The same value means something different at each level. A personal preference costs nothing; a national rule binds people who never agreed. Getting from one to the other is not automatic.
Privacy climbing from a personal preference to a global agreement — and the rung where enforcement stops.
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Three rungs, three kinds of rule
Personal
A preference. It costs nothing to hold and reaches nobody else.
National
A rule with a penalty. It binds people who disagree, which is what makes it work.
Global
Agreement without a penalty. It works by influence, because nothing sits above the state.
The gap this creates: Digital problems cross borders in a second. The value can be agreed globally and enforced only nationally, and that gap is most of what makes digital policy hard.
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Values are not the same everywhere, and assuming they are is a real analytical error rather than a matter of politeness.
| Question | One common answer | Another |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns personal data? | The person it describes | Whoever collected it |
| Is privacy from the state or from firms? | Mainly from firms | Mainly from the state |
| Should speech be limited to protect groups? | Yes, by law | No — speech is protected first |
Whose values? Four kinds
Personal
Held by one person: I never post photos of my friends without asking.
Shared
Held by a group or community: a gaming clan bans cheating tools.
Collective
Held by a whole society and often written into law: the EU's data protection rules.
Professional
Held by a profession: the ACM Code of Ethics (2018) tells computing professionals to avoid harm and respect privacy.
Real-world examples you can name
The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — in force since May 2018
A regulation giving people rights over data held about them — to see it, correct it, have it erased and take it elsewhere — and requiring a lawful basis before an organization may process it at all. Fines can reach 4% of a company's worldwide annual turnover.
Who it affected: Everyone in the EU, and any organization anywhere that handles EU residents' data.
Chile's neurorights amendment — constitutional amendment October 2021
The first country to write protection of brain activity and mental integrity into its constitution, ahead of the technology that would threaten them, prompted by consumer devices that read neural signals.
Who it affected: Chileans, and legislators elsewhere watching whether pre-emptive rights work.
Government internet shutdowns — tracked annually by Access Now since 2016
States order operators to suspend mobile data or the whole internet, usually during protests, elections or exams. India has recorded the most shutdowns of any country for several consecutive years.
Who it affected: Everyone in the affected region — including businesses, hospitals and students.
Do hackers share a code?: Some do. Steven Levy's book Hackers (1984) described a hacker ethic: information should be free and authority should be mistrusted. Today ethical hackers report flaws through bug bounty programmes and get paid, while criminal hackers use the same skills for profit. Same skills, different values.
How this is tested — sources in Paper 2 come from different countries, and reading them as if they shared one set of values misses the disagreement. It comes up two ways:
Paper 1 — structured question
- Part c: evaluate a global policy proposal
- Part b: explain why countries disagree about a rule
Paper 2 — source-based question
- Q3: compare and contrast two sources' values
- Q4: synthesise sources written from different positions
The trap: assuming your own values are the neutral ones: A source that weighs privacy differently is not mistaken. Saying which value each source puts first is a direct mark in Q3.
Explain one reason why a global agreement on a digital value is hard to reach.
Model answer plan
See the answer broken into clear points, with guidance on how each point earns marks.
Compare and contrast how two societies may value privacy differently.
Model answer plan
See the answer broken into clear points, with guidance on how each point earns marks.