Civil Liberties

Civil Liberties

Civil Liberties are the basic rights of the human race; it includes the freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freed from arbitrary arrest and so on. With the increasing domination of the internet, acts have had to be enforced to protect the rights that we are entitled to. With the internet becoming a bigger part of businesses etc it is essential that acts are put in place to protect and monitor data they withhold.

Data

Data is stored online in every company about every customer and everyone who works for them. This information should be kept private and people should have confidence in who has their data. Data subjects have rights, they have the right to refuse any data on them being stored in a corporation or firm if it will cause them damage or distress. Data subjects also have the right to refuse to allow processing for direct marketing i.e. junk mail. Data subjects also have the right see what data is being held about them if they ask the data user, and can also change the data if they know it is wrong. If the data held about them is wrong they can also to the data commission if they think the rules have been broken. If they have proven that the data on them is wrong they can claim compensation that has been caused by the data controller.

Data Protection Act

Data Protection Act has was put in place in 1998; it sets out to protect the privacy of personal information. However the act only covers personal information about living individuals, not the information of businesses. The act covers data stored on computers or in a paper-based filing system. It allows you to see what data is being held by you, the act is run by the Information Commissioner’s office.

Any organisation holding data has to have a data controller, they make sure that the act is enforced. The data controller has to notify the Information Commissioner on several things: What data they want to store, what they want to us the data for, how long they will keep the data and finally who they might pass it on to. These are points that are often the starting points of an offense. An organisation holding data also has to agree to follow the eight Data Protection principles (http://dataprotectionact.org/1.html).

However there are exemptions to the act. When the national security is at stake you cannot demand to see your data and if you are under police investigation you are not allowed to see the data being used as evidence etc. Another example is examination results which are not allowed to be seen by anyone before the publication of the exam board.

Surveillance Society

We are living in what many people call the surveillance society; many people think that there is too much CCTV. The UK has the most amount of CCTV in the world, to put this into perspective there are 8 cities in the UK that have more CCTV cameras than Paris. There is a lot of debate as to whether having a lot of CCTV cameras is a good thing. Many people like CCTV’s because of the security that they give us as many people have them on their houses etc. CCTV cameras are nearly everywhere now, they are in schools, at work and even in toilets. CCTV allows us to monitor and keep confidence and security in business and schools. However there is a cause for concern, CCTV does not come under the data protection act so a person can put a camera wherever they like, which can mean the power and security can be abused and used for the wrong reasons.

Other Aspects

Innocent people’s civil liberties can be damaged, to catch criminals we have to make data accessible; however this means that the innocent’s data is also accessible. Some of our data is also in the public domain this is why we get things like junk mail, companies will buy peoples addresses and this makes our data even more accessible and public. There are many things that people should keep to themselves and never give out over the internet for example your date of birth, card details etc. Many people have had found false data about them on the internet, this has become a great problem but can be prevented. People need to be more aware of the rights that they actually have on the online world. Our civil liberties are going to be more and more under threat as we are all data and they older we get the more data we have on us.

My opinion on Civil Liberties

Personally I think that it is important to make sure that any data anyone has about you is kept in confidence. I think that it’s also important that people who their rights and enforce them wherever they may need to do so, whilst also limiting the amount of data that they proved to others. I also think that having lots of CCTV cameras is important,  it’s an easy way to provide hard evidence and makes me feel a lot safer when I see a camera because I feel in a way that I am not alone and that I am being protected in a sense by just being video recorded.