Wait just a minute. The header says the government protects our food? Get real. Our food is loaded with herbicides, pesticides, and hormones given to animals. And the FDA does zilch. Likewise, the FDA is obviously in bed with the pharmaceuticals and tobacco. Purdue knew in 2006 that OxyContin was strongly addictive and so did the FDA. And one JUUL cartridge contains the nicotine of 20 cigarettes which the FDA knows is addictive. And what did the FDA do about this? 000000000
22
They can't do that. Data is in the ether (or whatever you youngsters call it I'm elderly and way behind the curve) It cannot be used without consequences. Governments get hacked all the time, energy distribution networks do too. Also the "free" internet is paid for by advertising. We are a consumer economy (heaven help us) and the only way to step out of the results is to live simply and use cash. Not convenient? Then don't complain about the price you pay for that convenience, or, as I do simply ignore the advertising.
5
Just because I purchase a product online or in a store does not give that company the right to hound me forever to purchase more of the same products. Just because I search a topic or product doesn't mean I want to be hassled electronically, or just mention a word in a phone conversation and guess what turns up on on ad my phone. We are electronically stripped of our identity every day by companies who then shout at us to buy their products after burrowing into our private written and spoken conversations, online queries and purchases. And don't get me started on telephone calls. Telemarketing and phishing has ruined phone service. People just don't answer the phone. However our political leaders are very happy to deny reality and rake in the money from these businesses, as well as the companies that poison the environment and provide the weapons we use to shoot ourselves and each other.
21
The US government doesn't do much to protect our food or our cars. But they can and do tax those industries and act like they enforce legislation, seemingly protecting us.
The diffference with our data is that those relevant companies, Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and others, pay almost no taxes at all, in comparison to the food and auto industries. And they are not regulated to any extent.
The US needs to tax ALL companies at comparative rates, especially tech comapnies that are collecting and monetizing our data while invading our privacy on every level.
12
Data = Money
Money = Power
And that's why it's not regulated.
21
Regulation. We rely on it for most other industries. Time to stop letting Silicon Valley rape the country without restriction.
4
@Sage Real, effective regulation is thin on the ground and going away fast. Much of the industries which were regulated have moved over seas and we get shoddy unsafe products, cheap.
1
The problem in the US is that everything, everything is based on the almighty dollar, Cha-Ching!
9
The idea that some people believe that government protects us form anything tells you how good the government is at fooling the people. The government does not protect you form anything, its just really bad things do not happen all that often and the government with all its watchdogs from the FDA to the FAA don't make those rare events form happening anyway. They just don't happen that often and the government convinces the public that they are the reason. Funny stuff. You think someone 100k a year agent form the SEC is going to police a banking regulation on Bank of America when he knows if he meets the right people goes out for a drink with them and eventually has a chance at getting hired by them his salary will change to 1 million a year. Yeas right, he is going to forego that chance for his career and his family's well being for the greater public good, ha ha ha.The idealists with their head in the sand till the proverbial you know what hits the fan and then they say "what happened"
3
Mr. Fox. meet Ms. Henhouse. The author seems unaware that since 9-11 the US government has undertaken a massive effort to infiltrate the conversations of Americans under a series of security guises. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_mass_surveillance_projects#United_States Here's a nice summary of what the feds actually do. https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying
3
I hate this kind of comment because it is a bit off-center, but the idea that the government protects our food is not what it sounds like. It protects industry's right to make whatever sells as long as it doesn't kill people overtly, but it does not protect the population at large from chemicals in food that can make us sick. Just read about the CLARITY-BPA study conducted by the NIH, FDA and 14 independent scientists.
14
The Congress has been bought and paid for by corporations that don’t want laws that would control their industry. Same old story!
7
The Republican credo has always been to prioritize the bottom line over all other considerations and to move in the direction of removing regulations that interfere with the bottom line. This has accelerated under Trump. The emasculation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau mainly because of its many successes in helping ordinary consumers stand up to large corporations illustrates this trend. Recent weakening of regulations has allowed more carcinogenic or otherwise harmful chemicals to be spewed into waterways (previously prohibited) or to be coughed up into the atmosphere. Now you want an increase of regulation to protect personal data and privacy--fine, as long as it does not make it harder to make more money. Profits first. Concerns for privacy or concern for children escaping asthma or the population avoiding cancer is not as important as making certain the wealthy make enough money to be able throw oodles of cash into Republican campaigns.
