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Bygrave, Lee A --- "Strengthening privacy protection in the Internet environment: A modest program of action" [2006] PrivLawPRpr 7; (2006) 11(8) Privacy Law and Policy Reporter 222


Strengthening privacy protection in the Internet environment: A modest program of action

Lee A Bygrave

This is an extended and updated version of a speech titled ‘Ensuring Respect for Privacy on the Internet’ given at the 26th International Conference on Privacy and Personal Data Protection, Wroclaw, Poland, 15th September 2004.

Introduction

In this paper, I reflect briefly on how best we can build up, and build in, norms for protecting privacy with respect to Internet transactions. I consider this issue first in the framework of traditional legal rules, specifically those in data privacy legislation. Thereafter, I consider other rule types such as ‘netiquette’. Finally, I consider educational strategies to inculcate privacy norms, particularly in young persons. My basic point is that improvements can be made within all these frameworks in order to diminish the risk of privacy violations in the Internet environment.

Application of law to Internet

In the past, not so long ago, it was fashionable in some circles to claim that the Internet – and its related transactional realm of cyberspace – were beyond the reach of traditional laws.[1] This claim is facetious and has rightly been consigned to the history books as one of the myths of digital libertarianism.[2] For the Internet and cyberspace may be vast, they may be relatively new, they may be challenging for traditional values and norms, but they are and never have been beyond the reach of the law. Of course, some laws have been drafted in a manner that makes their application to the Internet difficult, but much law is sufficiently technologically neutral in its formulation as to permit application to new forms of information and communication technology (ICT). Hence, the basic question when assessing the applicability of laws to the Internet and cyberspace is usually not: do the laws apply? It is rather: how do they apply?

The latter question breaks down into several other questions:

• Do the laws apply with sensible results?

• Do they achieve a desirable balancing of interests?

• Are the results unexpected? Unforeseen? Awkward?

• Do the laws give sensible guidance as to what Internet-related activity is permitted and what is not permitted?

Answering all of these questions conclusively with respect to data privacy laws is difficult. In many cases, these laws can be applied with generally sensible and desirable results, but not in all cases – as I show further on. Moreover, as they currently stand, the bulk of the laws fail to give adequate prescriptive guidance with respect to processing of personal data in an Internet context. Concomitantly, it is often difficult to predict the results of their application in such a context.

Looking at the main international instruments on data privacy, we see that these have been drafted sufficiently broadly as to apply to the Internet. However, most of them have been drafted with little, if any, conscious account taken of the Internet or digital environment more generally. This is so with the European Union’s (EU) 1995 Directive on data protection (DPD).[3] It is also the case with the 1981 Council of Europe Convention on data protection,[4] along with the 1980 OECD guidelines[5] and 1990 UN guidelines[6] on the same topic.

The one notable exception is the EU’s 2002 Directive on privacy and electronic communication (DPEC).[7] The Directive covers some important ground and some controversial areas with respect to the online world – eg, use of cookie mechanisms, logging and use of traffic data (Articles 5, 6 and 15). Yet the Directive applies only to electronic communication service providers (ie, those who facilitate transmission of content), not content providers (Article 3(1)). Hence, it has relatively little to say about the appropriate conditions – from a privacy perspective – for development and application of Digital Rights Management Systems, as such systems are focused, to a large extent, on provision of content.[8] Somewhat surprisingly too the DPEC does not directly tackle several key definitional issues in an online context, such as the scope of the concept of ‘personal data’ with respect to e-mail addresses, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and attached clickstream data. It also leaves in the air the status of electronic agents – ie, software applications which, with some degree of autonomy, mobility and learning capacity, execute specific tasks for a computer user or computer system.[9]

The uncertainties surrounding the ways in which the bulk of the principal international instruments on data privacy apply to the Internet are, by and large, repeated with respect to the application of national data privacy laws.

The judiciary to the rescue?

These uncertainties are exacerbated by a paucity of clarifying case law. Court decisions treating in detail the provisions of data privacy legislation in an offline or non-digital context are few and far between;[10] decisions that consider these provisions in the digital context are almost non-existent.

