Joseph
Cannataci describes UK data protection as ‘a joke’ and says a Geneva convention
for the internet is needed
The first UN
privacy chief has said the world needs a “Geneva convention for the internet”
to safeguard data and combat the threat of massive clandestine digital
surveillance.
Speaking to the
Guardian weeks after his appointment as the UN special rapporteur on privacy,
Joseph Cannataci singled out British data protection as being “a joke”, and
said the situation is worse than anything Orwell could have foreseen.
He added that he
doesn’t use Facebook or Twitter, and said it was regrettable that vast numbers of people
sign away their digital rights without thinking about it.
“Some people
were complaining because they couldn’t find me on Facebook. They couldn’t find
me on Twitter.
But since I believe in privacy, I’ve never felt the need for it,”
Cannataci, a professor of law at the University of Malta, said.
Appointed after
concern about surveillance and privacy following the Edward Snowden revelations, Cannataci agreed that his notion of a new universal law on surveillance
could embarrass those who may not sign up to it.
“Some people may
not want to buy into it,” he acknowledged. “But you know, if one takes the
attitude that some countries will not play ball, then, for example, the
chemical weapons agreement would never have come about.”
Cannataci came into
his new post in July after a controversial spat involving the first-choice candidate, Katrin Nyman-Metcalf, who the
Germans in particular thought might not be tough enough on the Americans. But
for Cannataci – well-known for having a mind of his own – it is not America but
Britain that he singles out as having the weakest oversight in the western
world: “That is precisely one of the problems we have to tackle. That if your
oversight mechanism’s a joke, and a rather bad joke at its citizens’ expense,
for how long can you laugh it off as a joke?”
He said proper
oversight is the only way of progressing, and hopes more people will think
about and vote for privacy in the UK. “And that is where the political process
comes in,” he says, “because can you laugh off the economy and the National
Health Service? Not in the UK election, if you want to survive,” he said.
The appointment of a UN special rapporteur on privacy is seen as hugely
important because it elevates the right to privacy in the digital age to that
of other human rights. As the first person in the job, the investigator will be
able to set the standard for the digital right to privacy, deciding how far to
push governments that want to conduct surveillance for security reasons, and
corporations who mine us for our personal data.
Cannataci’s mandate is extensive. He is empowered to:
- Systematically review government policies
and laws on interception of digital communications and collection of
personal data.
- Identify actions that intrude on privacy
without compelling justification.
- Assist governments in developing best
practices to bring global surveillance under the rule of law.
- Further articulate private sector
responsibilities to respect human rights.
- Help ensure national procedures and laws
are consistent with international human rights obligations.
Although
Cannataci admits his job is a complex one that is not going to be solved with a
magic bullet, he says he is far from starting from scratch and believes there
are at least four main areas – including a universal law on surveillance,
tackling the business models of the big tech corporations, defining privacy and
raising awareness among the public.
“I would say
it’s impossible to achieve in three years. And it’s probably impossible to
achieve even if the mandate is renewed to six years, if you’re trying to do too
much. But I do think that – at least my view of things in a field like human
rights – is the longer term view, right? The impact must be felt in the long
term.”
However, Cannataci says we are dealing with a world even worse that anything
Orwell could have foreseen.
“It’s worse,” he says. “Because if you look at CCTV
alone, at least Winston [Winston Smith in Orwell’s novel 1984] was able to go
out in the countryside and go under a tree and expect there wouldn’t be any
screen, as it was called. Whereas today there are many parts of the English
countryside where there are more cameras than George Orwell could ever have
imagined. So the situation in some cases is far worse already.
“The way we
handle it is going to be the difference. But Orwell foresaw a technology that
was controlling. In our case we are looking at a technology that is
ever-developing, and ever-developing possibly more sinister capabilities,” he
said. Because of this, the Snowden revelations were very important, he said.
“They were very important. Snowden will continue to be looked upon as a traitor
by some and a hero by others.
But in actual fact his revelations confirmed to
many of us who have been working in this field for a long time what has been
going on, and the extent to which it has gone out of control.”
Cannataci, who works between his offices in Malta and the Netherlands, has set
his sights on challenging the business model of companies that are “very often
taking the data that you never even knew they were taking.”
“This is one thing that is certainly going to come up in my mandate, which is
the business model that large corporations are using,” he said.
“We have a
number of corporations that have set up a business model that is bringing in
hundreds of thousands of millions of euros and dollars every year and they
didn’t ask anybody’s permission. They didn’t go out and say: ‘Oh, we’d like to
have a licensing law.’ No, they just went out and created a model where
people’s data has become the new currency. And unfortunately, the vast bulk of
people sign their rights away without knowing or thinking too much about it,”
he said.
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