Digital information is largely permanent, but in most cases it shouldn’t be
NOT AS DURABLE AS, say, words carved into stone tablets, paper nonetheless feels more permanent than information in the digital age – just so many pixels flashing across a screen.
Many of us still resort to hitting “print” and putting a hard copy of documents into a file. It feels more real than digital information, even that stored locally on a computer hard drive, for instance.
Far from being ephemeral, however, digital information can be forever.
That’s especially true now that digital storage is cheap and ubiquitous, with backups of backups of the backup copies. Widely disseminated, the information can be squirreled away in perpetuity. Not just can be, it is. (And that extends beyond the ever-growing reach of spy agencies, acting legally, if immorally, and illegally, of course.)
Spread around, much of the information remains accessible over time rather than being buried away in some form of paper storage facility, either indefinitely or to be destroyed at some interval. What goes online today will be there tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. And so on. Even if it becomes outdated, superseded or plain wrong (from the beginning or otherwise).
The Internet does not forget.
But the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) is looking to change that, concerned about the online reputations of Canadians.
In a new report, the commissioner calls for better tools that will help Canadians control information about themselves. The report proposes measures such as the right to ask search engines to de-index web pages that contain inaccurate, incomplete or outdated information, and the removal or amendment of information at the source.
“There is little more precious than our reputation. But protecting reputation is increasingly difficult in the digital age, where so much about us is systematically indexed, accessed and shared with just a few keystrokes. Online information about us can easily be distorted or taken out of context and it is often extremely difficult to remove,” says Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien of the new report.
“Canadians have told us they are concerned about these growing risks to their reputation. We want to provide people with greater control to protect themselves from these reputational risks. Ultimately, the objective is to create an environment where people can use the Internet to explore and develop without fear their digital traces will lead to unfair treatment.”
Current privacy laws afford us some right to ask for information to be de-indexed, which removes links from search results without deleting the content itself, under certain circumstances. But the laws have to go much farther.
For its part, the commissioner’s office maintains that Canadians should also be permitted to easily delete information they’ve posted about themselves on a commercial forum, for instance a social media site. In cases where others have posted information about an individual, they have a right to challenge and seek amendment to demonstrably illegal, inaccurate, incomplete and out of date information.
There have been plenty of recent examples about how old information – right, wrong or incomplete – can come back to haunt people. Beyond #MeToo, however, there are plenty of cases where a search engine query of your name (the proverbial “google yourself”) returns data you’d prefer others not see, from old, ill-advised social media posts (what happens in Vegas should have stayed in Vegas) to some items not on your résumé on your current job hunt.
There are a number of circumstances which could potentially be the subjects of de-indexing or takedown requests. For example, an adult may feel their reputation is harmed by controversial views they held as a teenager and posted online. Other examples could include defamatory content in a blog; photos of a minor that later cause reputational harm; intimate photos; or online information about someone’s religion, mental health or other highly sensitive information, the report notes.
While the OPC suggests that search engines and websites have tools and policies in place to de-index information in response to individual requests, there may still be cases where complaints will be filed with the office.
Overall, tougher rules are needed. The commissioner points to right-to-beforgotten rules in Europe, but isn’t recommending that kind of “right to erasure” framework. Rather, the idea is to use current Canadian law as the basis for better protection of our online reputations. The issue warrants further investigation.
“While it’s important to take action on de-indexing, we are also recommending that Parliament undertake a study of this issue. Elected officials should confirm the right balance between privacy and freedom of expression in our democratic society,” says Therrien.
He’s certainly not wrong, though it’s very unlikely the government will do what’s really right and necessary in terms of mandating sunshine clauses for most information, the automatic deletion of all but the most essential digital information – mostly government documents such as health records and the likes of banking information.
In that vein, the data mining by the likes of Google and Facebook should not only be discouraged but actually outlawed, making such commercial abuses of people’s privacy a criminal code violation. That’s true even if there are far too many of us who willingly – if ignorantly – barf up way too much information online.
That’s goes double for the police state efforts of data collection that today go beyond anything imagined by the Stasi.
Instead, we’re going in just the opposite direction.
Legal experts advise that we think before we post: Always assume that your boss or a prospective employer could someday see that photo or comment. Your posting may be visible via friends’ and other acquaintances’ social media. Always err on the side of safety and good judgment.
Don’t make assumptions about privacy settings. Check them. Frequently.
Limit personal information: Be aware of what personal information you are entering when initially registering. Many details of personal information are not required.
There are plenty of people looking to use and abuse your personal information, in both the public and private sectors. There’s no need to make it any easier for them.