Fortunately, we now have a landmark decision by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) dealing precisely with the application of data protection norms to processing of personal data on the Internet – more specifically, the applicability of Directive 95/46/EC to certain website-publishing activities of a Swedish woman. I refer here to the judgment of 6.11.2003 in the case of Bodil Lindqvist.[11] Many of you will be familiar with the ruling. It has attracted widespread public attention principally on account of its relevance for the increasingly large number of people who, in an ostensibly private capacity, set up personal Internet ‘homepages’ from which information about other persons can be spread.

In my view, the decision of the ECJ is a sensible one. It helps clarify the application of DPD Articles 3(2) and 25 in the context of website publishing. Nevertheless, it leaves a range of important questions unanswered. One such question is: When may a webpage with personal data be sufficiently private to fall within the ambit of Article 3(2)? It will be recalled that the second indent of Article 3(2) states that the Directive does not apply to data processing by a natural person ‘in the course of a purely personal or household activity’. Using recital 12 in the preamble to the Directive as a point of departure, the Court tersely held that this exception ‘must ... be interpreted as relating only to activities which are carried out in the course of private or family life of individuals, which is clearly not the case with the processing of personal data consisting in publication on the internet so that those data are made accessible to an indefinite number of people’ (paragraph 47 of the judgment). However, the Court gave no guidance as to whether a lesser degree of accessibility (eg, by a smaller and limited number of people) may make a website private for the purposes of Article 3(2). Concomitantly, it failed to provide guidance as to what mechanism might be sufficient to limit accessibility and thereby make a website private. Would, for instance, a password mechanism be sufficient? A host of further questions arise with respect to other parts of the Court’s judgment – particularly those parts dealing with the applicability of Article 25 to website publishing. The basic point, it suffices to say, is that the Lindqvist decision goes only a small (albeit significant) way to clarifying the application of the DPD to the Internet. And it has, of course, only limited relevance for construing data privacy law in jurisdictions outside the EU.

The risk of regulatory over reaching

As already intimated, the fact that data privacy law may apply to the Internet will not necessarily produce entirely sensible or desirable results. A good example in point is provided by DPD Article 4(1)(c), which provides that the data protection law of an EU state may apply outside the EU in certain circumstances, most notably if a data controller, based outside the EU, utilises ‘equipment’ located in the state to process personal data for purposes other than merely transmitting the data through that state.

This provision gives an impression that the EU is, in effect, legislating for the world. However, the provision is motivated in large part by the desire to prevent circumvention of EU data privacy norms by data controllers based in third countries. That is, of course, a reasonable motivation. Nevertheless, implementation of the provision carries a distinct risk of regulatory overreaching in the sense that EU member states’ data privacy laws are given so broad a field of application that there is little realistic chance of enforcing them. This risk looms particularly large in the online environment where, eg, routine use of cookies mechanisms by website operators in third countries, may involve utilisation of ‘equipment’ in an EU state (assuming that the cookies are properly to be classified as personal data). Is it, for instance, realistic to expect a website operator in China that puts cookies on the browser programs of website visitors from the EU, to comply with EU member states’ privacy norms? Is it realistic to expect such an operator to be even aware of this compliance duty?[12]

The ultimate problem here is not so much one of regulatory overreaching but the fact that such overreaching may make a mockery of the law. Accordingly, greater thought should be given to amending Article 4(1)(c) – and the corresponding provisions in national laws – in order to ameliorate the risk of regulatory overreaching. This is just one facet of a broader program of legislative reform that is required to fine-tune and supplement the core principles of data privacy laws so that they better protect privacy-related interests in the Internet environment.

