The state has been handing over citizens' data to digital giants. After almost a year of activists' petitions on the matter, it turns out that the most effective way to protect citizens' data is the personal intervention of the Minister of Digital Affairs – states “Dziennik Gazeta Prawna” in Tuesday's edition.
“Dziennik Gazeta Prawna” points out that the situation has not improved at all since last year, when the Panoptykon Foundation and the “Internet. Time to act!” Foundation submitted a petition to the Ministry of Digitization regarding the use of technologies collecting data about Internet users on websites run by public administration entities.
The newspaper recalls that the appeal was the result of an analysis of pages in the domains gov.pl and lokal.gov.pl. As reported by “DGP”, it resulted from the analysis that visiting these pages in many cases involves the necessity of disclosing data to companies such as Google – which process and use for their own business purposes all information about our activity on the Internet. The newspaper emphasizes that this also includes personal data.
“DGP” adds that the foundations filed this petition in April last year. In response, the ministry informed in the summer of last year, among other things, that a decision had been made to change the tool for checking website viewing statistics from Google Analytics to another one. “We were later at a meeting at the Ministry of Digital Affairs. Representatives of the Office of Electronic Communications and the Office for Personal Data Protection also participated in it. There was talk of creating guidelines for website administrators regarding the use of analytical tools and cookies,” reports Wojciech Klicki from Panoptykon, quoted by the newspaper. “Perhaps some changes were indeed made later, but we were not informed about them,” he adds. The newspaper notes that the dialogue with the Ministry of Digital Affairs ended at this point.
Tomasz Zieliński, programmer and author of the Informatyk Zakładowy blog, points out in “DGP” that Google and other large corporations not only have the ability to profile internet users based on the websites they visit, but can also identify them by name and surname.
When we realize this, we will see the essence of the problem. If Jan Kowalski visited the website of the oncology hospital many times, how much will the insurer valuing his life insurance policy be willing to pay for such information? Instead of counting on the ethics and honesty of big tech, it is better to preventively cut them off from such information,” emphasizes the expert quoted by the newspaper.
(PAP)
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