11
Just a reminder that since 2016 the "government" [aka the Trump administration] no longer "protects" us when it come to auto emissions, water quality, air quality, airplane safety, gun safety and on and on. Only the profits of the fossil fuel and other industries are protected. The E.P. A., for example, is now become the Environmental Pollution Agency. So when it comes to Donald Trump, it's "Don't ask what your country can do to protect you; it's what you should do to protect me."
15
In an era where every government watchdog agency is under attack and weakened non-stop by Republicans, regardless of the importance to the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food that we eat, the planes that we fly in, or the banks that we rely on, I'm skeptical that ANY action will ever be taken to protect our digital information. It's much too valuable and monetized by the big corporations and the government. The only way to stem the tide is to lessen your digital footprint. The first step is to delete Facebook forever.
14
@Michael Gilbert
You make sense.thanks. But no thanks for being able to copy what's on my computer.
2
And we spend oodles of tax dollars to make and keep our cars happy; all at the great expense of forsaking the simple joys of walking and fashioning walkable towns and cities.
5
In the1990’s as part of his Contract on America, Newt Gingrich got rid of the Office of Technology Assessment, which advised Congress on technological matters, as well as reducing the number of staff Congress members had. This essentially forced Congress to rely on business lobbyists for information.
So now we have the current situation: no regulation of data, no net neutrality, etc.
Republicans are simply not on the side of freedom for the people— only freedom for business.
17
The Government stopped working for We the People in the 80’s thanks to Ronald Reagan.
He told us that government was bad, that we were “rugged individuals”, and basically that it’s survival of the fittest from then on.
Reagan set to work cutting taxes on the rich, and doing everything in his power to dismantle government of, by, and for the people.
The Republican Party continued with that narrative, demolishing any and every policy that helped make the country better and that attempted to create a more perfect union.
Americans now accept this as normal.
The government should have been there to protect our data from the beginning of the tech boom, but Congress critters were too busy working for their own self interests, since people like Moscow Mitch, Paul Ryan, and an endless stream of Republicans had destroyed the hope of the American people for a representative government.
14
Certainly the author jests - What good is the FDA? Do we really need another agency that is actually controlled run by the people they are supposed to be checking up on?
6
Consumer protection is all but dead. Drastic cuts have been made to programs for food safety, airplane safety, auto safety, and consumer product safety. Antitrust enforcement has become a joke (unless Trump doesn't like your company). Welcome to the new gilded age of caveat emptor and laissez faire.
18
Working in a world where our business is heavy regulated at the state level I can say that we would welcome with open arms a federal level regulation that would override the states. Any federal regulation on this that still allows states to set their own requirements would be less than useless for us.
5
We may be finally demonstrating that we want our data protected and that we want to have more control over how it is used. What we haven't demonstrated yet, though, is that we're willing to pay for it. Until then, the business models will still be built around extracting value from our freely given data.
4
Can we distinguish the difference between data we own and data about us?
Bank accounts, SSNs, medical records, personal communications, passwords, etc. are clearly private data that each of us owns. Browsing and shopping histories are data about us, collected by others, and often with our permission. You do read the user agreements, right?
Do you expect privacy when you enter a supermarket, library, or adult film cinema? What's the difference about surveillance in the digital commons?
2
Fintan is right on the money. This is the type of reading the Constitution should be given, as Abraham Lincoln and other forward-looking people have said. The "concrete harm" standard is akin to locking the barn door after the horse has fled. Perhaps it is time to give a look at rights-based laws. Another point to recognize is that the data created or used in any fashion is at least in part the property of the creator. If musicians can receive royalties, why not an analogous system for the use of electronic data? I do not think the technical issues would be significant, but that the political ones would.
3
Owning our own data is a human right.
Citizens United removed the connection between consumers and constituents. Unlimited and potentially anonymous money flows, oblivious to the will of the people. (John Thune voted against net neutrality after ISPs gave him 900k.)
The world’s information ecosystem has been degraded with the assault on truth facilitated by the greed of aspie billionaires. They answer to no one as they sell our data to Russian interlopers.
Data needs its own agency.
3
Don't hold your breath on this one. We're going backwards on consumer protection. See what happens with airline safety when we give up oversight. It is happening with food and cars also.
19
If our data has value (it obviously does) then why don’t we make Google and Facebook, et al pay us for it?
