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Analyzing privacy in a surveillance society: from biometric ID card to social media. Pirongrong Ramasoota. Brief background about Thai society and privacy. A long standing surveillance society Ancient system of wrist-tattooing for manpower control
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Analyzing privacy in a surveillance society: from biometric ID cardto social media Pirongrong Ramasoota
Brief background about Thai society and privacy • A long standing surveillance society • Ancient system of wrist-tattooing for manpower control • Citizen ID card a staple since 1940s and biometric technology incorporated since 1990s • An emerging privacy regime in a political divide • Personal data protection law under consideration since 1990s but never enacted • Abuses of dissidents’ privacy politicized amidst color-coated conflict and clashes
Evolution of citizen ID cards in Thailand – 1913, 1963, 1988, 1996, and 2005
Lessig’scode: adopted framework for analyzing privacy • Lawrence Lessig. 1999. Codes and other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Perseus Books.
Four regulators • norms constrain through the stigma that a community imposes • markets constrain through the price they exact • architecture constrains through the physical burdens they impose • law constrains through the punishment it threatens The case of the cigarette
Case of biometric ID – analytical dimensions Unique context of privacy Stakeholders Issue surrounding surveillance/privacy regime
Strict screening Provincial authorities are taking steps to ensure the new ID cards for children are not issued to the offspring of foreign migrant workers.
Stakeholders in biometric ID card in Thailand People – as citizens and service beneficiaries Government agencies Public administrators Politicians Procurers – vendors and suppliers Design and IT developers Businesses Each has different expectations with respect to privacy intrusion, data security, accuracy, and retention and can also play a different role in their variant sphere to affect to drive or impede privacy/data protection
SNS and surveillance Social networking thrives on surveillance and directly subverts individual privacy. SNS’s existence and business model depends on individuals’ voluntary (and sometimes inadvertent) revelation of detailed personal information and their activities to “friends” and corporate-owned sites that aggregate and mine their information for commercial purposes (Regan & Steeves, 2010)
Cyber-witchhunting via privacy abuse became politicized History of Miss Jane Doe – detailing her real name, address, her parents’ name, their profession. Items 1. to 5. listed her academic background, her being expelled from school for lèsemajesté, her participation in the red-shirts’ rally, and her constant posting of lèsemajesté content on her facebook wall.
Content regulation in computer crime law • Section 14 of the law defines as offences the import into a computer system of such type of content: • forged computer data, false computer data, in a manner that is likely to cause damage to a thirdpartyor the public; • false data in a manner likely to damage national security or to cause public panic; • data constituting an offence against national security under the Penal Code; and • pornographic data in a manner that could be publicly accessible. • Section 15 provides that service providers who knowingly or allow the above offences to take place in their service are subject to the same penalty as offenders – intermediary liability
According to the law, competent officialsare allowed to • summon alleged party to appear • request information and evidence, • duplicate, decrypt, censor, access computer information • confiscate or freeze computer system.
Traceability regulation • Due largely to the enforcement of the computer crime law, ISPs and online service providers (OSPs) – those that host social networking services, blogs and websites -- have growingly set up a system that enables “traceability regulation.” To access content and services on these websites, users are required to provide some sort of ID or certification first. • With the availability and widespread diffusion of citizen ID number, many OSPs require that users submit a scanned copy of their ID card upon first subscription. • Lawrence Lessig describes “traceability regulation” as requirement by the state for service providers to employ software that facilitates traceability by conditioning access on the users’ providing some minimal level of identification.
Other issues surrounding surveillance/privacy on SNS in Thailand
Policy considerations for privacy • In order to be relevant, both public and private public policies aimed at protecting privacy in both contexts need to consider data subjects (citizens in biometric ID case and SNS users) practices, perspectives, and attitudes towards privacy, which might be different from general assumptions and may vary in different socio-cultural contexts. In other words, evidenced-based policy-making which also needs to cope with the fast changes of technology as well as changing behavior of users • Public policy makers need to consider the full range of available approaches, not only law, but – importantly – also education. Hence, the emerging privacy protection framework needs to incorporate mechanism of social learning.
Policy considerations for privacy • In the case of SNS, platform providers have a direct responsibility not only as far as consent and defaults are concerned, but also in terms of educating users, particularly the young ones, about privacy issues • One key challenge to be addressed by policy-makers in the case of SNS is the question of third-party use (commercial or political) of the data as well as dealing with long-term implication of data sharing, data profiling (including cyber-witchhunt), and data aggregation • Crisis of privacy abuse could be turned into opportunity to raise public awareness through case studies of real life high-impact stories. But constant advocacy is necessary to make it stick in the public’s mind.
