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particular in terms of the power that national regulators have: “what we should fear
is the growth of government databases”
(Singleton, 1998). Privacy therefore clearly
raises social concerns in terms of trust, digital democracy
as well as employment,
particularly in relation to the rights of employers to access or monitor personal
information of their employees (ranging from email messages to medical records),
often without their explicit consent
or even their knowledge. Finally, the difficulties
of updating databases and business processes and the challenges to comply at a
technical level when using some contemporary information technologies (Lycett &
Pouloudi, 2001) signify that privacy protection remains a challenge for policy
makers.
Content
As electronic commerce is an international phenomenon it is impossible for
policy makers to control the content of the information transferred on-line. While
the exposure to all this information can be beneficial, for example expanding
people’s learning horizons (Forcheri et al., 2000), governments and citizens are
concerned about the publication of offensive material (Nelson, 1999). As the
complaints from parents and educators about the influence of the Internet on
children become more frequent, there are several civil liberties organizations
devoted to protecting users from exposure to inappropriate on-line material. Such
groups include the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which supports
legal and
legislative action to protect the civil liberties of on-line users and the Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), which aims to protect privacy and
civil liberties. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed a technical
platform that allows user-defined, customized access to the Internet (Patrick, 1999;
www.w3.organisation/PICS) and has enabled the creation of rating services and
filtering software, for use by concerned
parents. While the need for filtering of some
information is generally considered as appropriate, there are also attempts at
censorship. For example certain Asian countries place restrictions on the use of the
Internet. The use of censorship on the information highway is debatable, both in
terms of its technological feasibility but also in terms of its moral foundation (Ebbs
& Rheingold, 1997).