11
The reason is simple: money. Google and Facebook track our every move and use this information to sell to advertisers. We have become a country of greed over principles. The thought that our privacy is not ours to protect is simply Orwellian.
12
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
It is not entirely unreasonable to think that “papers and effects” now extends to data. While the 4th Amendment largely protects from government intrusion and potential tyranny, we should be equally concerned about corporate intrusion and tyranny.
These are the discussions we should be having.
28
@Fintan
Not unreasonable at all.
4
There are two reasons why the government doesn't protect our data: 1) The average age of a United States senator is north of 60 years. They do not grasp the nuance (or even the broader issues surrounding personal information, technology, etc. and 2) as others pointed out, there is little that Congress does (or that the President doesn't then try to undo) to protect ordinary Americans. Withness the rollback or net neutrality, the CFPM, student loan protections, etc.
My sibs and I used to laugh when our politically savvy mother would talk about a coming revolution. She's gone but I can now see that is likely the only way to take our country back. Not sure we're up to the challenge, however. Our smartphones generally work as does Netflix and there's a sport that dominates every season. I fear we're just too busy to care.
10
We deserve to have the absolute right of privacy to protect our lives, including, but not limited to our data, and no other entity should have the right to abridge it, unless it is being affirmatively used for clandestine purposes to hurt others and/or our country!
For big biz to encroach upon these rights, is big biz gone too far for its own greed and avarice, and an invasion of our privacy.
Other countries have it, and we should have it too!
9
If only we lived in a divided limited different power constitutional republic of united states where the people were the ultimate sovereign power over their elected and selected hired help.
If only we lived in a democracy without a Senate, Electoral College, Cabinet and Supreme Court standing as bulwarks against individually expressed majority reign and rule.
Americans can't blame their predicament on divine royal sanction selection nor an armed uniformed military coup.
In order to find and locate the culprit try a mirror or a window.
4
"Government Protects Our Food and Cars. Why Not Our Data?"
Because it's the American Way to only close the barn door after the horse gets loose.
Because it's the American Way to let 'industry' run amok until the situation is ridiculous, people are dead, and it's a scandal.
Because it's the American Way to let things run until politicians see they cannot be re-elected unless the problem is addressed.
18
@Mike And it’s the American way to think they absolutely have to have a cellphone, Internet, and order from Amazon.
2
NYT --- "A Brief History of How Your Privacy Was Stolen
Google and Facebook took our data — and made a ton of money from it. We must fight back."
By Roger McNamee
Mr. McNamee, a long-time tech investor, was an adviser to Mark Zuckerberg. June 3, 2019
CNBC--- "Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook have called for “comprehensive privacy legislation” similar to GDPR.
Lawmakers, lobbyists and CEOs in the U.S. are looking to trying to pick out the best parts of the EU law – and ditch what they see as the worst."
"GDPR, USA? Microsoft says US should match the EU's digital privacy law. https://www.zdnet.com.
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), are the toughest in the nation. "
5
No matter how miscreant or zealous the GOP are in cutting regulations, you must admit both parties are absolute geniuses about failing to regulate at all.
4
The Grand Oligarchy Party wouldn't have it any other less profitable way.
D to go forward; R for reverse.
November 3 2020.
41
The US government colludes with corporations to bring consumers pesticide and antibiotic tainted foods that promote the diseases that other corporations “cure.”
The government does not protect because it is beholden to those corporations that also pay no taxes and discriminate against races, sexes and religions.
14
It's too easy for our personal information to wind up in the wrong hands. It's too easy to call people who don't want to be called when it comes to scams and other "offers". Yet when we want to see our information companies charge us for it. They go out of their way to make it difficult for us to see it, to correct it, and to monitor it. These same companies often demand personal information as part of registering on a website, filling out online applications, or, in the case of some stores, when we pay for an item. The only purpose is to send us junk mail or to sell our information to a third party.
I'm sure that the phone companies could, if it benefitted them, find ways to end robocalls and phone scams. However, they benefit when our cellphones receive these calls because we pay for incoming and outgoing calls.
It's tiresome being tracked online or through my credit card charges. There are never better offers made. It infuriates me when I realize that any idiot can call me and waste my time or call the elderly and dupe them. But what help can we expect from lawmakers or tech companies when one supports the other and even lies about the reach of their technology and will sell us out too? Nothing that's what we can expect. One other thing we can expect: higher charges and protests that it's not possible to stop any of this. Of course it's not. Not when they are making large sums of money from it.
