The privacy farce in the era of internet exhibitionism
In recent years the Internet has become an essential tool not only for the development of new business models, but also as a social and democratizing tool that has given strength to various social and cultural manifestations since the "cyberspace" to the real world. Internet constitutes a free space, where its users move without major restrictions, being able to demonstrate both on political issues and on personal issues. In this way, the Internet is mainly a platform for freedom of expression. Despite the above, freedom on the Internet is not exempt from restrictions. In repeated opportunities we have seen how various initiatives have tried to limit the information that circulates. Today there are thousands of electronic files, public and private databases in which general personal data and even sensitive data are available, and it is possible to find large amounts of information related to third parties, and may even be stored in such daily objects as our dailyidentity cards. The biggest problem is that most people have not realized the magnitude of the problem.
Today it is impossible to conceive the operation of the Internet without cookies. Apparently we cannot do anything else to accept to continue sailing on any page that communicates it to us. Cookies are data files saved in a specific directory of the user’s computer. They are created by the web servers with the aim of being sent to the user’s browser programs, and thus collect the information that said file has gathered. The information that is revealed to the visited web can be used by systems administrators to build personal profiles of the people who visit them. They are mainly used to help the Internet user in their navigation (remember the user keys when you enter a website and not have to be introducing them every time we change page within the same website, for example). Placing a cookie in the browser of a visitor, automatically the server records information in the cookie. This allows administrators to see, for example, the historical sites that the user has visited before entering the web, as well as the ads that he has seen, number of transactions made on the web etc.
In summary, they are a valuable function on the web, since following the information obtained they can carry out thorough studies of consumer habits, preferences on the web, time spent etc. For many companies it constitutes the main business marketing tool on the web. Therefore we find a powerful instrument of obtaining information for the administrator of a server and for the marketing departments of companies that have a web page on the Internet. But.. How to protect yourself from the danger of cookies? Is there any way to avoid them?. In the following work I will address the reasons why I consider that the use of these small computer elements that are seen as a double -edged sword: on the one hand, thanks to them users can have a more personalized experience through navigation,But on the other, they can mean an attack on the privacy of people.
As I said before, it may be very useful that, after navigating the Internet, the computer remembers our search preferences or our login data, as a consequence, in most cases of the use of these small text fragmentsor data that proportion to the web server to the browser in each use and that we know as’ cookies.’However, this comfort and time savings entail their risks, because users do not usually have great knowledge about what they imply and therefore the appropriate precautions are not taken. One of the most basic characteristics that it is useful to know is that there are two types of cookies: the storms and permanent. The first (or session), are maintained while for the period in which the computer is used and disappear when the session is closed. While the second or permanent, as their name says, remain on the computer for several sessions according to their characteristics or until they are eliminated manually by the user, as in the case of data customization, where an example can bethe ones of those cookies that allow to give weather information of the city in which the user is, without the need to update said data every time it is accessed. To this are added third -party cookies that are created by some websites, in order to track online behavior for commercial and advertising purposes, information that can then be used by advertisers to offer users, articles and services according to preferencesNavigation shown.
Cookies are spy programs. Information of different types are collected: address addresses and passwords, our telephone number and address, IP address, the computer operating system, which browser is in use, the pages previously visited, among others. Most social media services and internet "applications" most commonly installed on our computers and cell phones do not only serve to communicate and consume content through the Internet. These were also designed to generate information about the behavior of their users, constantly registering: where we are located, where we were, what we know, what we like or interest and what we ignore, reject or find it indifferent. Is this safe for us? How exposed are we in cyberspace? Nobody likes to be formed, and that is why I defend the fact that this principle of respect for the privacy of people imperates both outside and inside the internet.
Not everything that is said in a public space is public content;Thus, personalized conversations are deprived for being considered a manifestation of a thought that is generally aimed at a specific recipient, a criterion that has been recognized by our Constitutional Court and which must be applied and respected in the field of social networks. It should be noted that it is in the social networks cataloged by communication or leisure, such as Facebook or Instagram, in which the greatest threats and transgressions to the private life of people are presented. The actions carried out by the user on social networks, either to access or share information, are also protected by the national legal system. Article 19 num. 12 of the Political Constitution of the Republic protects the freedom to issue opinion and that of informing, while Law 19.733 On freedoms of opinion and information and exercise of journalism is responsible for regulating the processing of personal data that are made in the exercise of these rights.
