Thursday, January 23, 2014

The Big Brother problem: Trillions at stake in private data struggle...

Cyber-attacks on personal privacy and the corporate world are at the top of the worry list at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, where delegates at a forum on data protection were reminded that the digital revolution carries as many threats as rewards.

Growing concerns about personal privacy being compromised by government intelligence bodies, such as the United States National Security Agency (NSA), were tackled by a panel of experts at a WEF session entitled ‘The Big Brother Problem’.

Amnesty International Secretary-General Salil Shetty said the right to privacy is “one of the defining issues of our times” and went on to attack “open-ended fishing expeditions” by governments.

Bradford Smith, general counsel at Microsoft, said the internet giant regularly challenged requests for information through the courts, but admitted it did not always win. “We will do what we are ordered to do by governments if we lose our case,” he said.

But while governments were condemned for wading through swathes of personal data in search of tidbits of information, the panel was short on answers to the problem apart from reforming national laws to blunt the attacks. Full story...

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