Individuals need protection from Google

Millions of private Wi-Fi addresses captured. Millions of passwords and email addresses plucked out of thin air. The Google Street View episode is starting to look very serious indeed. The first rumours came earlier this year, when Google admitted that “fragmentary” data had been picked up by some patrol cars. This was an innocent mistake, it said. But it wasn’t the whole truth.

The news prompted me to request a debate in the House of Commons. Thanks to the backbench parliamentary committee, my debate is finally to be held today. For the first time, MPs will hold Google and other internet companies to account.

I am no internet Luddite. In fact, in many ways I am a Google fan. I rely on its free software to run my office in the Commons, synchronising the calendar with that on my Blackberry. I have a huge belief in the power of the internet to do good, allowing citizen power at its best.

But there’s a great difference between advancement of the internet, and violating people’s right to privacy – in essence infringing people’s civil liberties. We risk sleepwalking into a privatised surveillance society.

I have no problem in Google photographing me in my garden. But I want to give permission first. And Google was not taking a few holiday snaps. It was invading our privacy on an industrial scale, for commercial purposes.

This makes the case fundamentally different. Google might have honourable intentions. But if we permit this invasion of privacy today, what might it be used for tomorrow?

In August, the South Korean government raided Google’s offices. Greece and the Czech Republic have banned Street View. The Canadian privacy commissioner gave Google an official reprimand, warning that the company faces serious disciplinary action if it does not tighten up its policies by February. In Spain, the firm faces a serious judicial review.

By contrast, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office visited Google’s HQ, had a nice chat with its senior executives, went through its computers, and then decided to do nothing. In a statement in July, it said that Google did not appear to have collected “significant amounts” of personal data. How did it miss the huge numbers of passwords, email addresses and emails which Google now admits were involved?

For its part, Google trotted out the same line. This is a terrible mistake. We are mortified. It won’t happen again. In fairness, it has always been open to discussion with me. A few weeks ago, I visited its offices and was reassured about the “fragmentary” and harmless nature of the data. Since then, however, it has been pressured into a U-turn by freedom of information requests in other countries. Google’s invasion of privacy is starting to look like a pattern.

We are familiar with the idea that we have a social contract with government. If we are unhappy with a government, we can sack it. But what is our social contract with an internet corporation? Street View affects everyone. The question of civil liberties is much murkier, and less defined. That is why we need a commission of inquiry – with teeth – into the internet’s relationship to individual liberty. I am not against private companies. I am a Conservative, after all. But the time has come for a new legal framework – an Internet Bill of Rights – to protect people.
Credit: Robert Halfon MP

Source: The Telegraph