Public ignoring data handover risks
BRITISH consumers are ignoring the risks of routinely handing over data to private firms, Amber Rudd has suggested.
The former home secretary said there was an “extraordinary contrast” between the willingness of Britons to provide personal information to companies while being inherently opposed to the gathering of data by the State.
Her comments came as a book by Michael Chertoff, the US secretary of homeland security under Barack Obama, suggested that companies should be banned from forcing con- sumers into handing over significant amounts of personal information online in order to access their services or buy their products.
Sir David Omand, the former GCHQ director, endorsed his proposals and warned that personal information “harvested” by private firms could be used by “hostile groups and governments” to manipulate the public.
Ms Rudd, who will speak alongside Mr Chertoff at an event in London on Wednesday, told The Sunday Telegraph that as home secretary she “wrestled with ... this whole area of the balance between security and privacy”.
“It’s the age-old debate but the internet has made it so much more rele- vant,” she said. “It’s made it relevant in terms of privacy – on the one hand not wanting the Government to come near us, on the other hand giving our shoe size, our dress size to absolutely everybody who asks. There’s an extraordinary contrast there.”
During her time in the post, Ms Rudd, who resigned in April over the Windrush scandal, said that online messaging services such as WhatsApp should stop using “unbreakable” encryption software because it only benefited terrorists.
Speaking ahead of Wednesday’s event – hosted by the Policy Exchange think tank, she added: “Changes are happening so fast that government is struggling to keep up. Regulations and legislation take time and have to happen with the public’s consent and I don’t think the public has quite made up its mind either [about] what level of regulation it wants and what privacy it wants. This is one of the most important things for proper international consideration of what would work best, because one country doing it on its own does not work.”
Mr Chertoff ’s book, Exploding Data, sets out proposals to tackle the mass harvesting of data by governments and private firms.
“I think it’s worth considering whether, when you’re dealing with monopolies ... having a requirement that they give you an alternative to obtain the service without giving your data, even if that alternative is they charge a fee,” he told The Telegraph.
Ms Rudd, who helped set up the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, added: “On so many other areas we need to have a much more transparent, serious debate about what level of regulation we need to have.”
Sir David said the book highlighted “just how effectively our personal data is being harvested by the private sector and how it can be used to manipulate us by hostile groups and governments”.
Mr Chertoff ’s proposals were “sensible steps that could be taken now to manage the risks”, he added.