Green: Web privacy should about manners

Immigration Minister, Damian Green has said that the government should not interfere with people invading the privacy of others online.

"We, as a society, need to work out what the rules of the game are. It could be down to good manners,"

Ultimately he said, it was down to the individual to decide whether or not they chose to publish private information online, and that the role played by the state should be minimal.

"Technology and attitude changes mean we are becoming a society, we are becoming a world, where people voluntarily strip themselves of personal privacy."

He added;

"Privacy has become a bit distorted in what is a wider societal change. I am being insistent in saying I want the state to intrude less in people's lives then the logical position for me is that, OK, if you want to put your entire life on up on YouTube or on Facebook or whatever, that's your choice."

"It could be down to good manners. It is not for government to legislate. It is about us all behaving properly."

Mr Green made the comments during a fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference.

Outlining the government’s Freedom Bill proposals Green added that one of the areas that would be tackled was the Police DNA database.  A campaign to remove the names of innocent people from the database has gained wide support over the last few months as race equality campaigners in particular have called for the government to deal with the over representation of Black people on the database, and the retention of information.

By Richard Sudan