A privacy-friendly internet might be possible in the future
according to an academic from the University of East Anglia.
Speaking at a conference today, Dr Paul Bernal will paint a
picture of what a privacy-friendly internet might look like in practice and put
forward a series of internet privacy rights – rights that are both theoretical
and achievable – and look at how the implementation of those might impact upon
the internet.
It follows the proposal of ideas such as the ‘right to be forgotten’
and of a ‘do not track’ system with tracking off by default. Both have been
attacked as unworkable and likely to ‘destroy’ the internet – the former by
undermining free speech, the latter by making the economic model that supports
the ‘free’ internet unsustainable.