Legislative support for PETs

An important instance of another facet of this reform program concerns Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs). Most data privacy laws contain little direct support for PET development or usage.[13] Again, the DPD is a significant case in point. Certainly the Directive contains provisions which come close to mandating PET usage – see particularly Article 17 along with recital 46 in the preamble. Yet these provisions are concerned prima facie with security measures – ie, measures aimed primarily at maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and availability of personal data. While security and privacy concerns overlap considerably, they are not commensurate.[14]

At the same time, we must not forget that any attempts to introduce more direct legislative support for PETs risk conflicting with current regulatory mores, such as the principle that legal rules should be technology-neutral and not distort marketplace competition. These difficulties, though, are surmountable. As I have stressed before,[15] rules encouraging PET development and usage could be drafted so that they simply stipulate the goals to be reached (eg, greater allowance for anonymity and/or pseudonymity) and then specify the means for reaching these goals in fairly general terms only (eg, in terms of systems development). German legislation provides an instructive model for such rules. I refer here particularly to section 3a of the Federal Data Protection Act of 1990 (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz – as amended in 2001) which stipulates that ‘[t]he design and selection of data processing systems shall be oriented to the goal of collecting, processing or using no personal data or as little personal data as possible’. Moreover, it would not be difficult to modify DPD Article 17 so that it more clearly embraces PETs.

Role of ‘soft law’

Our attention should not be directed solely at refining and extending the privacy norms found in legally binding instruments. Netiquette, industry codes of conduct and other ‘soft law’ instruments have also an important role to play in fostering privacy in the online environment. They have several ostensible advantages over traditional legal instruments. First, they often permit more flexibility. Secondly, they engender a greater degree of user ‘ownership’ of the norms they promote. Thirdly, the language they employ is often simpler than the terminology of legislation.

Notwithstanding these apparent advantages, it would be wrong to claim that such schemes are without problems. They do not necessarily give greater prescriptive guidance than legislation: their apparently simple language can often harbour considerable ambiguity, and uncertainty frequently arises over the extent to which their dispute resolution outcomes create binding or influential precedent. They tend also to be relatively transitory. An example is Norway’s Nettnemnda (Net Tribunal). This was established in early 2001 with sponsorship from the Norwegian ICT industry, and was probably the first scheme in the world to offer both a set of ‘Ethical rules for the Internet’[16] and a workable dispute resolution procedure.[17] It is now – just a few years later – operationally defunct, for reasons outlined further below. There appear to be few other equivalent schemes in long-term existence.

The basic point, nevertheless, is that hard law must be supplemented by soft law; ‘top-down’ legislative action must be supplemented by ‘bottom-up’ code making. In other words, we need to encourage co-regulation in the data privacy field. Concomitantly, self-regulation on its own is insufficient. Experience indicates that self-regulatory initiatives will usually only work fruitfully in the face of a sustained threat by government to ‘cover the field’ through legislation. The demise of the Norwegian Net Tribunal scheme is, again, illustrative: the scheme was in large part an attempt by the local ICT industry to head off government regulatory interference by showing that the industry itself could adequately regulate the field. Once government regulatory pressure was relaxed, the willingness to finance and sustain the scheme dissipated. Unfortunately, there seem to be few, if any, co-regulatory privacy schemes currently working with respect to the Internet industry. Australia’s Internet Industry Association draft Privacy Code of Practice,[18] which arguably embodies the most ambitious plan for such a scheme, has not yet been officially approved by the Australian federal Privacy Commissioner.[19]

Another important point concerns the involvement of Privacy Commissioners and other data protection authorities in the development of basic Internet architecture; ie, their involvement in the development of ‘code’ (in Lessig’s terms)[20] or ‘lex informatica’ (in Reidenberg’s terms)[21] . My hunch is that data protection authorities rarely participate in the forums which spawn or shape Recommendations for Consideration (RFCs) and other Internet-related standards.[22] If my hunch is correct, we are faced with a serious shortcoming on the part of privacy officialdom. It means essentially that the privacy authorities have not learned the basic lesson offered by Lessig, Reidenberg and others in their analyses of ‘code’ and ‘lex informatica’. That lesson needs to be learned if we are to have a realistic chance of preserving, or improving, the privacy-friendly characteristics of Internet architecture.

