Civil Rights in the Information Age

The information age brings new and exciting things, but it brings problems too. With people breaching people’s privacy and separate laws being taken out purely because they need to stop people intruding into others person al things. With recent scandals like the phone hacking one being brought to the public eye, it is in no doubt that it has been brought to the country’s attention.

Phone Hacking

Phone hacking was recently brought to the public eye when Rupert Murdoch’s ‘News of the World’ was caught phone hacking various celebrities and people just to get stories for their newspaper, this is illegal to do this. Phone hacking is linking into someone’s calls or voicemail without the person knowing so, or giving consent- doing this is a clear violation of their privacy and is not legal. Due to the phone usually having a pin and many users not wishing to change this, it makes it easier for their phone to be hacked. Although in sight of the recent controversy with the phone hacking through ‘News of the World’ they have changed their system so that this cannot happen anymore.

The ‘News of the World’ controversy with the phone hacking brought light onto the situation which could be happening to many people, it allowed people to see how easy it is to access their phones. They targeted many people, some members of the Royal family were targeted through this. They even went to horrible lengths of hacking Milly Dowler’s voicemail, which lead to this interfering with the investigation.

Phone hacking is a clear breach of one persons privacy and completely shows that in some cases people cannot have any privacy.

The Data protection act

The data protection act is a list of laws in which are put in place to show people that if someone does invade their privacy then they can be punished for it and shall not be able to get away  with it. They are in essence rules that have become known due to the development in the information age;

-Data must not be disclosed to other parties without the consent of the individual whom it is about, unless there is legislation or other overriding legitimate reason to share the information (for example, the prevention or detection of crime). It is an offence for Other Parties to obtain this personal data without authorisation.

-Individuals have a right of access to the information held about them, subject to certain exceptions (for example, information held for the prevention or detection of crime).

-Personal information may be kept for no longer than is necessary and must be kept up to date.

-Personal information may not be sent outside the European economic area  unless the individual whom it is about has consented or adequate protection is in place, for example by the use of a prescribed form of contract to govern the transmission of the data.

-Subject to some exceptions for organisations that only do very simple processing, and for domestic use, all entities that process personal information must register with the Information commissioners office.

-The departments of a company that are holding personal information are required to have adequate security measures in place. Those include technical measures (such as firewalls) and organisational measures (such as staff training).

-Subjects have the right to have factually incorrectinformation corrected (note: this does not extend to matters of opinion)

Phone Tracking

Phones can now be installed with tracking devices so that either the police or someone’s parents know where they are, but in some cases the person who owns the phone does not know they possess this information. Phone tracking is a device which is inserted into the phone and through GPS they are able to see where the person is, through this device. It is usually a small chip which is inserted in the phone. It is good in some ways for people who want to know where their children are if they go missing, they can get their position, it is also bad because it cannot always be accurate.