Let’s start the article with quoting from The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19, which states “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” The most notable words here are “any media and regardless of frontiers”. Irrespective of electronics, news or social media this. Article 12 of the same declaration states: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”
Article 19, of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states two points:
Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice
Though they put some exception and or limitation by these lines:
“The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
(a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;
(b) For the protection of national security or of public order (order public), or of public health or morals.”
The hastily converting era notably affected and expanded the electricity and the controlling capacities of States and businesses over people, with direct implications for privateness. Alongside these new capacities, new debatable legal questions arise, related to the collection, storage, access, exploitation, and mass analysis of records. Along with new technical powers and makes use of get up arguable legal troubles together with the constitutionality of data retention for regulation enforcement functions, the quantity of the authority to get entry to communications statistics, the limits of responsibilities to assist regulation enforcement through encryption-based offerings, and the duty mechanisms affecting intelligence organizations. As for groups, other debatable issues stand up, consisting of defining the rights of statistics proprietors and the duties of businesses that engage within the evaluation of personal data. If we look into “Data Protection Regimes” around the world, the result is indeed heartbreaking. Only 58% of countries has Data Protection legislation in place whereas 21% of countries have no such policy/law in place. 10% of the countries are currently drafting a policy and 12% has no information available.
To protect data for EU citizens and to give them better control over their data, GDPR was introduced. Such model was also adopted in Brazil with different name “LGPD” though purpose was aligned.
For the countries who do not have such policies in place can adopt a policy named Intermediary Liability. It is the legal liability of Internet intermediaries for content contributed by, or activities carried out by, third parties. This policy is currently adopted by Governments around the world and is defined as a framework called “Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability”. All the developing nations can look into this framework and it might help them in long run.
To summarize, privacy of information is most vital part of technology now a days. The governments need to take necessary measures to ensure privacy of citizens. At the same times citizen have to understand the economic value of their data. If we can introduce security by design concept and at the same time can work on awareness and stronger policy making, data privacy can be protected up to many extent for sure.