A few days ago, the Appeals Court handed out what can be described as a landmark decision, ruling that mobile service providers should not be expected to hand over people’s data to the police to be used as part of their investigations.
In its judgment, the court, presided over by Mr Justice Philip Sciberras, declared that the police had other options which they could use to investigate crimes rather than ask mobile service providers to submit private information about people and location data.
In his ruling, Mr Justice Sciberras said that “this is not a police state”, adding that the court could not tolerate that all mobile users are considered as suspects just so that the police can process their information in an elimination process.
This sentence is double-edged because, while understanding Mr Justice Sciberras’ line of thought, there is another side to the coin.
On the one hand, society knows that the privacy of individuals has been safeguarded but, on the other hand, society now knows that the police’s hands are somewhat tied in their efforts to protect the same society from individuals
who cause harm.
The dilemma Mr Justice Sciberras had to answer was whether the police should be given the right to use all available tools to carry out investigations which, after all, are intended to maintain law and order, even when these may impinge on the privacy of us all; or on the other hand, whether they should be deprived of using such means because these would encroach on the privacy of individuals.
Mr Justice Sciberras’ ruling favoured privacy. Is such a sentence a victory for society? Or is it a defeat? Can society feel safer because its privacy is being protected, or would society be happier to give up a bit of privacy knowing that it is after all helping it in its fight against crime?
It is, perhaps, a bit of both, and the issue can be debated – with all its pros and cons – interminably.
It opens up a debate on other matters related to privacy too. Much has been said and written on privacy matters over the past years – and laws have been enacted to safeguard the privacy of each and every one of us – but there are still areas that need to be addressed.
For example, should employers have the right to look up, say, emails that are sent or received during office hours by their employees, just to check whether the emails were work-related or not?
Employers will argue, perhaps rightly, that the equipment being used belongs to the company and that the emails are being sent and received during office hours, that is when they are paying their employees supposedly for doing a job.
For their part, employees will insist that nobody has the right to check into personal matters as this is an invasion of privacy, even if company equipment and time is being taken up.
A worse scenario is when employers delve into personal matters and use information obtained through such means against employees in question.
Again, it is hard to draw a line between what is right and what is wrong.
What is important however is that people should know where they stand, and undoubtedly there is not enough information available. There are too many grey areas on such issues that make it impossible for citizens to know what their position is.