As a defence lawyer, all I can say is finally - it’s about time people started becoming aware of the importance of their personal privacy and the need to protect it.
http://www.nationalpost.com/most-popular/story.html?id=3084666For years I have been scolding staff at my office and others about the dangers of social networking sites such as Facebook. I have even gone so far as to implement policies prohibiting the use of such sites on company computers and absolutely forbid any discussion or posting about me or my business on any social networking site (including Facebook). Of course, a concern was that social networking sites distracted staff from their duties, but that was not the actual reason for the policy implementation. The policy was initiated to stop the potential breach of my privacy interests where even an unintended blunder leaked in a most innocuous way could create a problematic privacy or confidentiality issue.
When it comes to informational privacy, it seems to me most citizens conceptualize the dangers in terms of identity theft or fraud scams designed to drain wealth from unsuspecting victims. But the reality is, insight into a person’s private life is highly viewer dependent. For example, as a criminal defence lawyer, it is not unusual for me to investigate those involved in a particular case by conducting surveillance on their social networking pages. Most of the time, the information gathered supplies nothing more than useful insight into the person, but given that social networking sites are a hotbed for users to vent frustrations or chat about personal issues, it is not unusual to obtain information directly related to the Prosecution’s case – or to the defence of it, for that matter.
Let me put it this way, if information collected from social networking sites is used by me, what about the police, Government, Corporate America, internet predators or others?
I am certainly not a Luddite. Unlike many of my elders, I do not find computers to be so foreign that I am instantaneously defeated by a mouse pointer and a keyboard. I generally understand how to navigate the internet – and am reasonably confident that I do so in relative safety.
That said, I sometimes find the internet to be a rather unsettling place. Like the ocean, I can’t see what’s around me. Like my motor vehicle, I do not truly understand its inner workings. Like many plebeian internet users, I navigate “the web” with a kind of blind faith that information on my computer is protected by the virus scanner and spyware detector running surreptitiously in the background, and that my firewall will repel any unwanted intruders. But the truth is, other than to say these programs are “ON”, I really understand nothing about them.
I know the internet is populated by hackers and techno-wizards capable of ripping through a basic firewall in seconds. I know my greatest protection on “the net” comes with the fact that I am online with a million other users, so the risk of being specifically targeted is diminished by the mere fact of the herd. Privacy in numbers!
With this in mind, however, I do not think it is overly dramatic to say: to be online line is to do so “at your own risk”. In other words, let the user beware!
Knowing this, I feel it is even more important to make best efforts to keep personal information private.
The internet is a tool of convenience – and just like I operate with a kind of blind faith that software on my computer is doing its job, I certainly operate with a kind of blind trust that the companies I do business with on the internet will do their level best to protect my privacy interests.
Social networking sites, however, are in the business of transparency, not privacy. Stated mildly, it seems to me the corporate interests of social networking sites are to promote the ultimate disintegration of the right to privacy, not to protect it.
It is one thing to provide information to your bank or to Canada’s online passport renewal – but it’s completely another to release it to social networking sites such as Facebook for the mere pleasure of having digital friends.
In the National Post article, “Matt Hartley: Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg to be Blamed for Privacy Mess”, it was suggested that the “big mess” surrounding Facebook’s privacy issues should fall “squarely on the shoulders” of the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.
Though I certainly do not agree with Mr. Zuckerberg that an open world is necessarily a better world, I do not think the privacy mess falls squarely on his shoulders. Rather it falls on those who gave their personal information to the social networking giant.
Facebook always struck me as a kind of Orwellian product designed to transcend privacy barriers. However, to say its creator is responsible for the privacy fiasco is to scapegoat a shrewd businessperson by deflecting the blame away from the 500 million Facebook users who gave up their personal information to have friends. Sadly, the closest contact many will have with their so-called Facebook friends is a live camera shot, a lot of typed transmissions and perhaps a conversation communicated over a digitized data stream, played through speakers on a personal computer.
In criminal justice, notions of privacy are evolving. In cases such as R. v. Plant, [1993] 3 S.C.R. 281 the Supreme Court of Canada recognized privacy was a protean concept. In R. v. Tessling, [2004] S.C.J. No. 62, the Supreme Court wrestled with the distinctions between personal, territorial and informational privacy. Informational privacy was at the forefront in R. v. Patrick, [2009] S.C.J. No. 17 (S.C.C.). Though the Supreme Court acknowledged in Patrick the importance of informational privacy, they refused to recognize it to the extent of limiting anybody (including the State) from simply sifting through and taking a citizen’s garbage, even while it remains on his or her own property. Recently, in R. v. Morelli, [2010] S.C.J. No. 8 the majority of the Supreme Court of Canada recognized privacy interests in data stored on a home computer. In excluding the evidence seized due to a lack of police reasonable and probable grounds to search, the Court characterized the search as occurring in the most private place within the home. In the words of Fish J.A. at paragraph 105:
...it is difficult to imagine a more intrusive invasion of privacy than the search of one's home and personal computer. Computers often contain our most intimate correspondence. They contain the details of our financial, medical, and personal situations. They even reveal our specific interests, likes, and propensities, recording in the browsing history and cache files the information we seek out and read, watch, or listen to on the Internet.
To understand privacy is something we should not easily part with, it is important to understand that privacy in our modern world encompasses more than merely being left alone in our own home sanctuary. Perhaps the Facebook fiasco is a fortuitous reminder of the importance of protecting individual privacy interests – the need for broad thinking about the scope of such interests – and the need not to become complacent about caring for them.
Protecting privacy is not only about defending against identity thieves, government, police or Corporate America from using our personal details; it is more broadly about defending the interest as a fundamental principle intrinsic to living in a free and democratic society. Accordingly, defending the right necessitates undying and perpetual vigilance, which might mean foregoing guilty pleasures in favour of preserving the long term integrity of the interest against minute incursions over time capable of eroding it altogether. For the risk of giving up a little privacy here and selling a little there may be to risk losing it completely.
With this in mind, perhaps it is to time to topple the house that Zuck built?
David G. Chow
Calgary Criminal Defence Lawyer
www.calgarydefence.com
