Internet Governance
importance in other cultures. Modern practices of privacy focus on communication privacy (no surveillance of communication) and information privacy (no handling of information about individuals). Privacy issues, which used to focus on governmental activities, has been extended and now includes the business sector.44 The issues Individuals and states Information has always been an essential tool for states to exercise authority over their territories and populations. Governments collect vast amounts of personal information (birth and marriage records, social security numbers, voting registration, criminal records, tax information, housing records, car ownership, etc.). It is not possible for an individual to opt out of providing personal data, short of emigrating to another country, where they would confront the same problem. Information technology, such as that used in data mining,45 aids in the aggregation and correlation of data from many specialised systems (e.g. taxation, housing records, car ownership) to conduct sophisticated analyses, searching for usual and unusual patterns and inconsistencies. One of the main challenges of e-government initiatives is to ensure a proper balance between the modernisation of government functions and the guarantee of citizens’ privacy rights, including restricting the collection of information to what is strictly necessary to perform the government’s role or the public service. However, recent years have witnessed an increased appetite of governments for collecting and association of more personal data for compulsory identification (such as biometric data). After the events of 11 September 2001 in the USA, the US Patriot Act46 and comparable legislation in other countries broadened governments’ authority to collect information, including a provision for lawful interception of information. The concept of lawful interception in gathering evidence is also included in the CoE Convention on Cybercrime47 (Articles 20 and 21). Moreover, the EU requested the adoption of national legislation allowing the retention of data necessary to identify a user for a period of 6 to 24 months. Privacy protection: individuals and businesses As depicted in the privacy triangle image, the second, and increasingly important relationship is that between individuals and the business sector. A person discloses personal data when opening a bank account, booking a flight or a hotel, paying online with a credit card, or even browsing or searching the Internet. Multiple traces of data are often left in each of these activities. 106