Mental ‘hardwiring’

These references to learning dovetail neatly with the thrust of my final message. This message is that we need more education of the general populace about the importance of privacy and related values, both generally and in the digital context. Analogous to the above-indicated need to ‘hardwire’ privacy-friendly standards in information systems architecture, there is a need to hardwire, as it were, privacy-friendly attitudes and perspectives in people’s mentality. If the latter hardwiring is to be successful, it must be directed to a much greater degree than it has been in the past at young persons. Courses on ‘information ethics’, embracing data privacy issues, should be made a compulsory part of the school curriculum. There is much work to be done in this respect. Focus hitherto has largely been on getting more ICT into schools; relatively little focus has been directed at teaching youth about the ethical consequences of using ICT. The privacy ramifications of this imbalance in priorities are now increasingly manifest with the growing number of children who have mobile phones with cameras and ready connection to the Internet.

It might be argued that secondary schools would be the natural place to introduce such educational measures, but I believe that primary school pupils can also be sensibly targeted. Learning about basic data privacy norms is, after all, a natural extension of learning about bodily integrity and respect for others. We teach young children to say ‘please’, ‘thank you’, ‘excuse me’ etc. We teach them about the importance of their bodily integrity and space. We can also sensibly teach them about basic manners on the informational plane.

There is growing interest on the part of secondary and primary schools for appropriate teaching materials on data privacy, and, fortunately, an increasing range of such materials is being produced. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Office of the Information Commissioner has developed an interactive CD-ROM, ‘Protecting the Plumstones’, which it sent out to some 30,000 primary and secondary schools in 2002.[23] In Canada, the Media Awareness Network has created an educational games package, ‘Privacy playground’.[24] In Norway, the Department of Education has recently sponsored development of a secondary schools’ course on data privacy.[25] Complementing these initiatives are educational programs on ‘Internet safety’ for children which have been developed in Ireland, Denmark and Norway under the auspices of the EU-sponsored SAFT (Safety, Awareness, Facts and Tools) project.[26] Moreover, some commercially developed interactive packages exist, such as Disney’s ‘Surf Swell Island’.[27]

While such initiatives are praiseworthy, they must be augmented and replicated, not least in other jurisdictions. In Australia, for instance, there is an apparent paucity of suitable educational material for schools. The federal Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has produced an online human rights education program for teachers of upper primary and secondary school students which, although valuable in its own right, scarcely focuses on privacy issues.[28] The gap does not seem to have been filled by the educational efforts of Privacy Commissioners at federal or state level, or by the corresponding efforts of civil society groups, such as the Australian Privacy Foundation. This is not to say that no such efforts have been made,[29] or that there is a complete absence of useful reference material for Australian school students;[30] but my distinct impression is that insufficient material has been developed, particularly for primary schools.

To some extent, this shortcoming is both understandable and excusable given that Privacy Commissioners and privacy advocacy groups tend to suffer from a severe shortage of resources. In such a situation, it is far from easy to find the time, money and effort to develop or assist in developing course materials for schools. Nevertheless, giving greater priority to such initiatives will probably engender greater privacy protection in the long run.

Dr Lee A Bygrave is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, and a member of the PLPR editorial board.


[1] The most rhetorically grandiose version of the claim is contained in John Perry Barlow’s “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” posted on the Internet in February 1996; available at <http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html> . This and all other URLs cited in this presentation were last visited 16.11.2005.

[2] See, eg, J Boyle, ‘Foucault in Cyberspace: Surveillance, Sovereignty, and Hardwired Censors’ (1997) 66 University of Cinncinati Law Review, 177; G Greenleaf, ‘An Endnote on Regulating Cyberspace: Architecture vs Law?’ [1998] UNSWLawJl 52; (1998) 21 University of NSW Law Journal, 593.

[3] Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (OJ No L 281, 23.11.1995, 31), adopted 24.10.1995.

[4] Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (European Treaty Series No 108), adopted 28.1.1981.

[5] Guidelines Governing the Protection of

Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data (Paris: OECD, 1980), adopted 23.9.1980.

