LAST WEEK I had the pleasure of chatting to Dan Nesbitt, Research Director for digital privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch. At the heart of the organisation lies the core value of protecting individual privacy from misuse of information and the dramatic expansion of surveillance powers.

With this in mind, I put some questions to Dan about BBWatch’s research, the challenges we still face in society regarding online privacy and if regaining control is likely.

Do you think an everyday person on the street can regain control over their digital privacy? Do you think an everyday person on the street can regain control over their digital privacy?

People are certainly waking up to the issues of being under surveillance and the scale of data collection Whether this means they are able to regain control of their data I’m a bit more skeptical of, I think that with more and more companies collecting data I think it’s in fact harder for people to regain control of their information.

So, what really needs to be done to protect individual’s internet privacy?

In terms of what can be done there is really a two-fold approach. Companies need to be a clearer about what they are asking from their users, for example making sure terms and conditions are much more understandable. At the moment they are very long and just full of legal jargon, some privacy policies are quite frankly longer than Shakespeare plays so for the individual to be able to fully understand them and give proper consent, it’s not likely unless something changes. On the other side, individuals need to be more aware of what they are giving over and who they are giving it to.

From your research as a civil liberties group, do you think people are concerned over this issue?

We in fact did some polling on whether people are now aware of digital privacy issues in the UK. When the question was asked, “are you concerned about your privacy online?” 49% of people said they were fairly concerned and 29% said they were very concerned. I think is a very telling sign of the consumers mindset shifting however, although the concern about online privacy is there, I think in a lot of cases people just don’t know what to do about it.

What advice would you give to people to help them protect some privacy?

The advice I can give is basically just understanding where your data is going, who you are giving it out to, what types of things you are signing up to, I think it’s very important that people understand where their information is going and what can be done with it when you give consent. That is really the best thing people can do.

Do you think there needs to be an online bill of rights similar to offline?

I think that is definitely an idea that is worth exploring. However, it would be more difficult to implement than an offline bill because it would need to signed up by almost every country. The internet is everywhere, not just in one country so we need to make sure that there is a universal agreement rather than each individual country having their own rights because that could be quite dangerous.

What challenges are you seeing that we still face in society?

You have companies like Facebook whose entire business model is tailored towards finding out more and more about a person so it becomes second nature. That’s one challenge, we’ve also got governments looking more into gathering more data to either increase their surveillance capacity or to facilitate public services so we have to be careful with exactly what information is collected.

Of course there are huge problems like the Talk Talk hack, which is people trying to maliciously steal and use data so there is a whole range of issues there and I think it’s an ongoing process to hand power back into the consumer’s hands but it’s not going to be finished any time soon.

A huge thank you to Big Brother Watch for sharing their knowledge and opinions on the topic of online privacy. Much of the organisation’s insight will appear in my written feature coming soon. In the mean time, to stay up to date with all the project’s progress visit @surf_incognito.