Ordinarily, you wouldn’t connect the expressions “mental hospital” and “traffic congestion”–unless road rage inspired a violent episode of temporary insanity.
In the Netherlands, however, there’s a fascinating connection. In two cutting-edge technology projects, one to maintain mental patients’ records and the other to prevent urban gridlock, the Dutch have been working to protect individuals from invasions of privacy.
And, defying the popular (and often unfair) wisdom that bureaucrats are inept drones, one Dutch official has been central to those efforts. He’s John Borking, vice president of the nation’s Data Protection Authority, a quasi-governmental body charged with enforcing the nation’s strict rules protecting residents’ privacy against intrusions from government and business.
“I’m of the firm opinion that the law itself cannot adequately protect privacy,” said Borking, who has a worldwide reputation among privacy advocates as a leading light in the field. “We need a combination of law and technology. My concern is that technology is moving so fast that the law can’t keep up with it.”
Most European nations, unlike the United States, have organizations such as the Dutch Data Privacy Authority. Europe is far ahead of the United States in its overall data-privacy policies; a European Union directive, which goes into effect in late October, will codify strict pro-privacy tenets throughout the continent.
The Netherlands’ authority has been ahead of the curve, by many accounts, and Borking is credited with spearheading much work.
The velocity of technological change has forced organizations like his to become less reactive. “You must be involved at the beginning of the process,” Borking said recently at his office in The Hague.
That’s what happened with the mental hospital data–and it’s what Borking is trying to make happen with the highway project. Let’s look at the latter first.
The Netherlands is planning to install an elaborate, automatic toll system in several major cities, which are beginning to look more and more like urban America during rush hours. The system will include cameras and sensors along highways, plus electronic devices in cars. The idea is to charge drivers extra for the privilege of using congested highways during rush hour.
Cars will pass through a curtain of infrared light, invisible to the naked eye, and sensors will look for a device–some sort of smart card or similar system–inside the car. If the car doesn’t have one, the sensor will tell cameras to snap pictures of the front and rear license plates. The pictures, along with other information, including the date and time, will go to the government, which will fine the scofflaw.
The system, now in the planning and early testing stages, raises huge privacy questions. Borking doesn’t object to the notion of charging more for driving at peak hours–a concept known as demand pricing–but he wants to ensure that drivers won’t have their movements monitored and stored in central databases. He’s pushing transportation authorities, as well as the companies bidding on the project, to make anonymity the rule. How? Deduct money from smart cards that could be “filled” with cash anonymously; don’t let the system automatically deduct money from people’s bank accounts.
The moment you establish a database of this sort, governments and private businesses–the banks in this case–will be tempted to use it for unintended purposes, Borking said. “We don’t want to create the opportunity for them to misuse it,” he said, adding, “Total anonymity is no more expensive, and it’s technically feasible.”
Building state-of-the-art security and privacy into a hospital information system was only slightly more expensive than doing things the old way–and that’s the kind of thing Borking loves to talk about.
Early this year, he said, the Veldwijk Hospital in central Holland switched to a new computer-based records system. Privacy was an integral part of the project, not bolted on later.
Except under specific circumstances, the new system walls off the doctors’ detailed records about individual patients from the patients’ identification data, such as names and addresses. The idea is to keep unauthorized people away from the highly sensitive information. Someone might hack into treatment records, but it’s almost impossible to connect them with the actual patient’s name.
The complex software project uses encryption, pseudonyms and other techniques to give doctors relatively easy access to the data on their patients. The system keeps patients’ individual records secure, but it’s also designed as a research tool. For example, a researcher can study aggregate data on certain illnesses, looking for better treatments.
The hospital has hired hackers to try penetrating the system, but so far no one has succeeded. Without question, it’s vastly more secure than what it replaced–paper files that were widely available. G.H. Ter Avest, the hospital’s executive director for administration, doesn’t guarantee that no one will ever break in, but he’s confident that the databases are as safe as today’s technology allows.
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Borking doesn’t believe absolute privacy or security are possible, either, but he’s convinced that modern societies will have to do more to ensure both as we move into a Digital Age where surveillance is made simpler through technology.
Vested interests in government and business want to use all the data they can collect on people. But individuals are properly alarmed at the trend, Borking says.
“If we want to keep the information-based society safe and humane, and don’t want to wake up in a nightmare some day, there’s no way except to respect the privacy of people,” he says.
It’s not an option, Borking insists, in a world where we depend on complex systems for survival.
“One reason we’re here is not only to protect citizens but also to enable those systems to exist,” he said. “If you break that trust, parts of society based on these systems will collapse.”