Bryan Glick

When Information Commissioner Richard Thomas first coined the expression ‘sleepwalking into a surveillance society’ in an interview in 2004, he probably did not realise he was creating a catchphrase.

The quote has become a byword for the wide belief that technology inevitably means a dangerous loss of privacy.

The privacy debate is a looming crisis, which will have to be publicly tackled soon. Today, there is little rational debate on the subject – only opposing, black-or-white opinions.

Take the recent announcement that the government wants to join up its databases for better information sharing between departments. This is a sensible and much-needed objective, given that a bereaved family currently has to inform up to 44 different departments about a relative’s death, for example.

Yet the plan was initially reported in the national press as a single super database containing everything the public sector knows about us, from police records to council tax payments, with the inevitable allusions to Big Brother.

The privacy debate cannot stay stuck in the past in this way. The internet is changing the game. Personal information is a valuable currency online, with free products and services available in return for registering your details. Among the younger generation it is second nature to provide details to trusted web sites.

There are potentially huge benefits for all of us from better sharing of information, but the use of that data must be controlled. Yet too many privacy campaigners see all such sharing as an intrinsically bad thing, and so the debate never moves forward. Meanwhile, web users continue to trade with their personal data, oblivious to the arguments.

Continuing a 20th century argument means those who embrace the new will be poorly protected. The old privacy campaigners, by their reluctance to accept the potential of technological progress, will simply create an even bigger problem for people enthusiastic for change.

Here is another black-and-white vision of the future to consider. One day, privacy may be a privilege, not a right. The parts of society that can afford the technical security to protect their personal information will trade widely in that data, gaining access to exclusive products and services.

The rest will have no ability to control who has access to it, thereby rendering the data worthless. Will you be part of the elite data rich, or the undervalued data poor?

What do you think? Email: feedback@computing.co.uk

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