MPs have called for a Green Paper to give consumers greater
protection of their personal information both online and
offline.
The Green Paper should set out plainly "far-reaching" protection
for privacy, members of the
All Party Parliamentary Communications group (apComms) said.
"People need effective protection and they need to understand the
nature of that protection," the group said.
The MPs are calling on government to simplify the conflicting
protection for personal privacy online and offline. Complexity "is
not an ideal way to provide a legal base for privacy", said MP
Derek Wyatt, chairman of apComms.
Wyatt said behaviourally targeted advertising was closely tied
to privacy. He predicted privacy would become a "very big issue"
over the next five years, especially if it was not addressed
now.
ISPs had to do more to counteract abuses of the internet that
threatened to undermine its development as part of the social
fabric, the MPs said.
The committee confirmed that consumers should have to opt in to
receive advertising based on their online behaviour. This was
especially so for children. Consumers should also have explicit
information about the precise use of their data before they signed
up, they said.
MPs wanted lessons on eSafety included in the core school
curriculum for key stages one to four, and for the government to
ensure they were kept up to date.
They suggested that network operators and retailers work
together on putting eSafety on mobile phones. Ofcom should insist
that all mobile access devices were fitted with child protection
filters, the said.
MPs said government should resist the temptation to pass laws to
force ISPs to block websites that the
Internet Watch Foundation
(IWF) listed as sources of material that indicated child sexual
abuse and incited racial hatred.
Legislation would block efforts to develop self-regulation and
would be counter-productive, they said. Instead, they suggested
that government push to extend the IWF's model to the rest of the
world.
MPs recommended that Ofcom assess "net neutrality" as part of
its annual review. Net neutrality refers to ISPs' capacity to
discriminate against consumers on cost, access and network use
because of their choice of content and application.
Ofcom should make ISPs say what minimum network speeds they
guaranteed, MPs said. Without a minimum figure, consumers had no
recourse when their service degraded, they said.
MPs also wanted ISPs to detect and deal with malware-infected
machines voluntarily. This would help stop end user machines from
becoming part of botnets and sources of malware, they said.
They also wanted the law changed so that ISPs could block
servers that hosted "inappropriate content" without facing legal
penalties.
This comments came at a conference to report and discuss the
findings of apComms' enquiry "Can we keep out hands off the Net?"
The committee had received 45 written submissions and heard
evidence in three oral sessions in reply to questions about online
privacy, behavioural advertising, internet service providers' role
in stopping "bad" traffic, and how to stop websites that offer
child sexual abuse.
Wyatt said MPs wanted to suspend the debate on how to stop
illegal file-sharing until the new European Union Telecoms Package
was finalised, and to fit in with that.