Privacy Outline

Intro 

• Hook: Work in progress 
• Introduce the shift: Americans are being watched. Everything from position to purchasing habits can be recorded and sent anywhere in the world thanks to technology like cellphones and the internet. For many years, the line between privacy and surveillance was not a major cause of controversy. Even with the dawn of the internet, people still sacrificed their privacy without much concern. Government surveillance laws like the Patriot Act passed immediately after 9/11 had widespread support, passing 357 – 66 in the House and 98 – 1 in the Senate. In 2019, 70% of Americans say that their data is less secure than it was five years and 81% say that the potential risks of companies collecting all this data outweighs the benefits.  
• Thesis: As a result of outdated laws and data leaks which exposed both U.S. government and the world’s largest corporations, Americans are now disillusioned with the right to privacy which will do long-lasting damage to the government’s trustworthiness and the American ideology of free speech.  

Defining the Shift: 

• Before the shift: While the right to privacy is never explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, its implication through legal precedent complemented the right to free speech. The Fourth Amendment bans search and seizure without a reasonable cause of suspicion. More recently, Supreme Court rulings like Roe v. Wade reinforced the right to privacy. Overall, the aggregate of these continual legal rulings on privacy formed a simple definition of privacy. 

• “The right of a person to be free from intrusion into or publicity concerning matters of a personal nature” (Merriam-Webster) 

• After the shift: People are concerned about their privacy, but they have no methods to preserve it.  Only 3 states (California, Colorado, and Virginia) have their own data collection laws although the Virginia law is seen as a weak set of laws that only adds in a few more options to opt-out of data collection which means data tracking is on by default unless someone takes time to find ways to turn it off. 14 other states have introduced new privacy laws but many of them function like Virginia’s law. Conversely, companies collecting data like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are essential for many individuals to communicate with others and grow their businesses, so consumers and entrepreneurs are left with few options. 

Analysis of Causes: 

• Edward Snowden’s leak of government surveillance techniques provided a straightforward example of privacy being violated which facilitated major shifts in the perception of privacy.  

• Snowden revealed that the U.S. government was recording millions of telephone calls per day and accessing the servers of companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft for surveillance purposes under a program called PRISM. Those are only two examples of the hundreds of surveillance tactics that Snowden leaked. The news coverage for the leaks resulted in government trust reaching new lows with 81% of Americans in a Pew Research study saying they trust the government to do the right thing only some of the time. 

• Outdated laws leave the door wide open for groups with control to abuse personal data and break the trust of consumers. 

• Companies continue to grow the markets they inhabit. For example, Amazon used to just sell books. Today, they sell books, other people’s products, their own products, and streaming services. The amount of data they collect about individual consumers is astronomical, but most data laws don’t address companies that collect all this data because they did not exist when they were written so they can get away with using this data in mostly unmonitored ways. This results in events like Facebook’s involvement with Cambridge Analytica where data ended up in the hands of people who were never supposed to have it. (This point needs WAY more development) 

• Data leaks that directly impact people’s lives remove the incentive to ignore privacy.  

• Verbose privacy agreements and fast-acting websites incentivize people to believe that privacy is being respected by companies. However, money is an even bigger incentive for most people. When someone’s money or credit card information is at risk due to a company letting their data be stolen, it damages the credibility of these major companies. One example is Equifax’s data breach, when at least 147 million people had information like social security numbers and driver’s license data leaked to unknown hackers. This problem was “solved” by making Equifax pay a 700 million dollar fine. While that is a lot of money, that solution is equivalent to prescribing a diseased person with medicine that only addresses their symptoms and does not cure them of the disease. 

Why the Shift Matters: 

• Privacy is necessary to uphold freedom of speech. In response to privacy’s growing importance. Georgetown University’s Julie E. Cohen wrote a paper for Harvard Law Review titled “What is Privacy For.” She bases in her argument in the idea that privacy is “something that is necessary for us to: develop who we are; form an identity that is not dictated by the social conditions that directly or indirectly influence our thinking, decisions, and behaviors; and decide what type of society we want to live in.” Privacy is non-existent in countries like China and the lack of privacy both in real life and on the internet gives the government control over their citizens. Cohen notes that in order to uphold the American ideology of free speech, there must be privacy because people act differently when they are being watched.