[6] Guidelines Concerning Computerized Personal Data Files (Doc E/CN.4/1990/72, 20.2.1990), adopted by the UN General Assembly 4.12.1990.

[7] Directive 2002/58/EC concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (OJ L 201, 31.7.2002, 37), adopted 12.7.2002.

[8] See further LA Bygrave, ‘Digital Rights Management and Privacy – Legal Aspects in the European Union’, in E Bekker et al (eds), Digital Rights Management: Technological, Economic, Legal and Political Aspects (Berlin / Heidelberg: Springer, 2003), pp 418–446.

[9] Further on the privacy issues raised by such agents, see JJ Borking, BMA van Eck & P Siepel, Intelligent Software Agents and Privacy (The Hague: Registratiekamer, 1999); LA Bygrave, ‘Electronic Agents and Privacy: A Cyberspace Odyssey 2001’ (2001) 9 International Journal of Law and Information Technology, 275.

[10] See generally LA Bygrave, ‘Where have all the judges gone? Reflections on judicial involvement in developing data protection law’ (2000) 7 Privacy Law & Policy Reporter, 11, 33.

[11] Case C-101/01 [2004] 1 CMLR 20.

[12] Further on these issues, see LA Bygrave, ‘Determining Applicable Law pursuant to European Data Protection Legislation’ (2000) 16 Computer Law & Security Report, 252; C Kuner, European Data Privacy Law and Online Business (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), chapter 3.

[13] See generally LA Bygrave, Data Protection Law: Approaching Its Rationale, Logic and Limits (The Hague / London / New York: Kluwer Law International, 2002), especially chapters 18–19.

[14] üSee further, eg, W Steinmüller, Informationstechnologie und Gesellschaft (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993), especially p 472.

[15] See LA Bygrave, ‘Privacy-enhancing technologies – caught between a rock and a hard place’ (2002) 9 Privacy Law & Policy Reporter, 135; Bygrave, supra n 13, p 371.

[16] Set out at <http://www.nettnemda.no/netregler.html> .

[17] See <http://www.nettnemda.no/complaint.html> .

[18] See <http://www.iia.net.au/privacycode.html> .

[19] The draft Code was submitted for approval and registration by the Privacy Commissioner back in March 2003. Under Part IIIAA of the federal Privacy Act 1988, the Commissioner is empowered to approve industry codes of practice that meet criteria specified in the Act and related guidelines. Once approved, a code replaces the National Privacy Principles (in Schedule 3 of the Act) as the standard to be observed by organisations that decide to subscribe to it.

[20] See L Lessig, Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

[21] See JR Reidenberg, ‘Lex Informatica: The Formulation of Information Policy Rules through Technology’ (1998) 76 Texas Law Review, 553.

[22] For an exposition of the RFC standards development process, see AM Froomkin, ‘Habermas@discourse.net: Toward a Critical Theory of Cyberspace’ (2003) 116 Harvard Law Review, 749, 782ff.

[23] See <http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/cms/DocumentUploads/270902%20Plumstones.pdf> .

[24] See <http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/games/privacy_playground/> .

[25] See <http://www2.skolenettet.no/personvern/> .

[26] See <http://www.saftonline.org/Education> .

[27] See <http://disney.go.com/surfswell/> .

[28] See <http://www.hreoc.gov.au/info_for_teachers/index.html> <http://www.hreoc.gov.au/info_for_students/index.html> .

[29] For instance, the Victorian Privacy Commissioner has entered into a sponsorship agreement with the Victorian Commercial Teachers’ Association to facilitate links between students, teachers and the Commissioner’s office, and thereby stimulate greater youth interest in privacy issues.

[30] An example of a useful resource for secondary schools is the paper, ‘Hot Topics No 45: Privacy’ ( <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/liac/hot_topic/hottopic/2004/2/> ) commissioned in 2004 for the State Library Legal Information Access Centre of New South Wales. This paper and the others in the ‘Hot Topics’ series are sent to all libraries and promoted as a student resource.


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