IB Digital Society 3.4F Internet Dilemmas Notes

3.4F Internet Dilemmas

Privacy, anonymity, and surveillance

1. Every request passes through equipment run by others, so browsing leaves a trail. Privacy, your ability to control what is known about you, is a central dilemma of the internet.
2. Alongside it sits surveillance: the systematic watching and recording of what people do online. Providers, platforms, advertisers, and governments log activity in ways users never see.
3. People push back with anonymity, hiding who is behind an action. The same cover shields people doing harm, which is why it stays so contested.
4. Privacy, surveillance, and anonymity are locked together, and strengthening one usually weakens another. Much collection is invisible because it is bundled into services people want: free apps paid for with data, conveniences that track location.

The right to be forgotten

1. Online, the past does not fade: an old article, photo, or record can surface years later. Some legal systems recognise a right to be forgotten, letting people ask for such information to be removed.
2. In practice this usually means removing a search-engine result rather than deleting the original page, so the source may still exist even after the link is hidden.
   1. Example: In 2014 the EU Court of Justice ordered Google to remove certain results about a Spanish man's long-settled debt, establishing the right across Europe. Google now handles millions of such requests, judging case by case.
3. Contested: a person's dignity and chance to move on versus the public's interest in accurate history and free access to information. The search engine ends up an unelected referee, deciding privately which requests to grant and which to refuse (values and ethics).