13
ISSUES: Privacy
Chapter 1: What is privacy?
Privacy and the online world in 2016
Predictions for the hot talking points for 2016 regarding families and the internet.
By Geraldine Bedell, Parent Zone editorial director
J
ust before Christmas, the
EU passed new regulations
concerning online privacy. The
text still has to be approved and won’t
become official for another couple of
years – but the regulations mean, for
example, that companies won’t be
able to pass on information they’ve
collected about users to a third party
without the user’s permission. (If, like
me, you’re a cynic, expect your T&Cs to
become even more opaque.)
Tucked in among the new regs was
one saying that social media sites
must increase the age at which young
people can access their services
without their parents’ permission,
from 13 to 16. Cue an outcry from
tech companies, alarmed by the
costs of policing this (you won’t find
them saying so, but they can’t keep
under-13s off as it is) and from child
protection bodies, worried that young
people will be barred from accessing
helpful information; for example,
about sexuality or their rights.
Whether or not you think it’s right
that parents should control under-16s’
Internet access (and we probably don’t
even agree about it in the Parent Zone
office, where we think about it all the
time) it doesn’t matter in the UK at
the moment: the EU responded to the
backlash by deciding at the last minute
that member states could choose
whether to implement this particular
rule. The UK has already said it will be
sticking with things as they are.
But the row did expose privacy as
a raw issue, with many different
groups fighting over the rights and
wrongs of collecting and passing
on users’ (especially children’s) data.
Data collection is fundamental to the
business model of the Internet and it
would be idiotic to pretend otherwise.
In practice, most of us decide (perhaps
after thinking about it carefully,
perhaps not) that the benefits of the
online services we use are worth
giving up our data for.
But things are about to change,
literally. We are seeing the beginning
of the Internet of things, when all
sorts of household objects will be
able to collect information about us.
In 2015 there was an outcry when it
was reported that Samsung smart
TVs “could be spying on their owners”
whose “spoken words could be
captured and transmitted to a third
party.” I, for one, don’t particularly
want my (very) occasional episodes
of ratty, bad-tempered parenting
reported by my kettle.
Samsung pointed out that the
televisions were simply learning from
voice commands and, besides, the
listening-in option could be turned
off – but you can see how this could
become an issue for families, opening
up an Orwellian prospect of their
comings and goings, their fights and
make ups, becoming public property.
So, this year, expect lots of debate
about blocking software (again). Also,
discussion about whether anyone
will ever again achieve privacy and
anonymity in the world of the Internet
of things or whether the latest
technology will always outsmart us.
Plus there will be lots of talk about
the need for corporations to become
more transparent. Why shouldn’t tech
companies tell us who is collecting our
data, what they’re interested in, who
they’re sharing it with and what are
those others doing with it?
What companies do with our data is
only one part of the privacy question.
There are also new possibilities for
hacking. One hacker group last year
arranged for a brand of talking doll to
start swearing – which is quite funny
unless it happened to be your child’s
doll. But what if a much less benign
group decided to hack the NHS, or your
car when you were on the motorway?
As the Edward Snowden revelations
showed, governments can’t be trusted
not to snoop on citizens – so while the
EU is protecting us from companies,
it’s reasonable to ask what new
information governments are now
able to find out about us.
One way and another, privacy is going
to be a major issue of concern for 2016
– and because we find it easier to focus
on how these issues relate to children,
and because children are a special
case, requiring extra protection, much
of this will be seen through the prism
of the family. The rights of parents, the
state and corporations will clash over
children’s online lives.
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