Briefing material for the TVNZ 7 Internet Debate

Parents & Children

Today’s children are growing up in a digitally-enabled society where access to the Internet is the norm. Children are voracious consumers of online content and thanks to developments in mobile technology can access the Internet from anywhere. They are doing so at younger and younger ages and are proving willing and eager to openly share information online.

In the United Kingdom, Internet safety is set to become a compulsory part of the curriculum for primary school children from 2011. The Internet is now a necessity and it is becoming increasingly important that we teach how to use it and the ethics of doing so in the same way that we teach road rules and how to read, write and do maths.

The Internet opens up a world of possibility at the touch of a fingertip and much of what is available is wonderfully fun and educational for children. Going online is a mostly positive experience but for all its benefits the Internet does have a dark side. In the words of its inventor Dr Vinton Cerf the Internet is just “a mirror of the population that uses it” .

Exploitative crimes like identity theft, cyber-stalking and cyber-grooming are very real online risks for children. Excessively violent and pornographic material is readily available, as are expressions of hate crime, and the Internet has become a vector for cyber-bullying.

The issues surrounding online safety are concerning for many parents, and parents need to understand the nature of the Internet to be able to address them. Surely no parent would want their child exposed to such content.

• Are parents even aware of the breadth of content available online?
• Many children are far more technology-aware than their parents, so are parents properly equipped to give sound cyber-safety advice?
• What role should parents play in ensuring their children are safe online? Should the close parental supervision and monitoring that largely applies in the real world also apply in the virtual world?
• What should parents and schools be doing to teach children to be good cyber citizens?

One option is for parents to strictly enforce each and every online experience, educating and insisting on safe practices. Another is to let children freely navigate the Internet and trust them to make the right choices.

• At what age should children be responsible for their online behaviour and at what stage should parents remain in control?
• Pre-school, primary school, high school-age; how old is old enough to be fully trusted? At what point should parents ‘hand over the digital keys’ and allow unrestricted private access?

Mobile phones are increasingly Internet-capable and because of mobility it is significantly harder for a parent to supervise mobile phone Internet use compared to a home computer.

• Should mobile phone companies be required to provide tools for parents to control Internet access on their children’s mobile phones?
• At what age should children have access to the Internet on their mobile phones?

Individual versus Government

The Internet represents a kind of organic anarchy. It is the epitome of an open system and is ‘borderless’. The freedom it gives to publish information, and the speed with which that information can be disseminated is presenting significant legal and regulatory challenges.

Key legal issues in the Internet age include copyright infringement, the breaking of Court suppression orders online, lack of jurisdiction over online material hosted outside national borders, and the widespread availability of harmful, obscene and inappropriate material.

• Is it appropriate for governments to step in and regulate the Internet; for governments to enact laws and implement technical systems to help protect ourselves from ourselves online?

While there are no international Internet laws, Internet-specific legislation is enacted at national levels and the degree to which states exercise control over the Internet varies greatly by jurisdiction.

With over sixty Internet-specific regulations the Chinese government sits at one end of the regulatory spectrum, heavily controlling and suppressing the publishing and accessing of information online . Other countries that greatly censor and suppress content include Cuba, Syria, Tunisia and Vietnam.

New Zealand takes a relatively light-handed approach to Internet regulation. New Zealanders enjoy fairly unfettered access to all corners of the online world but there is some Internet censorship with the DIA running a voluntary filtering system targeted at known child abuse material.

• Is New Zealand’s approach to Internet regulation the right one?
• Is the DIA filtering system an acceptable approach?

Surprisingly, our closest neighbour Australia is threatening to take a hard line approach in respect of Internet filtering. Their filter is intended to be mandatory and is far more restrictive, covering a much wider range of ‘refused classification’ material.

• Centrally-operated government filtering systems are in wide use, but are they effective in excising the evils of the Internet or are they a threat to democracy and free speech?

Being connected to the Internet does expose people to threats; and chief among these are security threats such as computer viruses, worms, Trojans and malware (malicious software). Globally, many governments take active cyber-defence roles through CERTs (Computer Emergency Response Teams), but New Zealand remains one of the few countries that lack a national CERT.

• Should the New Zealand Government beef up its cyber defence capabilities?

New Zealand has legislated against spam, banning unsolicited commercial messages with a New Zealand origin.

• What other government measures if any should be taken to help protect people online?

Individual versus Industry

A large and growing ICT industry exists to support the global Internet; from equipment vendors to internet service and hosting providers to content firms.

Because of their data transport role Internet Service Providers are often seen as crucial from a law enforcement perspective.

• To what extent are ISPs responsible and liable for people’s online behaviour and to what extent are they simply operators of dumb pipes?

Most service providers do take Internet safety very seriously and will bind subscribers to acceptable use policies concerning the use and abuse of their networks; many also offer free security products such as anti-spam and parental filtering software.

• To what extent should ISPs require specific behaviour from their customers through contract vs. rely on an educative approach to Internet safety?

Less clear is how seriously content firms take Internet safety and, in particular, Internet privacy. Content lies at the very heart of the Internet, with mega-content firms such as Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook accounting for the lion’s share of global data flow.

Widespread use of the Internet has arguably magnified the abuse of privacy, and one of the biggest problems is that a country’s privacy laws can’t be applied in a foreign country, particularly in respect to the United States where most of the big content firms reside.

Many people are now very willing to go online and share what was previously considered private information. And people appear to be “oversharing”, telling each other things online that they would never say face-to-face.
GPS, and new types of image recognition technology enables people to be located. Depending on how savvy they are, they may or may not be aware of that happening.

It is now very easy to go online and collect bits and pieces of people’s personal information. When aggregated, that information can present significant privacy issues.

• What duty-of-care does a social network operator such as Facebook have to people’s privacy, to their safety?
• What responsibility does an innovator such as Google have when creating new services that may involve people’s personal data?

Some researchers have suggested that privacy expectations online might differ depending on which agency or actor is trawling for information. The IRD and CYFS for example are two New Zealand Government departments that are understood to look through social networking sites to obtain information about individuals. Is this as acceptable as potential employers searching Facebook for information about applicant employees?

There is no doubt that companies routinely collect information about people’s browsing habits and make significant amounts of money by marrying their tracking techniques with targeted online advertising.

• Is there a tradeoff between privacy and functionality that the public is willing to bear?

The culture of oversharing, including unauthorised third party sharing of information, has arguably changed the notion of ‘privacy’ forever.

• But can and should the brakes yet be applied or have we become so steeped in social media and digital technology that information-sharing and openness that there’s no turning back?