Privacy is Secure in Europe
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This has been an eventful week in terms of computer security, and privacy laws worldwide. In fact, “eventful” may be an understatement. This week can easily be called a watershed week for several reasons.
The IP is personal again. That’s right. In a monumental statement, the European Union concluded that the IP was akin to a person’s social security number on the web. Therefore, large corporations that has so far been using IP to gather personal information about net surfers should treat the multi-part number as they would treat all other types of private and critical information.
This essentially means that not only will the large Internet companies be allowed to use the IP data, they will also have to create a formal policy that defines how they protect it. Your IP will enjoy the benefit of being protected by a defined policy of disclosure.
While this may sound sweet to you, the online advertising firms may not feel the same elation. Most online ventures have so far used the IP as one of the key parameters to identify a particular surfer. The only exception has been Google who store all the data related to searches for up to two years and then destroys it. Well, Google has always been kind of a visionary.
Music Isn’t Uncharted Territory Any More. In yet another monumental judgment, a European court in Spain, threw out a case filed by the Promusicae against ISPs who they accused of shielding torrent sharing networks like bit-torrent, U-torrent and Kazaa. The music industry, bolstered by their success in the US went for the kill here in Europe too. They wanted the ISPs (specifically, Telefonica) to reveal the details and locations of the people who had downloaded or shared pirated music. What they received in the form of a judgment was a slam in the brakes of their suing-pursuing juggernaut.
The judge threw out the case on the basis of the fact that the stringent European privacy laws do not all the file sharing networks to reveal the details of their users, no matter what act they may have been engaged in… as long as it didn’t threaten the general public. Music piracy was obviously not one of those threats. The judge, however, conceded that maybe the European nations should have a re-look at their policy of disclosing private data.
In a related note, Societe Generale of France was duped off a whopping €4.9bn+ by an ex-employee whose computer literacy could be described as basic at the best. What happened there? Read this report from the Irish Examiner.
My oh my! Europe is happening at this time of the year. Isn’t it?
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