Data privacy, also known as information privacy or data protection, is the relationship between the collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, contextual information norms, and the legal and political issues surrounding them. While the concept of privacy dates back to ancient Greek philosophy, the notion of any right to privacy has only existed for roughly the last 150 years. This is a result of the natural progression of technology, as prior to mass communications like TV, radio, and of course the internet, there was a natural, assumed privacy for people that could only be violated by spying in the literal, physical sense.
Thus, takes us to 1984, or rather 1948, when George Orwell wrote the dystopian novel that modern politicians love to reference whenever there’s a new privacy-related law that they disagree with. 1984 informed many people’s idea of what a mass surveillance state would look like, establishing the fear and speculation surrounding security cameras, tracking devices, and censorship that persists to this day. However, the truth of the matter is that large social media companies, rather than the government, are able to monitor a user's data and decide what is allowed to be said online through their censorship policies, not necessarily to forward any particular political view, but as a method to maximize profit.
We will come back to social media’s role in the dissolution of privacy rights, but first, let’s establish what privacy rights do exist here in the United States. Several recent, prominent Supreme Court cases have protected some digital privacy rights, such as United States v. Jones, which established that trackers could not be used without a warrant, Riley v. California, which established that police could not search a suspect’s phone without a warrant, and Carpenter v. United States, which established that police could not warrantlessly access phone records. All these cases were ruled based on a "reasonable expectation of privacy" interpreted in the Fourth Amendment. Despite these rulings, we know government agencies have been skirting this issue of privacy for decades now, largely thanks to infamous NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
In 2013, Snowden revealed a series of severe privacy violations committed by the NSA in the name of national security and stopping terrorism. Ends justifying means have long created the validation for privacy violations in the United States and similar nations like the UK and Canada, with these western nations touting the importance of safety and security over privacy. The NSA specifically has garnered a reputation for collecting mass quantities of Americans’ data basically just in case. The Patriot Act, the nation security centric law passed in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attack, created such a broad scope of what could feasibly be considered terrorism or terrorism-related, that it gave the NSA the means to do nearly anything, as long as it could vaguely be construed as preventing terrorism.
Even with the legal justification to do all this domestic espionage, the NSA still required the means to actually do it. This is where the internet and private companies enter the mix. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if something is free, you are the product. In the case of the modern internet, the American government is just one of many, many paying customers. Social media sites make their money by collecting and selling their users’ data, primarily to data brokerage firms, who amass millions of people’s information to create digital models of individuals that are designed to emulate that person’s online activity. These models are then sold to advertising companies, government agencies, and literally anybody else willing to pay for it.
It’s become a forgone conclusion that the internet be free to use, even though it costs money to access it via an internet service provider. As such, we, as a society, have traded privacy for convenience, and without a dramatic, highly disruptive overhaul of the internet, that will not change. The entire internet is built on a framework of selling data and ad-space while providing free content, and you may be fine with that. Plenty of Americans do not care about private companies or the government accessing their browsing data or search history or anything like that, as those people believe they have nothing to hide. However, data privacy should be a concern for many more Americans, as just because you aren’t doing anything illegal, does not mean you don’t have anything to hide.
For starters, your data may be more revealing than you might initially think. These data brokers that we mentioned before build full profiles of people, and while they often claim that the data is anonymized, some amateur internet sleuthing can make it very easy to connect these profiles to a name. The data collected often includes location information, and that, combined with social media and other publicly available information that may be in or out of your control, allows the companies, agencies, and individuals who buy information from these data brokers to learn nearly everything there is to know about you. For a couple disturbing examples, Edward Snowden’s NSA leak revealed a fairly common practice of NSA employees using their access to spy on the lives of exes and other people in their personal lives, and there have been multiple reports of particularly zealous stalkers buying data from data brokers to find their targets.
To make a bad story worse, there is little political motivation to do anything about the system as it stands. Government agencies and law enforcement routinely use data brokerage services and other domestic espionage tactics that depend on the current state of data privacy. Beyond them, politicians themselves depend on this lack of data privacy to give them an edge in their reelection campaigns. By using the data provided by these companies, politicians can get data much more accurate than anything they would get from the most comprehensive poll, and they can therefore more effectively target their ads and messaging to sway a critical mass of their electorate. The good news is that there are a variety of steps, tools, and services to protect your data, at least to a point. Certain web browsers do not collect any data on their users, and using VPNs can also limit what private companies can see your data. These data brokers are also required to allow individuals to opt out, though it is notoriously difficult to do so. The most important thing to remember is that anything you upload onto the internet can almost certainly be tracked back to you, so be cautious about the information you share online.
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