Safety vs Privacy

I watched an interview with Bernie Ecclestone, the F1 magnate, with Eddie Jordan on Sunday and he described his own reaction to Max Mosely as 'over the top' when he had demanded that he resign over the affair of his filmed session with dominatrix prostitutes. He said that 'Max was now fighting for the rights to privacy for all people'.

Indeed. There are different laws for the rich, as we have seen in many cases. Mosely not only got compensated for the film being shown on the internet but he is now taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights claiming that whole affair has 'lost him his dignity'. Some would claim that if you did not have any dignity beforehand then you can't lose it but maybe that's a little unfair on poor Max. Certainly, the outrage has been turned on Ecclestone and his own sense of morals and ethics have been reversed after a severe talking to from Max.

Power and money should never be underestimated.

What About Joe Public?

For mere mortals like us, we have our privacy breached daily. Despite being on Telephone Preference Service (TPS), I still get a call a day from some nebulous call centre with the delayed start before they try to confirm my name and then I get some spiel before I cut them off. Whether we like it or not, TPS is about as effective as an MP's Expense Rule Book - if you want to bend the rules, you'll find a way.

So what of the new EU Directives which come into force next week? As of Monday, your ISP or telecom firm will be storing details of all your emails and net phone calls - not the content as yet but who you are communicating with. It comes in the wake of the London bombings and several countries like Sweden have outright refused to implement the directive while Germany is mounting a challenge.

Civil Liberty whingers feel this is another erosion of our privacy. I have reported on more extensive plans being discussed at high level which extends to phone calls and all internet communications including social network sites. In reality, the knowledge of who is communicating to who is of little use as in a world of pseudonyms and avatars on the web, knowing 'Terminator' is communicating with 'sweetliljools' is not too helpful.

The content of the communication is of more value in the search for terrorists, so we are but a short step away from everything being monitored.

The Arguments

Of course, you only need to have one bombing to justify such an invasion of privacy, just like a speed camera can be erected on a street where one death has occurred - in my main street it was the death of a dog which triggered its installation. In Britain we already have worse than 1 camera per 14 people and this was not much better when 7/7 took place. In fact, the bombers were clearly identified as they boarded a train at Luton and then on their way into the Undergrounds at Kings Cross. Seeing them did not prevent the bombings - the only way they would have been stopped was if they had omitted to buy a ticket.

There's the rub - the technology currently looks for exceptions. If all our data is to be stored then the only way it can be filtered is to first search by demographics and then to search by keyword, hoping that 'death', 'glorious victory' and 'Osama will be pleased' crops up. Or indeed the user names 'Osama_cave' or 'Allah_Fist' are nicknames used.

The argument by whinging Liberals is that this is a short step to full invasion of privacy. They are not wrong. Most surveillance cameras have been erected in city centres in the name of security and public safety. Laws have now been passed that councils can use the same cameras and images to spot people who park illegally, overstay their ticket or use a parking space for a two minute drop off. Number plate recognition catches them out and fines are sent by post - no matter what your excuse, you are guilty. The extension of this thought is that many agencies and commercial ventures will be very interested in your data and so before long lots of them will have access to our details and our most intimate thoughts and communications.

If you think that is scaremongering, it isn't. It means that Max Mosely might have to find another method to arrange his visits to prostitutes, it means that for all of us we should think twice about who and why we are communicating. As a for instance, the moment you register for the Electoral Roll, your information goes public. From that moment onwards your new address and details of who lives there is in the public domain. Junk mail comes flying in, unsolicited phone calls abound and your information is visible to any number of firms who pay for it. You have not ticked any boxes allowing them to have access to this but they do. You cannot get a mortgage without having joined the Electoral Roll so don't even think about not doing it.

Our information is freely traded today and there is little we can do about it. It's a precious commodity and knowing what we communicate about is even more precious. You can bet your shirt that taxes will arise associated with our information - that's one certainty.

But then again - what price Freedom? Surely erosion of our privacy is paramount in the search for terrorists? What do we have to hide if we are not terrorists? Max Mosely is showing exactly what we have to hide. His 'crusade' on behalf of all of us is to stop what is happening and saying 'what I do in privacy is my own business'. Max is campaigning against Google Street View which shows images in streets where he might be visiting 'paid for ladies', against firms that might pick up his internet booking of a good spanking by a lady with a paddle, against the use of cameras anywhere to show his private acts in public. The natural extension of what Max is doing is that he is saving us all against the tyranny of invasion of our privacy just so he can have uninterrupted sessions with 'Madames'.

