A National Privacy Law Is Nowhere in Sight
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The Montana state constitution provides citizens with a right to privacy but attempting to enumerate it in law is an uphill battle. At the last legislative session the national Charter public policy guy flew in and spoke against the bill saying it would be an incredible burden on his company to allow customers the right to privacy (conveniently ignoring they're up to the task for collecting and storing DNS, usage history, a multi-billion dollar company etc.). They were able to spread enough FUD to get the bill killed.
Corporations are stifling privacy at the national level and willing to spend the money quashing attempts by the states to take it back. Privacy will be a hard-fought battle most likely won with technology and user choices vs policy.
At this point I think the best option is for people passionate about privacy issues to start building products and platforms that address the problems by providing real solutions. That's what I'm doing with all my energy, and I know a lot of other talented people who are too (or, at the very least, they want to help).
Tech folk always seem to think more or new tech is the answer, and it absolutely isn't the case of privacy. If you really want to help, do that in your 20% time and focus all your energy on advocating for a GDPR clone.
And on this issue is proposing data as a property right: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/data-property-right/
The EU often falls back to referring to this stuff as Personally Identifying Information, which is at least a more logically coherent term -- it focuses more on de-anonymization and the risk to the individual, rather than on this idea that I somehow have a morally granted monopoly over a fact.
I'm trying to be more careful about how I phrase stuff like this in the future (PII, or 'facts about you' instead of 'your data'), to try and make it more obvious that the privacy community isn't monolithic and that there is no singular view even among privacy advocates about what data is or how it can be controlled.
What is it that you oppose? Specifically, which of the enumerated rights on the linked page do you have a problem with?
Specifically:
> The right to be forgotten; to have all data related to you deleted upon request.
This conflicts with the Right to Remember, which I believe applies to communities and companies as well as individuals.
More broadly:
> Data generated by each individual needs to be owned by them.
No, no one has a moral right to own a fact.
Even more broadly:
Data ownership is not sufficient to address modern privacy concerns (and may in fact be counterproductive). This is because it reframes the debate about privacy under Capitalist terms. This is a problem for two reasons:
1. Privacy as a Capitalist problem only really deals with companies, not individuals. This is not just a problem with scope -- as long as we describe privacy as "something that exists because you own your data", we're going to be ill-equipped to handle conflicts between individuals.
If we're talking about privacy regulation on an individual level (ie, what can I ask my neighbor to do), nearly all of Yang's rights listed here are problematic (and a few are outright unconstitutional). It's not clear to me how I would apply any of these principles to, say, whether or not my neighbor can record me with a Nest camera.
2. Describing data in financial terms broadly opens the door for the government to grant itself exceptions, and makes it harder for citizens to argue against those exceptions because the harm is phrased in Capitalist terms -- the inability for me to monopolize an asset that I own. The government is likely to win the majority of those fights.
When describing privacy rights, it is better to focus on the fundamental rights that privacy protects. Privacy protects your right to hide from aggressors, to exercise autonomy around the identity(s) you present to others, to speak and research freely, and to oppose unjust systems or laws.
The push to regard data as an asset captures none of that, so I personally view it as a misguided distraction. I think it's actually counterproductive to say, "we'll just deal with companies first, and then handle individual/government issues later." Building a set of privacy restrictions that only targets companies makes it harder to address concerns around individual and government collection. I want legislation that helps me stay private everywhere, not just when I'm engaging with the market.
When I say "your data" I mean exactly "your data" in the same way that I would say "your home" is your home but also the home of people you live with.
It sounds like you're saying that you do think "your data" describes a type of property ownership, not just an abstract thing you have a stake in protecting.
I realize there are some things that require gov / poltics. That's not my angle here. It's just that in Yang's case, my sense is, he has more to offer and can deliver more if he's not limited by politics; especially the current mess that it is.
Then in say eight years Yang goes for the jugular of W.DC. ATM, he makes too much sense, he's too far ahead. FFS the Dems are serious about Biden and nothing says 20th Century more than ol' Joe. Nice guy, etc. But he's hardly anything close to 2020 progressive.
My hope is Yang finds himself with a cabinet position (I think he'd be a great fit for heading the US Digital Service [under the Executive Office of the President] when Matt Cutts is ready to bounce, to continue the digital transformation of government for service delivery) in the next administration where he can champion his less controversial (ie not UBI) policies while building political capital for a future run, when the electorate has evolved (as it always does over time).
And look where that got us. There was so much leveraging going on (read: lack there of) that just under 50% of the voters went for Trump. A guy with zero experience and more baggage than a 747.
> "Bernie Sanders was able to shame Amazon"
True. And that's my point about Yang. Bernie didn't do this with law / legislation. He did it via his fame. Being a politican might have helped but I don't think it was Bern's political power Bezos feared.
There's also the possibility that he only enters office with enough political capital to do the above exactly once. Personally, I believe if he only gets one shot transformative legislation then I'd like to see something that moves the needle on his UBI proposals (the "dividend" marketing is spot on I think). Mostly because I expect subsequent reforms to be easier once a stronger social safety net is in place.
If Yang made it, what would you want to see him put his capital behind? I could see the argument for it being privacy legislation, seeing as he is in a unique position to market that to the typical voter (nobody in this thread expects the party leaderships to prioritize it).
If Yang or Tulsi were at the helm, I think a lot of tribalism fuel would dissipate and significantly calm things down. Thus giving us a shot to actually focus on problems and solutions instead of just endlessly slinging arrows back and forth.
https://www.wired.com/story/california-unanimously-passes-hi...
https://fortune.com/2019/09/13/what-is-ccpa-compliance-calif...
https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/ccpa-priva...
Anything around privacy will need the support of the FCC and, under the current administration, they have clearly set a standard of favoring a hands-off approach. In fact, avoiding regulation is the number one philosophy bullet point on his profile - https://www.fcc.gov/about/leadership/ajit-pai.
While I am generally and very-broadly-speaking against regulation, I believe privacy and personal-data issues are definitely an exception for me.
Edit: Really not trying to be partisan here, folks. Privacy laws are regulatory and it's not an opinion that the FCC doesn't want regulations - that's why I provided the link to the .Gov website for proof.
Significant and impactful legislation needs the support of more than just the House and Senate.
Privacy laws in the US have not ever been updated for the computer age. It's still safer to send secret info in a paper letter than in an e-mail, because the laws have never been re-written.
This is not surprising given the generation that's been in power since the 1970s. They didn't grow up with computers, and they don't understand them.
I was reflecting on what I what think is a ~current~ large obstacle and tried my best to keep my comment neutral, but thanks for clarifying.
I feel cognitive liberty is underdiscussed. Not just in the context of consumption, but also in the context of mental autonomy. One of these days, if we don't have a strong cognitive liberty protection, they'll end up developing technology to "read" people's minds (which of course will be unreliable at first), and if we're not careful then the idea of having privacy in our own minds will be a thing of the past. If that happens, I fear we'll slip into a dystopia within a quarter century.
I have no hard evidence to back up my assertion. It's just my feeling after observing the path our societies are traveling. I really hope I'm dead wrong on that.