The Internet comes with some necessary trade-offs.
When we enter the digital realm, our personal information becomes a separate entity removed from ourselves.
To use many free Internet services, such as Facebook or Google, we must allow these companies full access to the data we provide them, but we are rarely ever given insight into how exactly our data is being used by specific companies or who it is being given to. The information takes a life of its own, moving from one company to another like the swapping of baseball cards, each covered in the statistics that make up our lives.
Our identities and our personalities become commodities to be bought and sold in the marketplace.
However, a California bill is attempting to make these companies more transparent about how they are using our information.
California Assembly Member Bonnie Lowenthal’s Right to Know Act of 2013 would allow consumers to petition data companies for access to the personal information these businesses have stored on them and what other companies they have sold it to. The companies would have 30 days to provide the information, which must go back 12 months, or face the possibility of a civil suit.
The bill is a great stepping-stone for moving toward a digital society that still takes the importance of privacy seriously.
After years of acting on the defensive, privacy advocates finally have a bill that acts as an example of how privacy can be fought for in the 21st century, a century that has thus far been hostile to privacy in America.
As technology has continually outpaced political change, privacy rights have had trouble keeping up. The 2001 passing of the Patriot Act opened a can of worms when it came to warrantless wiretapping, and the 2008 FISA Amendments Act gave the telecommunications companies legal immunity for their involvement in the NSA’s surveillance.
The past year has seen legislation like the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which would allow companies to share your information with the government without any protections and also with legal immunity.
Privacy advocates had to play defense, bringing the bills to court or challenging them in Congress — sometimes successfully, oftentimes not.
Yet, Lowenthal’s bill is a statement of action, a demonstration that some people are willing to struggle for more control over their personal information. It gives the consumers power for once, not just the companies, and it is nuanced enough to protect smaller companies from the hassles of the requirement.
The bill would allow companies to take measures to avoid the requirement by not storing data or by de-identifying the user data. Companies can also choose to notify users about the disclosure of their data as it is happening, and they are only required to release the information once every 12 months to avoid repeat request.
The only arguments I can see against this are from the uber-capitalists who say the information is now the company’s property and they shouldn’t be forced to disclose it.
However, it is horrifyingly commercial to remove people’s personal information from the people themselves and treat it solely as the property of a faceless, bland corporation.
In fact, the bill’s requirement does more to create a more libertarian society, in the truest definition of the word.
Transparency is one of the best protections against concentrated power. It attempts to bring corruption out in the open and fight back against collusion. It undoubtedly makes the world a freer and more knowledgeable place by leaving the information open and available.
By giving consumers the ability to see how their data is used, people can finally have adequate protections against abuses of power and privilege.
However, this bill is just the beginning, and there will be much to do from here.
David Scheuermann is a 21-year-old mass communication and computer science junior from Kenner.