The counter argument is on dodgy ground if we leave it in the hands of Max Mosely or, for that matter, in the hands of whinging Liberals who no one takes seriously.

Just today, Jaqui Smith is agreeing that 'chip and pin' technology will be incorporated in our Identity Cards and so can be used in our standard transactions at ATMs, for instance. This is claimed as a benefit - but this means our identity and all the information stored on the card about us will be freely available to banks, credit card companies, shops, internet companies - the lot as well as scammers and thieves.

Why would you want to do that? It is a wholesale public airing of even our biometric data - the possibilities are endless. It would be far easier for spouses to catch their other halves watching porn movies but would it stop terrorists?

The Jury's Out

One thing I do agree with the whingers on is that too often we see our data grabbed under the auspices of security and only to be made available to wider services and eventually the commercial world. Even cool technology like Google has its drawbacks as the lady who tried to escape a violent partner found out - the world is watching her and anyone can access it.

Far be it for me to whinge about safety - I would not wish a single injury or death by a terrorist if there was a way to prevent it. But as the 7/7 and JC De Menezes cases showed, we had a birds-eye view of the events and the people involved and it did not prevent the atrocities. It is what your intentions are and how you propose to use the data collected that determines whether terrorism or crime will be stopped.

Today, we have a track record to show that state and local government priorities are not centred around countering terrorism and crime but collecting more money from us. Until that is beaten out of the heads of the individuals involved, then I am against further invasion of privacy.

Whingers, make a place for me.

Big Brother Is Watching You - Hey, It's Good Thing!

'We get sued every day', said Eric Schmidt, CEO at Google. It was a comment worthy of his more bullish rival, Steve Ballmer at Microsoft, and it shows how companies who purport to change the world for the better develop a thicker skin as they mature.

It's a thin line between use and abuse of data in this modern age. So much information on us as individuals is collected and then we lose control over what is done with it. What starts as essential information for a transaction becomes a commodity to be traded itself. The issue of late surrounds Google's Street View service which was launched in the UK this month and got its first formal complaint put to the Information Commissioner (ICO).

In the complaint drawn up by privacy campaigners it cites over 200 reports from members of the public identifiable by the service.

Cool Google

Google has the reputation of being the soft mega-corporation who offers its employees cycles to get around its Bay Area Campus, who brought us the ability to search the web in seconds and who brought cool new applications and gadgets to make the computing dream come alive. It is also a highly profitable corporation and it is hell bent on replacing Microsoft as the dominant player in the future. Google Street View does not seem to be one of those sinister moves by a big company, it seems more like the kind of 'really neat' or 'cool' stuff from a company whose two founders are pleasant multi-billionaires who are ethical, nerdy and general all round cool dudes. Street View, we would like to think, has to be one of their zany ideas for people to try as they could not possibly be any other agenda or money to be made from it.

Street View allows a viewer of Google Maps to actually go and take a look at 25 cities in the UK, and get 360 degree views. As with most things in the computer world many might initially ask 'Why would you want to do that?' But as with Google's satellite views, I could not stop myself taking a look at my own address and seeing that the picture was taken in high Summer and you can see two sunbeds with yellow towels in my garden and my car parked outside the garage. It was way cool and has now become part of everyday browsing. Google Maps is just an amazing service which I even have on my PDA and, yes, I have used it when looking for addresses in London.

My theory is if I use then it has to be simple and useful, believe me.

So What's The Beef With Google Street View?

After the ICO had given permission in 2008 for Google to go ahead there is now a threat due to the complaint that Street View may have to be turned off. Prissy privacy campaigners would tell us that there had been 'clear embarrassment and damage' caused by people being viewed. This was also in breach of the permission granted by the ICO to Google in the first place.

Google had said that they would blur people's faces and car registrations when it was launched.

It sounds just another pathetic attempt by campaigners to spoil our fun. However, there is definitely risk here as one of the complaints received was from a women who was identifiable and had moved house to get away from a violent partner - she was pictured outside her new home. Another complaint came from two work colleagues found to be in a 'compromising position' - the image was subsequently circulated amongst their workmates.

You can see how this can quickly develop.

