Privacy Rights and Corporate Accountability in the Age of "Big Data"

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/03-1



The American Library Association’s current celebration of “Choose Privacy Week” highlights the diminishing scope – yet increased importance – of this choice. After all, privacy is a fundamental human right, preserving space for thinking, reading, writing, bodily integrity, identity, individual autonomy, and self-and-community development -- free from use, abuse, discrimination, exploitation or interference by the government, companies, or other people. Privacy is integrally related to other fundamental rights, ranging from free expression, association, and assembly, to freedom from coercive interrogation or torture or extrajudicial killings by drones or otherwise.

With ubiquitous surveillance, however, and the privacy violations by major corporations like Facebook (whose very business model has involved fooling people into giving up their privacy), or Google (whose Street View cars sucked up email content as well as passwords), truly voluntary choice recedes. All the more important, then, to understand and assert your rights to “choose privacy” wherever possible.

Facebook and Google are only the most familiar businesses premised on scooping up personal data and manipulating it (and you) in order to make more money by selling “you” to their advertisers. “You” are defined by your “data exhaust” (i.e. the digital trails and datapoints you leave). Readers should know that E-book readers, like Amazon’s Kindle, are increasingly doing the same thing with your reading habits, notes, highlights, and preferences. Beyond mere marketing, the potential harms include identity theft and more insidious manipulation and rights violations.

Such companies have ongoing relationships with government, with the better ones (e.g. Google) transparently disclosing requests and insisting on privacy and due process protections like a warrant beforehand, but the worst in this regard (e.g. Apple, Amazon, mobile phone companies Verizon and AT&T) routinely failing to protect users’ data, essentially allowing government to sometimes “outsource” illegal, warrantless searches.