Social networks go hand in hand with the use of cookies, tracked by their Internet Protocol (IP). The IP is a number that identifies or identifies a device connected to the Internet belonging to a certain individual, and is considered, for these reasons, as a personal fact. Therefore, it is required to demand the express and written consent of the user. However, in practice, social networks do not respect these requirements due to the general terms stipulated in their cookies policies: they pass over the principle of purpose and information, and also the consent may not be understood as the simple act ofClick a button.
According to the mosaic theory (Madrid, 1984), each data collected through cookies gives the possibility of revealing the real identity of people, exposing sensitive data of the user, concerning their tastes, hobbies, ideology, among others. As an example, Facebook points in its conditions of use that use cookies in order to carry out analysis and studies to improve its products, and share these data with other social network companies, however, these conditions do not specify the objectnor the deadline in which these cookies will be activated. The above shows that the social networks user not only has to be aware of the content and data that he explicitly shares in social networks, but must also be cautious with other actions, which, in the generality of cases, ignore that they are also monitored by these services, such as Facebook and Twitter Likes that are monitored by cookies.
An example that I consider relevant to strengthen this thought is the political scandal of Facebook with Cambridge Analytica occurred in March this year. Several newspapers denounced that the company was exploiting the personal information of Facebook users, acquired by an external researcher who claimed to be doing it for academic purposes. The consultant is accused of having obtained the information of millions of users, threatening against the policies of use of the social network and having used that data to psychologically manipulate voters in the US elections.UU. 2016, where Donald Trump was elected president. According to Fuentes, Cambridge Analytica would have been involved in 44 American political campaigns, but the most important would have been the 2017 US presidential election and Brexit. This type of violation of our right to privacy as cybernauts occurs in most Internet applications most commonly installed in cell phones, including browsers and social media services.
The case mentioned above of Cambridge Analytica highlighted the vulnerability of the current system. Both in the international and national context, work began on legal norms that protect users. In Chile, the right to privacy is recognized as a dynamic right and therefore its areas of protection vary according to the evolution of our society. In the international framework, Europe made a regulation change of the European Union. This began to govern on May 25 of this year, and regulates the way organizations use and store personal information. Regulation focuses on the privacy and rights of EU citizens to protect their privacy. As for our country, Chile became a pioneer in terms of protection of personal data in Latin America through the dictation of Law No. 19.628 on personal data protection. This law, with few modifications to date, is the only legal body directly applicable to this matter in general.
The Political Constitution assures all people, ‘respect and protection of private life’, granting protection to a specific sphere of people’s lives but without any reference to the specific scope or content of said protection. The use of social networks to take a new turn and must be seen with responsibility by the authorities, are direct contact tools and people will not hesitate to hear. While people at the end are the one who votes, we should not stop understanding how advertising, good or bad, can change the decision of people and what is finally discussed with this is how sure it is so sureOur information on the network, how much of what we see is randomly placed and how we are being conditioned. From the perspective of data protection, the Chilean legal system is built from the constitutional guarantee of respect for private life contemplated in article 19 no 4 of the Fundamental Charter and Law No. 19.628 on Private Life Protection.
Information and data so far are hardly accessible, thanks to the Internet, available to anyone. Privacy is the scope of personal life that can be of a reserved state or maintain confidentially. This applies to anyone will be subject to arbitrary interference in his private life, his family, his domicile or his correspondence, or attacks on his honor or his reputation. Therefore we can say that the right to privacy should also be established on social networks. The expansion of our personal information has no limits and cannot be controlled. By accepting the privacy conditions of social networks we reject many of our rights to the images that we hang or the information we share. That personal information, images and others, to be able to see it anyone, could be used against us in any way. For example, when we are looking for work and we do a curriculum, the person who reviews it, can look for your profile on social networks, see any image of your personal life, which has nothing to do with your professional life and discard youFor the position for any aspect that has not seemed correct.
