The Internet has blurred the lines of privacy and this can be a major pain for those caught on the wrong side of the fence

Last week, two issues cropped up in Japan and China concerning privacy. In the first instance, in Japan, lawyers asked Google to stop giving detailed street-level images of Japanese cities on the Internet. Their claim is that this violates the privacy of individuals because Google's Street View offers ground-level, 360-degree views of streets in a dozen Japanese cities. This means that Web users can actually virtually drive down a street by using their mouse as a steering wheel.

The second issue concerned a Chinese man called Wang Fei, who won China's first case against Internet vigilantism. The victory would have seemed hollow in some ways to Wang, who was harassed by strangers and lost his job after his wife committed suicide because she found out about his infidelity. All the details of Wang's affair were posted online by his late wife's university classmate, Zhang Leyi. Zhang posted Wang's wife's diary online and gave details of Wang's name, company name, and even family address. This, said the chief judge of a Beijing court, infringed upon Wang's privacy rights.

Common points

While there is something in common between the two cases, there are also a lot of differences. The common thing is that, in both cases, privacy is the issue. While in the Google case this has merely been alleged by lawyers, in the Chinese case this has been shown to be true in a court of law.

The differences are also stark. In the Google case, it is an issue of a company giving users the maximum that today's technology is capable of delivering. At best, Google may have to blur details that affect privacy for instance, you may find it all right if they show the road in great detail, but don't show your house in great detail. In other words, there is no malicious intent on Google's part here, just an over-enthusiastic application of technology.

People problem

In the second case, it sounds more dangerous. Normally, companies and governments are shown as entities that are trying to undermine the privacy of users and citizens, but here, we have people themselves trying to destroy the privacy of another citizen. The people involved, called the 'human flesh search engine' in China, did their best to sabotage Wang's life and even painted expletives on his parents' door and contacted the companies where he and his lover worked.

What has happened in Japan and China today may happen soon in India and in the rest of the world. What we need today, more than ever, are privacy laws that, like the Internet, are globally applicable.