One of the more troubling trends I’ve noticed over the past 15 years is an erosion of our privacy rights…and an erosion of folks (ordinary citizens, not just politicians) desire to protect them.
We’re transitioning into an information age. It’s become remarkably easy to accumulate, compile, and share data, and powerful statistical tools are being developed to improve the ease with which all that data can be turned into information.
Seemingly, with a punch of a button, the government can tap and record your phone calls or your email and store them potentially in perpituity. In some areas, closed-circuit TV cameras are very common…and when combined with pattern recognition software, there’s the potential for detailed records to be accumulated of your movements, the people you associate with in public.
Data accumulation is not the sole province of government. Businesses too accumulate massive amounts of data on you through the transactions you make, and that information can be bought and sold among companies allowing them to accumulate even more data about your activities and interests.
The creation, accumulation, and mining of all this data isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For example, knowing that if I were (heaven forbid!) hospitalized while traveling, my medical history can theoretically be electronically transferred to where I am is a comforting thought.
Getting a mortgage is far less onerous a process than it once was, due to online access to credit bureau and financial transaction data…as well as broker’s near-instantaneous access to powerful models to interpret that accumulated data.
Presumably, most of us should have nothing to fear from our government’s collection of data. After all, why should we need to hide if we have nothing to hide? Of course, that presumption assumes that the government will act ethically, and that there are no bad actors working within the government. Neither assumption is guaranteed to be true in perpetuity.
Perhaps the most maddening thing about all this, in my opinion at least, is that many (most?) people don’t seem to care, either from being blisfully unaware of the potential ramifications, or just simple apathy…at least until someone pieces together the necessary bits of information to drain their savings account or apply for multiple credit cards in their name.
There are a number of things I’d like to see happen, and which I wish a politician would at least consider tackling.
- The first, and simplest, item on my wishlist is education. It would be good for ordinary citizens to have some awareness of the risks that exist in this brave new world of ours. If they cared, perhaps more folks would take steps to protect themselves, and apply pressure for elected and business leaders to exercise better care with their information.
Similarly, education could address some of the silliness that is occurring as corporations, policymakers, and individuals take steps to partially protect privacy and personal information. While technology can and should be art of the solution, a little bit of education would be a better answer than some of the encumbrances that technological solutions place upon us.
An example from my own life — I work with significant amounts of data in my job. I always specify that the data I receive be stripped of personal identifying information, as it’s not normally data relevant to my work. My IT folks are more than willing to provide it…but I’d prefer not to have it.
If every data-monkey like me thought that way, we’d have the start of a culture of privacy.
- Even though I prefer the idea of education rather than overly-burdensome technological solutions, technology has it’s place. Why the heck isn’t simple, nearly transparent, encryption used in more electronic data solutions? For example, shouldn’t had drive encryption be a standard feature on every computer sold these days?
- The big thing that I’d like, but I know is currently an unrealistic wish, is formal acknowledgement from the government of citizens’ right to privacy, preferably via constitutional amendment. This is a concept I’ve written about before, in the previous incarnation of my Centrist’s Platform. The high points include:
- Required disclosure by government and businesses of what personal data is being collected, who has accessed that information, and its anticipated uses; and
- A Requirement that citizens/consumers be able to access data that has been collected about them, and an opportunity to correct any errors in that data.
- Parallel to all this, I expect that it is very likely that our laws are somewhat lax when it comes to defining the realm of torts and crimes when it comes to passing personal information without authorization. Mistakes will happen, and other than perhaps a dozen strokes with a clue-by-four, I’d hate to see folks punished for innocent flubs. However, having effective laws, with teeth, would go a long way towards encouraging businesses and public entities to minimize those mistakes.