12
Few die or are physically harmed by data breeches. A better solution is to ensure people are not liable for "stolen identities" unless the merchant/lender can prove you bought it and not someone who just entered some data you can glean from FB and/or Ancestry.com.
1
Yes, please. It is crucial.
3
Note that the headline didn't say that the government protects our airplanes.
5
The whole problem began when someone, wishing to make a buck from an unneeded service decided that our data and privacy were a commodity, not unlike phone listings, and were for sale without our permission.
Ever eager to get something for nothing, the multipage fine print waivers no one reads were inclusive of language that 'gave' these companies the 'right' to do so. Their way, or the highway.
Unfortunately these monsters have become so insinuated in our daily routines it is very hard to say, "No," and have an alternative such as a pay for use service that is forbidden to do the data mining that these companies use.
I'm sure our legislators, well paid by these up and coming tech firms, would never do so, but an amendment to our Constitution that, right up along side pursuit of happiness, would give us the absolute right to data privacy, with those who violate that being open to enormous penalties.
Would the CEOs and founders of these leeching companies take a hit to their portfolios? I'm sure, but in even the short run, the majority of citizens would be so much better off than we are with these data suckers, that we'd applaud the day the holes in the dam get plugged.
4
So not a single example of an actual personal harm to any American from a data privacy abuse.
Tens of thousands were dying each year on our roads, before NHTSA (the example chosen by the NYT) was created. Surely the NYT can find a handful of deaths linked to data privacy abuse - if they existed.
Maybe a few physical injuries like the laptop burns? Can't find that either?
It is a non-issue and not a single one of my friends is "outraged" by it or gives it much thought. Quite the contrary, they enjoy their free YouTube videos, free Waze, magical Uber transportation on demand, all made possible by companies that intelligently use our data to serve us better.
Stop the hysteria.
It is astonishing to me to read a cooment like yours. Why do you assume that the only effects of the misuse of PII are related to the posiibility of negative physical impact? Your information is bought and sold all the time with varying puposes: to manipulate what you see or hear, to find out what you are thinking of buying or checking prices for, how you spend your money and your time. It is used to get you to vote one way or another based on what you react to online, to track where you go every day, who you spend time with and what restaurants you go to. It can also be used by law enforcement and the government to tear your life wide open, by health insurers, banks, and credit agencies. It can also be breached, when the company who has it does not safeguard it well, by bad actors and malicious groups. Morgage funds are redirected, bank accounts drained, credit cards stolen - the list of things that can, and are, perpetrated on unsuspecting folks is tiresomely long.
So, go ahead, keep thinking there is nothing to this except a bunch of people panicking over nothing.
By the way, I work in cyber security and privacy, in Silicon Valley, so, I know what is being done with personal data - and it needs to change.
6
@Baron95
How have you managed not to notice millions of dollars in class actions suits, identity theft and fraud losses due to customer data hacking, the release of FB data to foreign intelligence services, and people for that matter being doxed and swatted online?
Mishandling and abuse of data results in billions in harm.
5
The Government does not protect our food. The FDA is bought and sold by dark private sector power and staffed with it as well. Witness how The Shackler Families Purdue Pharmaceutical paid off two FDA reps who changed the wording on their addictive Oxycontin to read that long term use is perfectly safe. These two FDA men then became Shackler executive employees. Our democracy is been killed by private sector power and money.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/opioid-epidemic-did-the-fda-ignite-the-crisis-60-minutes/
3
Let's see. In 1990, when I lived in Germany, its Ministry of Justice was working on data protection laws. We were debating 12 weeks of unpaid leave (Family Friendly Leave Act).
6
That would require political will to do so. And overcoming the will of the corporate tech donors.
4
Thank Facebook , Google and others in the tech sector. They make billions of dollars by selling info to a myriad of companies. Thank the GOP members of the Senate who are do nothing folks. As usual, in this Corporate Government that we have, the Corporations of Tech as well as insurance, agriculture, energy, banks, etc. "We the People..." are just "THINGS" to be used.
8
The only way to protect personal data is to stop putting it on electronic systems. Once it touches a smartphone or the internet, it's gone baby gone - forever.
3
It would be fascinating if Dr Hannibal Lecter invited Zuckerberg for dinner. A video of that exchange would delight millions far more than his appearances before Congress. And would bring the issue of data privacy to a tasteful and perhaps tasty conclusion.
4
@GAEL GIBNEY
I'll drink to that.
