ICO calls for action as online privacy issues get more challenging

Staying anonymous when online is increasingly difficult, said the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham.

At a conference hosted by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) today, Graham will discuss with public bodies and businesses about how advances in the technology and the scale of personal data being collected means respecting people's online privacy is an ‘ever increasing challenge'.

With the increasing number of reports from the ICO about data breaches and companies and public organisations losing clients' personal data, the seminar will debate how best to handle this increasingly thorny issue; such as removing personal identifiers and if more appropriate regulation should be introduced.

"Data sharing is the key to delivering services efficiently. But ensuring important personal information remains anonymous is an ever increasing challenge. Just by going about our everyday lives, our movements, browsing habits and personal information are constantly being captured.

"The information that can identity someone is no longer simply their name and address. It's their number plate scanned by a traffic camera, or the digital fingerprint that they leave behind when they file their tax return or renew their local authority parking permit online.

"How can we make sense of the big picture without compromising privacy?" Graham has said.

Other key speakers at the privacy watchdog's seminar at the Wellcome Trust in London today, include Paul Ohm, associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School.

"The way we protect privacy today - both through our laws and in the way we design computer systems - seems stuck in the last century. We need to realise the entirely new classes of threats to privacy that have recently arisen.

"In light of these threats, we must debate how we should regulate privacy in the twenty-first century." He added that the seminar "is fine example of the kind of discussion that is needed," he said.

The key discussion points and next steps need to ensure people's anonymity online and with other technologies will be published by the ICO in a report in the coming weeks.