The Legal Position

Legal Eagles argue that data protection is all about taking reasonable steps and the argument is that if Street View is breaching privacy then almost anything you can do with data is a breach of privacy.

That is one point of view. However, in this instance, the data is being collected without the express permission of those in the pictures to have their images distributed. If you do not have their permission to distribute the data then actually presenting it to millions of potential viewers on the web is pretty irresponsible to say the least, particularly if the images can result in embarrassment or damage.

The same argument can be applied to You Tube and other picture sites which now flourish on the web. In the business world, giving your business card to another person can mean your data can not only become freely available on the web but also sold many times. Services like Jigsaw actively rewards its users for contributing full business card information on contacts made which are then sold as a highly targeted services to other individuals and companies to find contacts and build lists. LinkedIn is similar is some respects but has curtailed access to some information unless of course you pay. There is a very definite implication when you hand someone your card that no permission is granted for the recipient to distribute it and certainly for any third party they should hand it to. But it happens.

The problem here is that already people have proved that they can 'lift' the images from Street View and distribute them and that means that Google really has not taken enough precautions to stop that. But all you have to do is send the link to everyone to achieve the same results, so it boils down to the collection of the data in the first place, how it is subsequently displayed, who has access to it and what might they do with the data once viewed

Will Google Get Around This?

Inevitably they will. They got through to China by taking on board their rules and I guess if they can make sure their blurring technology is more effective then they can re-launch pretty soon. The concept has great merit but as always there is a tendency to trivialise the risks of potential outcomes. We can all point fingers at 'nanny' campaigners but when we are personally affected by it then we suddenly become very indignant - and rightfully so.

The obvious argument goes the other way. If you put yourself in a compromising position, there is always a risk you pay a price. People like Max Mosley have argued successfully that is not true and may even have claim to have 'lost his dignity' because of it and get a large amount of compensation - he was filmed in an orgy with dominatrix prostitutes dressed in strange pseudo-Nazi outfits.

If he can get away with that then Google Street View doesn't stand a chance. As always there has to be a balance. It looks as if Google's first effort got it wrong - but the cool dudes among us hope they put it right as it looks a great tool.

What Is Dignity?

You have to laugh. Max Mosley has some front. Having organised an orgy in which his dignity was put at risk and possibly lost, he now claims that publishing the story about the orgy is the thing that lost him his dignity.

You have to really think about this and put yourself into the man's mind. He can look into the faces of all the people he loves, works with and represents with full dignity despite knowing he indulges in such activities, yet has lost his dignity now that they know.

I would argue, if there was ever a risk of any of them knowing then you should not have been having such orgies - if you were ever bothered about them knowing.

People in high places and in the media are a funny lot. They love the power and the fame but hate it when there are 'invasions of their privacy'. I do think that certain things should be private but when such a powerful, highly paid man represents the sport loved by millions then, like Politicians who represent us, they should be of good moral character - enough to know that whatever skeletons they hide in their cupboards are not going to make us think less of them.

Contradictions

Mosley was not at all ashamed to attend the orgies and get to do his 'thing' - that was never an issue. But he has a problem knowing 'that they know'. It's absurd and the legal system, having already supported him once, should not be allowed to support this load of codswallop again.

You play with fire, you get burnt, it's that simple. Just like stealing a car, you may not want to get caught but you should accept the consequences if you do.

But wealth goes a long way. It can buy you a new conscience that is suddenly very hurt that the world can share your dirty little secret whereas for the rest of us in this world it is something we have to be prepared to risk should we want to indulge. That he should have such a screen up to his own family is the mark of the man. Just like having an affair, after all this is not dissimilar, you risk your partner, family and friends finding out and associated shame.

But Mosley feels he should not be subjected to such shame - how bizarre.

In such circumstances, it is pretty important to have weighed up the risks beforehand. Are you prepared to let anyone know should, by some happenstance, they find out? Could you live with that shame and loss of dignity?

If you can't, you should not have done it. It could have been the postman finding out or a spouse, it just happened to be a newspaper. Mosley is just an idiot for believing his secret was impregnable - he should pay the price, like anyone else, for his own lack of judgement, arrogance and lack of morals.

