Privacy is not for sale, nor is it democracy
The fourth amendment protects people’s privacy. This constitutional protection aims to protect people’s private lives against the storming of the government.
In general, the government cannot enter a person’s house unless the judge issues an order. However, in the digital age this shield is no longer steadfast. Since people share their personal data to access news, social media and other content, the government can simply buy the data it wants; It is not necessary for a judicial matter.
This privacy erosion does not occur in the shade. It is an essential feature of the digital economy. We, as consumers, are used to collecting data unabated that feed the Internet. We “agree” on our clicks, locations, messages, and preferences follow them, fill them and sell them over and over again. The main actors in this data market are private companies, driven by large profits of targeted ads. The problem is that their most passionate agents are increasingly the United States government.
Legal discrimination between government monitoring and collecting corporate data has collapsed into a special monitoring partnership. Why do you get all the troubles of getting a judicial order when you can just buy what you need in the open market?
A recently submitted report confirmed that our intelligence agencies have obtained vast degrees of Americans’ personal information from commercial data brokers. In one of the reported cases, customs and border protection bought access to local aviation records for travelers, and to supervise the short circle required to collect direct government data.
This practice represents a deep threat that goes beyond consumer rights. It is a structural threat to the Democracy Foundation. Cooperation between commercial data collection companies and state strength creates a chilling effect on freedom of expression, associations and opposition – the principles of the basis for working democracy.
Think about it: Are you still looking for information about a protest against government policy, or donating a controversial political issue, or even sending a text message to your friend, if you know that an agency of three letters can buy a record of your activities? When the line between private spaces and government surveillance, self -censorship becomes a rational response. The public square, where ideas are supposed to discuss freely, shrink. Fear of targeting by the government can ultimately deter any civil participation.
This problem is more urgent because data intermediaries, advertising networks and other companies in the online advertising ecosystems are not fully known for their astral record of following privacy laws. For example, in a recent study, we found that the majority of web sites fail to honor users in choosing tracking and selling their data that they expressed by controlling global privacy, a new signal for legally linked reviews in California, Colorado, Contecticut, New Jersey. Since many companies do not even honor the privacy applications delegated legally, the data should not end in the hands of the government at all.
Now, what can we do? I seem to me the best way forward is a single private standard that applies evenly to both private companies and the government. Certainly, the fourth amendment applies only to the government. There is no way to overcome it. However, at what point does the “government” participate in the data collection activity? There is no doubt that there are thorny ideological questions that we need to address in order to adapt the fourth amendment to the current reality. However, the law is far from the specified, and we have a great opportunity to improve it.
The most prominent of which is that the fourth amendment prohibits “unreasonable seizures and seizures”, the courts have a wide period of determining what constitutes “unreasonable” activities. Current practices to buy data from private companies can be considered “unreasonable”. Perhaps this is not the case for all purchases in all circumstances, but legal courts and scholars have already begun to improve ideas about what requires judicial control.
As a guidance principle, the fourth amendment was not simply created to deal with the regular police and criminal enforcement, but it was formed to serve as Blueck against an authoritarian government. It should be explained accordingly.
In the end, protecting our personal data from selling it by profit -based companies to a permanent observation government is not the issue of consumer protection. It is an urgent prior condition to preserve the integrity of democracy. We should not allow the promises of constitutional privacy that is meaningless through a commercial treatment. Our personal independence is not a commodity. It is time for the fourth modification.
Sebastian Zimikk is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Weslian and a famous expert in the privacy of information and security.
