In the mid- 1990s something happened in the world, ecpesially in the western world. What happened tourned out to affect us in the coming decade more than we could imagine at the time. The name of the phenomenon was THE INTERNET. In the beginning this was strange, and not something that everyone had accsess to. However, that changed quickly. Today most people are on the Internet. They are surfing, chatting, participating on different social medias, writing e-mail, reading news, searching for information - the possibilities are enormous.
Digital dossier
What is the price to pay for this availability? Does people have control over their data privacy? Since before todays youth were born, they started to leave digital footprints to their digital dossier.Well, its not quite right, THEY did not do that, but their parents or other grownups did. Maybe it started with the sonogram, which was distributed to friends and family, and of course put into the digital file. Nowadays it is focus on how children behave on Internet and what they leave of information. I think that it is important to make parents aware of what they leave behind in cyberspace too.
Privacy
I think young people in general have no idea what is collected of them by companies behind the screen of their computers. It is so easy and harmless to post a picture on a web-site, because they are sitting in their own safe room at home and thinking that they posted it so their friends could se it. They may not see ahead, they may not think that what they do today can affect them when they wants to apply for a job. Maybe the picture never should have been posted, maybe the text they wrote was inappropriate.
Teachers and parents need to take responsibility for the youth and children who are participating in the cyberspace. Many of them lives more and more of their lifes online and they have to get to know the consequences of releasing information into Internet.
The Data Retention Directive is issued by the European Union. After the terror attacks in New York the 11. of September 2001, in Madrid the 11. of March 2004 and in London the 7. of July 2005, the authorities saw the need for storing data traffic to avoid crime like terror.
The Data Retention Directive allowes the authorities to store information about where, how, and with whom you communicate on telephone, cell phone or electronical mail. It is also possible to find out where you are when you use the cell phone. The information can be stored for six to twentyfour months. Information which reveal the content of the communication is not going to be available. This Directive was adopted by the Parliament the 4. of April 2011 in Norway. The Department of Justice has the opinion that the Data Retention Directive will be usefull to fight terror and child pornography.
In Norway it has been a tremendous debate and disagreement about the Directive, conserning both ordinary people and in the Parliament. Some people wants to have it and other don´t. In the Parliament it took the members nine and a half hours before they could vote over the Directive. It was adopted with 89 against 80 votes. On the social media, Facebook, it is created a site for people who are against the Directive. It is called Stopp Datalagringsdirektivet.
Why does this Directive cause so much involvement? People who are against the Directive claimbs it will harm the democratic freedom to communicate, and the authorities expresses a bad attitude to people in general.