The ease they represent for access to information social networks and the endurance of this through the available techniques can represent a danger to privacy, honor and informative self-determination of people. Therefore, the right to oblivion has been conceptualized, as a tool that assists natural persons to require information about them after the passage of a certain period of time. Although in Chile there are no express references in the Constitution or legal regulation on this right, it has found good reception in the doctrine and jurisprudence. This new form of protection to the private life of people consists in the power to request the elimination of personal data from any database for considering them obsolete, decontextualized or harmful to other rights. The Court of Justice of the European Union in a sentence pronounced in 2014 in the famous case "Costeja, Mario with Google Spain", established the so -called right to the Internet as a form of protection to private life and the honor of people. The ruling caused a stir as it ordered the elimination of the search results that link to websites containing the personal data of the SR. Cost, which was referred to an old financial information, without any relevance to continue appearing on the Internet. In this way, the door opened so that hundreds of thousands of people, for the most dissimilar reasons, request the elimination of their web names. This leads to a very negative effect for any of us: the information accumulated in the network for years – not only by themselves, if not by third parties – can persecute them as a nightmare throughout their lives, since such information can affect their honor, intimacy or image. Even in the workplace, problems occur. It is shown that many companies use some search engine with the name of the applicants to jobs and a “distemper” or inappropriate comment or ancient image that harms it may appear.
In Europe, where the protection of personal data has a range of fundamental right, the need to seek a solution to these difficulties was progressively climbing until an answer was achieved as was the failure of the case of Google Spain, mentioned above. They are cited as a previous history of the right to oblivion other similar, but that have an important difference with respect to how to eliminate the data when appropriate. For example, in France, the law recognizes Le Droit à l’Oubli, for which a person, after his sentence is fulfilled, has the right to eliminate the dissemination of his imprisonment. The United Kingdom has similar legislation called "Rehabilitation of Offenders Act" . In the cinema, the right to oblivion has always existed. We all know the legend that says: "This story is real, however, some names and places have been changed to protect the identity of the innocents". And in virtually all countries that have data protection legislation, that is, of protection of the private life of people, the services that sell financial information, have limitations in terms of time for which the records ofpeople . The particularity of this new right to oblivion is that it acts on search engines, specifically on the names of people and not on sources.
The failure cited in the previous paragraph means an advance in the rights of people, without injuring freedom of information, since the original source where the information was published, as a place or medium of digital communication, will not be affected. Data elimination occurs only from search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Our Supreme Court has already pronounced various sentences by accepting the right to oblivion in various cases in which freedom of information should be attenuated for the right to honor, intimacy or image of people. For example, at the national level, there is the case of the new director of Carabineros, Hermes Soto, who was accused by the communist deputy Hugo Gutiérrez, with the hatred that characterizes that party, of having been sanctioned with arrest for having attendedTo a brothel in 1985, that is, more than 33 years ago. Soto admitted the fact, but pointed out that he was 21 years old, when he was a hurry and was starting his career. It is being investigated how the filtration of the resume of the new general director from the Personnel Department was produced. That document, although not electronic, also constitutes a database, but in paper support, high confidentiality and it is logical to ask if General Soto had the right to oblivion. This information that damaged his image and certainly affected his family, is also today on the Internet.
It must be added- with a minimum of relationship, but it is still relevant- another right in terms of privacy: the “right to be alone”, where in the text privacy expectations and hidden recordings define it as the expectation notBe interfered by third parties against our will to share what we want to be known by others.
On the other hand, in the document situation of freedom of expression in Chile: Country 2016 report it is mentioned that the Digital Agenda 2020 raises two things: develop a regulatory framework for the digital environment, and secondly, work for the full respect ofFundamental rights in digital development. The agenda “contemplates work tables to agree on the courses of action and in others advance in the impulse of bills that are considered key to ensure the digital development of Chile with full respect for the rights of people.
However, it is also noted that it warns that the proposal for regulatory review is limited to: Personal data protection standards, standards on electronic payment means;impulse to the electronic signature, among others. That is, authorities are clearly worrying about digital development at the country level, but what about our protection in terms of privacy?. These gaps are worrisome.
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