Human rights can give guidance to the protection of data in cyber space under certain conditions

I want like to start this essay by referring to the right of privacy that is well established in international law. The core privacy principle in modern law may be found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 12 of the UDHR states "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." This article describes in a perfect way the fact that human rights can give guidance to the protection of data while navigating in the cyber space. More generally, the protection of privacy is considered a fundamental human right, indispensable to the protection of liberty and democratic institutions. William Pfaff made this point well when he wrote recently, "The defining characteristic of totalitarianism is its assault on privacy. The individual in a totalitarian state is deprived of privacy in order to destroy his or her liberty." Secondly, the protection of privacy is not a new subject. It has multiple dimensions and a well established history. Among its key characteristics is the recognition that privacy is a fundamental human right, that it is firmly established in law, and that Fair Information Practices provided a useful articulation of privacy principles in the information world. I believe that human rights alone can influence how our data is being protected in the cyber space because privacy is a fundamental human right. Philosophers and ethicists have described privacy as indispensable characteristic of personal freedom. Privacy is associated with autonomy, dignity, spirituality, trust, and liberty. References to the value of private life may be found in the bible, the history of Periclean Athens, as well as the history and culture of many people around the world. Also, as mentioned above, this right is established in law in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 12. After knowing this one question arises. What threatens our privacy? A generalized idea is that the threats to privacy came from multiple sources. They can be broadly classified as technologic threats, threats from actions of government, and threats from the private sector and commercial services. A key point in our discussion is that technology threatens privacy. In the modern era, technology has long been viewed as the source of many privacy concerns. But the relationship between technology and surveillance is not a simple one. Technology takes on certain forms and may lead to the adoption of new systems for surveillance by a process that might almost be understood as a dialectic between the purposeful creation of particular system for surveillance, the subsequent development of a means for surveillance not previously considered, and then the resulting creation of a new purposeful system for surveillance. It would be tempting to view this process as almost autonomous, but human accountability should not be ignored in any system of surveillance. In conclusion, it remains an open question at this point whether the internet will see a significant increase or decrease in privacy. There is certainly a strong case that the Internet will usher a new era of massive, routinized surveillance. It is possible with the current

protocols for Internet communication to record virtually every activity of an Internet user, the information he receives, the people he communicates with, his preferences and his predilections. Such extensive data collection is far more instrusive than was possible in the previous era of broadcast communication or in typical commercial relations. In the broadcast era, recipients of information were largely anonymous. In typical commercial relations, information is typically obtained only once a purchase occurs. One thing is certain: human rights alone have the power to protect our privacy online.