It’s 2020, and we enter the decade continuing to be blissfully unaware of organizations taking and trading the personal information we sign away in Terms of Service agreements almost as long as a CVS receipt.
Everyone knows the story now, a person mentions something in conversation unrelated to them only to suddenly see it in an online ad. It has been so prevalent that many have tested it on purpose and have gotten the same results. The optimist in me says that if companies are going to force ads on us then I would actually prefer ones which are relevant. The cynic says there’s much worse already happening in the background, and policy on the matter has yet to catch up.
2014, on year after Edward Snowden made the ultimate sacrifice to reveal that the NSA had global surveillance capability which, if used maliciously, compromised every US citizen’s privacy. The event was met with large amounts of press yet the implications from Snowden’s report left a lukewarm reaction among the public. In March, 60 Minutes releases an episode investigating a similar breach. But this time, it lies within the corporate world, and we all signed up for it.
Much of the public outcry has been aimed at the Amazon home assistant, Alexa. There is certainly a challenge in creating a device which is meant to respond to your voice, but ethically shouldn’t be listening all the time. Last April, CNN releases an article revealing that there might be an Amazon employee listening in when you give Alexa commands. The article claims that it is being used to improve on Alexa’s voice recognition software, which I believe is clear deception, as if Amazon didn’t have more than enough speech to refine the software.
In response, Amazon has a page on their website which gives methods they’ve implemented to own Alexa but stay as private as you wish. Among listing ‘wake up’ words, recording playback, and camera/microphone controls, they left out that the best way to retain privacy is to not own an Alexa.
Now we find ourselves in the fog of personal data sold through social media. In some ways, I can understand the focus on Alexa. The guise of something listening to you, in your home, is much more tangible than the transfer of information online. Even still, the comparison is nowhere close. People talk about Alexa as if they’re going to recite their address and social security number in their sleep. The reality is that by signing up for the increasingly popular and necessary social media websites we all choose to give up our info.
So here’s my take on the future and what policy needs to change for our privacy, taking some notes from Alexa:
The choice to give away information is ours as the consumer, Terms of Service contracts should be clear and concise in how and what they do with information. It shouldn’t take more than a minute to read.
On a similar note, access to these websites should still be available without giving away every single thing you put on it. Things we post are chosen to be put out there and can be exchanged, but there should be options to opt out of giving personal info.
We need a way to monitor our info and when we choose to exit these terms we should be able to control it on the 3rd party seller’s end as well.
These stipulations only exist in a perfectly private world. In reality the exchange of personal information has already been done on such a large scale and so effectively that we cannot erase it. Perhaps it can be overlooked with our government in the name of security, but in this case its a battle against big business. If there’s anything I’ve learned growing up in this country, its that we preserve nothing more than the areas where profit is made.
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