That issue hits home with Don Darragh, director of sales and marketing at ASCC, a network consultant and integrator in Western Pennsylvania. Darragh says the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights protects a person's individuality and identity in the "real" world. For the e-world, he proposes a "Personalisation Bill of Rights" to protect individuality and identity. Darragh has drafted a list of rights as part of a paper on the personalisation vs. privacy dilemma.
Summarised, Darragh's Personalisation Bill of Rights says one is entitled to the following:
- The right to establish relationships by creating or joining cyber communities of like-minded individuals (like the Constitution's Bill of Rights' free assembly).
- The right to keep and bear "arms," which Darragh views as the right of individuals to defend their privacy through anonymity and encryption.
- The right of individuals to have exclusive ownership and use of their electronic identities (e-ID), unless they expressly grant that right to another party for a specific time and purpose.
- The right to freedom from illegal search or seizure of individuals' e-IDs. "There is no such thing as a public e-ID, and the fact that companies or governments have 'collected and mined' my information does not make it theirs," Darragh notes.
- The right of individuals to determine when, how and with whom their e-IDs are used.
- The right of individuals to a speedy and public trial when others criminally misuse their e-IDs.
- The right of individuals to trial by jury for accusations of criminal use of e-IDs.
- The right of individuals to free and unrestricted e-ID use, unconstrained by taxes, fines, fees, regulations or unusual bureaucratic encumbrances.
- Individuals retain the rights not presently enumerated for their e-IDs.
- Individuals retain rights not expressly given to federal or state governments regarding e-IDs.
Who will guarantee those privacy principles? Darragh says industry self-regulation is "a myth because there is too much money and marketing power concentrated in too few hands for that to work." As for the regulators, Darragh views government intervention as onerous and not to anyone's advantage.
Darragh believes it is up to individuals to secure their rights. He advocates the use of personal e-ID encrypted software that lets individuals create their own electronic personae. Those personae could reside on consumers' PCs or at a third-party consolidation site, according to Darragh. Companies, organisations and governments would have to request permission to use the personae.
Darragh is considering expanding upon his personalisation-rights paper to include ethical and moral considerations, as well as legal precedent and constitutional law. But anyway one slices it, personalisation is a tough issue to nail down.