Funfzig lashes if you please, Judge

Max Mosley is some guy. If secretly filmed in a sordid sex session with a bunch of dominatrix paid-for ladies I would wager most people would be horrified and embarrassed, and possibly shrink from public life. It surely would be difficult to look loved ones in the eye and friends too - and goodness knows about work colleagues and business associates. Wouldn't we? Or am I living in a different world?

Not so Mr. Mosley. He actually turned the tables and made the whole thing a breach of his privacy. That takes some chin, but then again he's from a family not short of sticking its neck out and indulging in something repellent to most sane and decent-minded individuals.

What Are The Real Implications?

It was a bizarre affair that you couldn't have made up.

When a key witness did not show up the Judge in the case, Mr. Justice Eady, invoked the Human Rights Act to support legal action against the News of The World which had published the story and film to effectively expose his moral shortcomings, an age-old right of newspapers. Former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer stuck with his old chum and said the Judge did the right thing. Interesting.

Mr. Justice Eady ruled that the paper had breached Mr. Mosley's privacy while he had taken part in a sado-masochistic sex session with five prostitutes, in the process falsely claiming that it had a Nazi theme - which confused all of us who actually looked at the thing. I wonder why Max and the ladies didn't speak in menacing West Wales accents - surely it would have had a similar effects or perhaps we should ask the Judge.

In fact Justice Eady claimed Mr. Mosley was entitled to privacy for consensual 'sexual activities (albeit unconventional)'. It seemed to omit the fact he paid the ladies for the consensual activities, but no matter.

Enter The Daily Mail

I don't have a massive amount of time for newspapers editors, I think they do regularly overstep the boundaries of privacy. But in this instance, frankly Mosley had it coming. Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief at the Daily Mail, at the Society of Editors annual conference contended most people would consider Mr. Mosley's activities to be perverted and depraved.

I would draw readers' attention to my previous blogs on Denial as a Coping Mechanism. Psychopaths use the power of denial to distance themselves from their actions otherwise they surely would be overcome by their enormity while we regularly use denial to cope with deal with bereavement or similar. Mr. Mosley uses denial to make us believe the problem is with a warped newspaper who think his privacy is more sacrosanct than his depraved activities.

Dacre rightly points out the particular Judge has 'Form' on such rulings and contends that he is effectively passing laws. Even the PM would have had to set out a bill and get it passed by both Houses, a passage which everyone knows is no 'slam dunk'. Not so Justice Eady, asserts Dacre.

'...one judge with a subjective and highly relativist moral sense can do the same with a stroke of his pen,' said Dacre. 'I would personally would rather have never heard of Max Mosley and the squalid purgatory he inhabits. It is the others I care about - the crooks, the liars, the cheats, the rich and the corrupt sheltering behind a law of privacy being created by an unaccountable judge.'

Do We Agree?

Clearly the power of the vote of motorsport's governing body for whom Mr. Mosley works, do not agree - they gave him a vote of confidence although it might be alleged Mr. Mosley was happy to have accepted lashes instead.

I do agree this has a an implication for newspapers and society generally. If we extend Justice Eady's judgement then we may never know if politicians like Mandelson, Mellor, Blunkett, Conway, Hamilton or others far worse are doing anything which we ought to know about. It does have implications - it's called trust. While sexual activities may be a private matter in general, if you are in a high profile position or indeed in any where your actions may be construed by others as odd, depraved or unusual, do not be surprised if you take a fall. This applies to everyone when you think about it.

But here's the rub. Max Mosley slipped out of the situation because he has money. A great deal of it. If an employee, whatever rank in a company, had a video of his or herself published on YouTube of even an embarrassing incident let alone sexually depraved act they might possibly be disciplined or worse if their employers got to know. While they might argue a breach of privacy, the fact is they took the risk knowing the repercussions.

As usual in life, just as Formula One getting dispensation to get cigarette advertising a special dispensation even when it is clinically proven smoking harms health and can kill possibly with a greater risk than driving an F1 car, money talks.

Conclusion

All senses of morals say that a man in his position has betrayed the trust of his employer, wife, family and friends but that doesn't mean a jot and it outraged a lot of people who cannot understand how he keeps such a highly paid, high profile, ambassadorial job in a sport we love - in year when we have a British world champion to be proud of.

It makes you think it's a sport, much like banking, that is unhealthily in the hands of very few people who make more money than we could imagine. Perhaps it's time they joined the real world and got some sense of values and perspective, then they may actually realise this wasn't about privacy it was about trust.