Data Privacy Day 2011

Data Privacy Day is January 28, 2011
Sourced from Data Privacy 2011

Around the globe, people use powerful technologies and devices every day to improve their lives. Businesses develop software, build hardware and provide services designed to enhance individual productivity, communications and safety. We have come to depend on mobile communications, instant access to information, and intelligent services. We are empowered by these technologies in ways that those who have lived before us could never have imagined.

Despite all of the benefits of these technologies, doubts and worries persist about just how much personal information is collected, stored, used, and shared to provide these convenient and pervasive tools and services.

Data Privacy Day is an international celebration of the dignity of the individual expressed through personal information. In this networked world, in which we are thoroughly digitized, with our identities, locations, actions, purchases, associations, movements, and histories stored as so many bits and bytes, we have to ask – who is collecting all of this – what are they doing with it – with whom are they sharing it? Most of all, individuals are asking ‘How can I protect my information from being misused?’ These are reasonable questions to ask – we should all want to know the answers.

These are not questions for consumers and citizens alone – business operators must engage in this dialogue as well. They have to question whether they are complying with laws and regulations requiring consumer privacy protections. They know that customers have to trust their technologies and services before they will use and pay for them.

Join in the dialogue among all of the stakeholders – businesses, individuals, government agencies, non-profit groups, academics, teachers and students – to look more thoroughly at how advanced technologies affect our daily lives. We encourage this dialogue and are providing this website as a service to those who care about our common future and our roles as digital citizens and consumers. And let us know what you think – and how you might be able to contribute to the discussion.

To get involved, please contact us at info@dataprivacyday.org