Privacy, Surveillance, and The Law of Social Media

Introduction

The personal data whose mishandling leads to infringement is usually the data that contains sensitive information about a natural person. This data includes information about an individual’s race, ethnicity, political inclinations, genetics, health status, biometrics, religion, and sexual orientation.[4] Having established this, it’s, therefore, an individual’s right to be appraised on how their data is used, bar the use of the data, request for its removal, update, or portability.

            Serious infringement of this stipulation leads to a fine of ten million euros or 4% of the organization’s annual turnover of a fiscal year whichever is higher. An individual responsible for the use of personal data has to adhere to a set of strict rules referred to as ‘data protection principles. They therefore must make sure that the information is: used in a fair, lawful, and transparent manner, used for the specified and explicit purposes, used adequately, relevantly, and limited to only what is necessary, kept up to date, and kept for no longer than is necessary, handled securely, including protection against unlawful or unauthorized processing, access, loss, destruction or damage.[5]

In direct marketing, the GDPR rules on direct marketing with a focus on calls texts, and emails, to individuals and how they affect lead generation and the use of marketing lists. It will therefore help the responsible organization to operate within the law and maintain their good reputation with customers and set out what enforcement action can take against those who ignore the rules.[6] in this light, the organizations must therefore not send marketing texts or emails to individuals without a prior specific consent there is however an exemption of the previous customer who is known as the soft opt-in. in this case, organizations are required to stop contacting the customers once they opt out.

With the UK and the international community economy revolving around the availability and the use of data, the question of how this provision is affecting the marketers has risen a discussion in recent days. It brought about the questioning of the purpose of its existence and whether it should be removed and replaced with legislation more focused on whether automated decision-making meets a legitimate interest area. In this paper, I will carry out a critical analysis of what this provision does for the society and its effect on the market thereby determining whether it’s in the best interest of the UK, in general, to remove the provision or if it should be kept in place.

Advantages of having the stipulation

The GDPR provision evens the playing field. Before the realization of the GDPR, the businesses that maintained ethical practices were at a major disadvantage from those that breached the privacy of individuals. The GDPR, therefore, serves to keep fairness in the business practice. “Ethical enterprises fumbled about as they tried to determine how to reach a level of privacy that protected customers and clients without placing their organizations at an untenable competitive disadvantage.”[10] the GDPR provision, therefore, is key in making sure that the business is fair for all parties involved.

Disadvantages of the Stipulation

The availability of huge databases would lead to increased security. Most criminal profiling techniques are built on the use of social media arenas to track down and understand the motive and patterns of a suspect. It is this information that assists the investigators to determine the possible whereabouts of the suspect in question and consequent apprehension. Some social media apparatus like Facebook are rich with data that can be used to build a criminal profile. In addition, this step could go a long way in the mitigation of such crimes. Say a person is planning to build a nitrogen bomb. The said person will have to buy nitrogen-based fertilizer in bulk. As soon as this happens, the security agencies can then be notified and they investigate what the purpose of such amount is for and destruction is averted. With free sharing of information, whether the said individual buys be it from one store or many stores then they can be tracked and questioned.  In 2008 72 criminals were apprehended by the US law enforcement who were connected to a renowned gang by obtaining large amounts of data from a social media platform and establishing links between the criminals and their profiles, analyzing that data, and finding links between the gang members and their network.[16]

Conclusion

Bibliography

Edwards J, ‘6 Business Benefits of Data Protection and GDPR Compliance’ (14 January 2021)

Direct marketing code of practice; draft code for consultation p 26

Jennifer Tyrawski and David C DeAndrea, ‘Pharmaceutical Companies and Their Drugs on Social Media: A Content Analysis of Drug Information on Popular Social Media Sites’ (PubMed Central (PMC)) <www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4526896/> accessed 7 May 2022.

Coos A, ‘GDPR: The Pros and the Cons’ (Endpoint Protector Blog, 10 December 2020) <www.endpointprotector.com/blog/gdpr-the-pros-and-the-cons/> accessed 7 May 2022

General Data Protection recital 39