The Australian 11nov98 Internet threat to privacy: judge By High Court correspondent BERNARD LANE WHEN people enter the cyberspace of the Internet, they often make the mistake of assuming they become anonymous and their privacy is protected, Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court says. In an article on the Web, Justice Kirby warns privacy is increasingly at risk in the ever-expanding Internet, since national regulators are mostly powerless and new global rules are yet to be devised. "Users commonly think that because they do not enter their names or other details to gain access to Web pages, this means that there is a high degree of privacy in their use of the Internet; in other words, that it is virtually anonymous," he says. The judge, whose interest in privacy and information technology follows work with the OECD 20 years ago, canvassed the many Internet tools that collect information, including browsers, crawlers and spiders; search engines, robots and indexes. "It is not often appreciated by users of the Web that, without specific initiatives on their own part, their visits to particular Web sites can usually be resurrected: presenting a profile of their minds," he says. "Their visits may illustrate the subjects in which they are interested: their inclinations, political, social, sexual and otherwise." Justice Kirby acknowledged that regulatory impotence enhanced freedom of speech over the Net but said other human rights, such as privacy, also had to be given protection. He cited "strong resistance" to the US Government's proposed "clipper chip", intended to allow the State to override individual encryption as part of a campaign against crime and terrorism. "Whilst society needs to be shielded from clearly anti-social conduct, there are strong arguments for permitting, and protecting the anonymity of most Web site visits and providing 'dungeons' and 'chat rooms' in the Web, where people can communicate without fear that their interests, attitudes, beliefs and concerns will be monitored either by public or private sector snoops," he said. Justice Kirby's article for the University of NSW Law Journal is posted on the Australasian Legal Information Institute site, at http://www.law.unsw.edu.au/publications/journals/unswlj/ecommerce/kirby.html
