>> Before you start the lynch mob, ask yourself this: what on earth can one do with non-person-identifiable data stored on a server?
How do we know it's non-person-identifiable? It's certainly clear that the analytics data comes from a set IP address, and when correlated with all the other data that big G collect from all over the web, who knows what can come out of it.
>> Be very very fortunate you can even get a somewhat usable site, much less a very user friendly site.
1. It's not just an information site.
2. Why should Google (and by extension the US government) be informed that I'm looking up (for instance) legal advice, business law or anything else?
Again, this is my interactions with my government being published to another nation.
--edit-- removed accusations of laziness, I'm sure the gov.uk folks aren't that.
Right, so because we haven't got a full and complete legal framework and associated consensus driven moral framework in this area, we should just relax and give up on the whole idea?
We already have data protection frameworks in the UK and at the EU level. I would like to see them adhered to in spirit, and I would also like to know that someone involved in the gov.uk has at least given this a moment's thought.
Clearly not give up. But we should have at least a clear idea of where we want the debate to go to. You say you want the DPA adhered to in spirit - great. It is adhered to in the letter of the law, and there are many interpretations of the spirit of that law.
My view is that the spirit of the law needs to be codified for a new world, and it is healthier to have that clear (and so open for debate) than to say someone is violating my idea of what the law should be.,
My starter for 10:
* Privacy is merely a politeness, and does not actually "exist". The expectations of privacy are the expectation for data to not be exploited without our consent.
* All digital communications and associated metadata are made in a public domain, and should have very limited expectations of privacy.
* If digital communication is encrypted, or marked as anonymous, then it should be legally viewed as having an expectatin of privacy and similar penalties applied for interfering with that as with post.
* Any monitoring of digital activity that can be linked to an individual human must be publically acknowledged by the monitoring organisation and the data released / published unless the individual has given consent for identifying data to be stored and processed to that organisation.
>> All digital communications and associated metadata are made in a public domain, and should have very limited expectations of privacy.
This is where we depart. Just because it is a public network does not mean that people somehow naturally consent to monitoring by anyone and everyone, nor that they should have to consent to this stuff. The telephone network is a good example of public and private infrastructure in which one still has the expectation of privacy.
>> If digital communication is encrypted, or marked as anonymous
And what if someone, mostly without notifying us, loads a script into our browser that tracks everything we do and reports back to mother?
This is not a case of people marking data private, nor is it 'digital communication' this is intrusion.
How do we know it's non-person-identifiable? It's certainly clear that the analytics data comes from a set IP address, and when correlated with all the other data that big G collect from all over the web, who knows what can come out of it.
>> Be very very fortunate you can even get a somewhat usable site, much less a very user friendly site.
1. It's not just an information site. 2. Why should Google (and by extension the US government) be informed that I'm looking up (for instance) legal advice, business law or anything else?
Again, this is my interactions with my government being published to another nation.
--edit-- removed accusations of laziness, I'm sure the gov.uk folks aren't that.