Privacy Needs to Be Boosted in Apps and National Security, Privacy Officers Group Told
Changes may be needed to generate users’ trust in apps, said Jacob Kohnstamm, chairman of the executive committee of the Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Officers and chairman of the Dutch Data Protection Authority, at the data protection officers conference this week. “We don’t want to spoil the fun with apps,” said Kohnstamm, but data protection officers agreed to work with app developers to make them aware that “privacy should be taken into account."
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Unless there’s an effective and enforceable self-regulation program, privacy officers would need to push for regulation instead, Kohnstamm said. That would be reconsidered during the next annual conference, the conference’s official declaration said.
The group also approved declarations on profiling, on Web tracking -- which should only be allowed in anti-fraud cases -- on further strengthening international enforcement cooperation between privacy authorities, and on openness of personal data practices. Several of the declarations include reactions to the revelations of mass surveillance activities by U.S. and other secret services. One resolution explicitly asked for a binding international agreement on data protection that safeguards human rights, to be negotiated as an additional protocol to Article 17 of the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
"We still have many questions to which we will need answers,” Kohnstamm said of the leaks of National Security Agency surveillance activities. David Medine, chairman of the White House’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, said privacy and civil liberties aren’t limited to U.S. citizens. Due to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Medine said, there’s now a lively debate on the surveillance programs of the U.S.
Ian Readhead of a police officers group warned that the massive amount of data currently collected by police and security services sometimes doesn’t help investigations. In the U.K., he said, 1 billion pieces of intelligence, 7 million criminal records, 4 million DNA records and more is collected every day. He said there’s a “real risk that we hold a lot of rubbish.” Joel Reidenberg, professor and privacy law expert at Princeton University and Fordham University, cautioned against singling out the U.S.: “We have too much data, too much access to it and less knowledge.”