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Last week, the European Parliament adopted a recommendation to the Council on strengthening security and fundamental freedoms on the Internet.



UNI applauds this initiative which considers “digital identity” as an integral part of our “self” and thus must be carefully protected from intrusions of both private and public actors and that its elements should be considered inalienable personal.



The text also recognizes the danger of certain forms of Internet surveillance and control aimed at tracking every “digital” step of an individual. The parliament then urges Members States to identify all entities which use Net Surveillance and to draft publicly accessible reports on this practice.



Even more importantly the paper asks the council to examine and prescribe limits to the “consent” that can be requested of and extracted from users, whether by governments or by private firms, to relinquish part of their privacy, as “there is a clear imbalance of negotiating power and of knowledge between individual users and such institution”.



Finally, the recommendation stresses the importance of Internet users being able to enhance their right to obtain the permanent deletion of their personal data and exhort Internet players to engage in the on-going process of the “Internet Bill of Rights”.



Although workers are not mentioned as such, it’s a good step towards the protection of employees that can be considered as “users” when they surf on the web from their workplace. On top of that, if “digital identity” is protected on the Internet there is no reason why it shouldn’t be the same at work.