technology
A New Deal for the World Wide Web
A peak was reached last year in terms of disappointment regarding the respect of some companies for their users’ private data. At the same time, the number of data leak is increasing due to careless behaviors adopted by some companies. The information security is becoming more topical for citizens. We have to change our current relationship with online partners but it seems to be one of the global issue that need to be addressed by global leaders.
Is it possible to build a better and more respectful Internet together?
What the World Wide Web is today, is far away from what was dreamed by his father. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, best known to be the founder of Internet, is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Since the beginning of his career he has been involved in many different campaigns from net neutrality to data privacy all around the world (https://medium.com/@timberners_lee).
Then, when he took the floor during the Web Summit, on November 5th 2018, to express his willingness to reshape Internet, the whole tech world held its breath.
Who is more legitimate than him to talk about what the Internet should be?
His initiative called “A contract for the web” shares a simple but ambitious strategy: to make Internet available for everyone with respects for everyone’s data privacy guaranteed by Governments, Companies and Citizens. Its goal is to gather government, companies and citizens around the table to discuss how to deal with data privacy and internet accessibility.
Thanks to the reputation of Tim Berners-Lee, this initiative has already generated more than 960,000,000 results on Google (status January 15th 2019). In just a few weeks, an important number of key players from various sectors have associated their name to the “Contract”. Among them, political leaders as well as public organizations like SECURITYMADEIN.LU.
However, among the participants, we can mention names of the biggest technological companies in the world like Google or Facebook. Their presence seems paradoxical as some of the biggest clashes on data privacy in 2018 were related to these platforms.
What is Mark Zuckerberg’s personal challenge of the year?
Every year Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, shares his new year resolution in a publication on his social network account.
“My challenge for 2019 is to host a series of public discussions about the future of technology in society – the opportunities, the challenges, the hopes, and the anxieties.”
source: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook account
What could be perceived as a personal marketing used to bring confidence in the leadership of one of the world’s largest company is also a direct threat of “green washing” of privacy policy guidelines. Especially when global organizations like Privacy International sound the alarm about the behavior of Google and Facebook on this specific topic.
So, what can we expect from members with such different interests?
As true as it may be that a lobbying campaign could block the process to create a more respectful Internet, too many actors feel the need for change to allow this trend to fade. The impact of negligence in the management of data privacy is already being felt in our society and all actors must be involved in the definition of new rules to avoid that bad habits become the standard of tomorrow.
Despite the difficulties, SECURITYMADEIN.LU is willing to do its modest part of the job to write together a new contract for the web. You can also join the movement by simply registering on the site: https://contractfortheweb.org/