities and the publication’s owners into action. Another major privacy talking point in the United States is the proliferation of unmanned flying drones. Usually Indeed, issues of privacy and intrusion have been much associated with military operations in places like Iraq in the spotlight in Britain in recent years. The increasing and Afghanistan, cheaper and smaller drone versions use of closed-circuit (CCTV) cameras on the streets of are now being used for all manner of activities, from major cities like London and Liverpool, for example, delivering parcels to aerial filming of homes for estate has led to public concerns about the sheer magnitude agents. But the concern is that their proven ability as of the information being gathered, how it is being used military surveillance platforms – plus the increasing and stored, as well as how it may be used in future. commercial availability of sophisticated surveillance Defenders of the system, though, argue that the cameras technology – makes drones ideal for snooping on the help prevent and detect crime, give early warning of activities of American citizens within the United States. incidents like fires or vehicle accidents, and help to monitor the flow of traffic. The only people who have “Drones are the most powerful surveillance tool ever anything to fear, they say, are those who are up to no devised, online or offline,” observed Time magazine in good. a feature article last year. The publication reported that police departments are already using drones for In America – as much the Land of the Paranoid as it is the self-proclaimed claimed Land of the Free – mistrust reached new heightss recently when WikiLeaks revealed that the electronic onic spy organisation, the National Security Agency (NSA), NSA), had been spying on its own citizens rather than fulfilling its mandate of spying on the citizens of other countries. ount ntri ries ri es.. es 8 certain tasks and various civil liberty groups have begun New law a social media game changer South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI) was signed into law in November 2013 and will come into force on a date to be published in the Government Gazette. One of its main impacts will be on privacy in the social media arena, where the rapid pace of innovation and its uptake by the wider community has seen relevant legal frameworks lag far behind what has been happening on the ground. Now consumers will have greater rights as to how their information is obtained, used and shared with others. Similarly, businesses will have a defined way in which they must act with regard to any information they obtain about existing or potential customers through social media channels. “Put simply, if you receive or give any personal information to another party, then POPI applies to you,” says social media company Cerebra in a report on the new act. To provide a practical example, a company that runs a Facebook competition requiring entrants to submit personal information may not keep and use that data for any other purpose – such as a subsequent phone or email campaign – unless permission to do so has been given by the consumer. According to Cerebra, another impact will be the curtailing of so-called ‘influencer lists’ by marketers or their agencies. These are list of people who are influential on various levels on social media and could include customers, bloggers, journalists and others with a large and influential reach. “Be aware that when you first collected an influencer’s information it would have been for a specific purpose, such as an invitation to an event. [But] it doesn’t mean the list can be shared with other clients for a different purpose,” the report says. However, consumers need to be aware that information they display freely – such as phone numbers and email addresses on a website or Facebook page – is not protected by POPI and may be harvested for use by others. 9 lobbying to have legal restraints put on their use within Of greater concern than the visuals, though, has been America’s borders. Street Views’ (allegedly inadvertent) scooping up of passwords, email addresses and other personal “Until actual legislation is passed, it won’t be completely information by the mapping vehicles as they passed clear what information the government can and cannot by homes and offices. Google was fined US$7 million gather using drones,” Time said. “There are certainly last year after 38 American states brought legal action precedents: the Supreme Court has ruled that the against it for the privacy violations. Other countries police can, under the Fourth Amendment, fly an aircraft have also been unimpressed. A court in Italy recently over your fence to check whether you’re growing fined Google for a similar transgression and an Australian [marijuana]. It’s not a giant leap to imagine them flying regulator called it “probably the single greatest breach a drone instead. But where does it stop?” in the history of privacy”. Of course, legal restrictions only apply to those who Digital and data danger operate within the law. As Time noted: “Drones don’t While the protection of personal privacy can encompass care who they work for. They’ll spy for anyone and as anything from hidden spy cameras to private detectives they get cheaper, more powerful and easier to use, going through your rubbish bin, it is in the digital and access to military-grade surveillance technology will social media world that it seems hardest to control. get easier too. Voracious as they are for information, Alan Duggan, editor of the South African edition of drones could take a serious chunk out of Americans’ Popular Mechanics magazine observed in a recent already dwindling stock of personal privacy.” special feature on privacy: “We don’t want to scare you unnecessarily, but you need to know that a lot of digital information that you regard as strictly private is accessible to people who may not be very nice.” Google Street View Google’s global Street View mapping project has also run into privacy issues. It was introduced to Britain in 2009 and a 2010 opinion poll showed that 57% of people interviewed thought it was ‘intrusive’, while 24% said it was ‘a service for burglars’. For its part, Google responded by saying Street View was used by millions of people daily and there was no police evidence to suggest that it had assisted in any crime. Individuals with privacy concerns could have their homes removed from the video footage, Google said. 10 The article noted that web browsers are particularly leaky when it comes to privacy. “Browsers work in two directions. You use them to learn about the world and snoops use them to learn about you. The sheer number of identifying files or cookies downloaded onto our computers can surprise even jaded digital natives.” Social networks are another weak point and Popular Mechanics tells the story of an Austrian man who used an obscure European data-protection law to compel Facebook to provide all the data it had collected on him. He was eventually presented with a 1 222-page document! When marketing morphs into crime But while corporate snooping for marketing purposes may be irritating, far more worrying is that cyber criminals are also looking for your personal or business data. Here the implications of privacy breaches are far more serious. According to Zoaib Hoosen, Chief Operations Officer at Microsoft SA, one in five small and medium businesses in the country have been targeted by cyber crime and South Africa needs to move with greater urgency to solve a problem that could have great consequences for the economy. In an interview with the Financial Mail he noted. “We don’t have five years to sort it out. For government, this is a real threat, we need to move speedily.” His thoughts are echoed by the Pretoria-based Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS). “As many South Africans build higher walls, gates and electric fences to prevent crimes in the physical world, they should not lose sight of their growing vulnerability in the virtual world,” the ISS said in a report published earlier this year. “While there is no silver bullet to prevent cyber crime, South Africa should continue to pursue a multilayered and collaborative approach to counter it.” 11 ERROR: stackunderflow OFFENDING COMMAND: exch STACK: /_ct_na