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In a bizarre display of Italian privacy protection, Google bosses have been found guilty for infringing the privacy of an individual who was attacked, videoed and shared online using the Google Video Service. BBC News Article Here.
Italy of course have now an interesting set of cases making various parts of ‘normal’ web activity illegal. Remember when then made all blogs illegal as they amounted to “clandestine” press?
So - what are the options now for ISPs? The technological approach could mean the masking of faces from videos automatically, using similar face recognition technology employed in Google Street View. Costly and only for the big firms. Option 2, pull out of Italy; again costly but easiest. Thirdly appeal.
This is the best option. As far as I can determine (with my limited Italian - awaiting a good translation of the judgement to land in my inbox), the judgement goes against the European Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (‘Directive on electronic commerce’) article which states that…
Article 12
“Mere conduit”
- Where an information society service is provided that consists of the transmission in a communication network of information provided by a recipient of the service, or the provision of access to a communication network, Member States shall ensure that the service provider is not liable for the information transmitted, on condition that the provider:
(a) does not initiate the transmission;
(b) does not select the receiver of the transmission; and
(c) does not select or modify the information contained in the transmission.
The acts of transmission and of provision of access referred to in paragraph 1 include the automatic, intermediate and transient storage of the information transmitted in so far as this takes place for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission in the communication network, and provided that the information is not stored for any period longer than is reasonably necessary for the transmission.
This Article shall not affect the possibility for a court or administrative authority, in accordance with Member States’ legal systems, of requiring the service provider to terminate or prevent an infringement.
NB This is implemented in the UK as the The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002.
Quick note on the BBC News article, “US man ‘stole 130m card numbers’”
This article outlines how relaxed US institutions are when it comes to security. It will be interesting to find out how much social engineering was employed in gaining information. But to the point of this comment, ignore all paraphrasing in the article which concerns how the attack was carried out. The author should read some of the following articles:
For the code savvy who want to see worked examples
Preventing SQL attacks - Paper from Univ. Columbia
(NB: We don’t condone hacking!)
“The power of technology - such as blogs - meant that the world could no longer be run by “elites”, Mr Brown said. ” — Jonathan Fildes (BBC News)
The notion that technology has changed everything, including foreign policy, has been addressed by Gordon Brown at TED Global.
The article states: ” Policies must instead be formed by listening to the opinions of people ‘who are blogging and communicating with people around the world’, he said. “
Whilst this seems like a move in the right direction, domestic inhabitants might be concerned that their views may be quashed and decisions will be led not by elected individuals, but those commanding a voice in the global blogosphere. This global approach adopted by Brown needs to consider the cross-societal issues when listening to any tom, dick or blogger across the world.
In response to a post by Aleks Krotoski, Cyberissues comments were published today on the BBC Digital Revolution Blog - all material and discussion for a new BBC TV factual programme.
The comments were discussing wikipedia in terms of a broader governance in addition to views of academic referencing of wikipedia. All posts are reactively moderated, so am taking it as a win!
Thanks to @bbcdigrev team - its a great project.
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