2
You must mean that our government was designed to protect citizen consumers from predatory practices in all kinds of commerce. In many eras, and in many areas, government has work for the people, but not our current elected officials, and certainly not today. We have elected Republican lawmakers and enforcers who demand freedom from all consumer protection, and a free market for all corporations. We'll get it right again someday, but not in the near future. It will take death tolls or economic depression to turn this around.
1
"But after Strava, a popular fitness-tracking app, posted a granular map of its users’ workout routines last year, exposing their locations ..."
Ambiguous wording. The data is anonymized - the ensemble of all users data is drawn as a heat map. The part of rides close to rider's home are removed, so you can't see an individual riders homes in the heat map.
The heat map is incredibly useful feature for seeing popular routes, which are likely to be safer and enjoyable (additional confirmation using ordinary maps and other sources advised).
The greater problem for the military is soldiers carrying cellphones which are always generating cell tower location data even without Strava being enabled. That data is siphoned, collated, and sold. Even if the personal ID is removed (dubious claim) the marketable macro data will still reveal things like the location of US bases, and there is no way to control who buys that data. Obviously the only solution in that situation is - no cellphones ON.
Which is hopefully what the US military already orders, and the locations of semi-bases US bases are probably already 100% known to the locals anyway.
1
@Craig H I would argue that we'd all be better off having those 'valuable' routes and data available only to be viewed by the one having gone down that path, rather than plastering it all over the internet.
You are naive in the extreme to think that those routes are as protected as you claim they are.
There is absolutely NO reason for those paths to be tracked in the first place, and to try justifying this invasive app's existence shows how much you've been suckered into thinking this is and OK practice.
3
You lost me by the time I finished reading the title. Thanks to Trump the EPA is being obliterated, pharmaceutical lobbyists tie the hands of the FDA by bribing politicians not to protect us, and relaxing exhaust omission standards for cars is just a start for making them less safe. Why would the government care about protecting our data?
12
@East TN Yankee Most Americans refuse to demand that government protect our liberty and equal protection rights.
2
It wasn't that long ago when calling a government employee a bureaucrat was an insult: They spent part of each day writing reports for others of their ilk to read and initial, and the rest initialing reports written by other such, accomplishing nothing of value. If something was proposed by a maverick employee that was actually useful but even hinted at less such "work" for their fellow staffers, it would be condemned by all.
What is suggested here is a further expansion of our bureaucracy. Now, I am not defending the tech giants monitoring our every online move and using that data to entice us into purchases we would not have made otherwise -- that is, purchasing products and services we were doing without with no problems. I was being shown ads in my "free" favorite sites that pushed school-patterned fabrics after a string of Google searches for such I made on behalf of another. So I agree the unregulated data aggregators’ resale of the data they collect on us surreptitiously by watching our searches – even our email content -- must be curbed; the issue is how.
The danger of an ever-expanding bureaucracy becoming unelected rulers of our day-to-day activities are taken to their ultimate extreme in a book I coincidentally I’m reading, Lawrence Sanders' "The Tomorrow File." Can't happen here? Yes, and unimportant blips on the world map would never become nuclear-weapon capable. Blips like North Korea.
Be careful what you ask for. You may get it.
2
It is no different to gangs in Mexico having more power than the government because they have more money and members; i.e. recent example El Chapo's son being released when the gangs went on a rampage when he was arrested.
Same goes for hackers and criminal gangs that roam the internet exploiting your privacy and looking for a way to mine data so they can hack into your bank account or use your profile for fraudulent purposes. The government will never be able to catch up with data miners and hackers because crime pays and it is profitable to do so. I don't think the people who work for government have the expertise to catch them because their budge and wages are low and criminals go where the easy money is, and the pay packets are bigger. Cyber security is a joke.
2
Yes, we need well-funded, government regulation so we have privacy from corporations, who are egregiously abusing our private information for profit--None of which comes back to us, who it is built upon.
The fact that Experian can have an enormous data leak with all of our private details exposed (great for identity theft, which can ruin your life) and have no real consequences is a huge problem. In my view they should be out of business.
Privacy is a huge issue: I forcefully disagree with the quoted University of Arizona person. Perhaps they have never checked how much data is collected if you download what Facebook and Google and Amazon have collected on you.
Our government has very strict rules regarding our private data, which if you violate you go to jail, and the private sector has None. That is crazy.
Remember, as The Times previously pointed out, Silicon Valley is not your friend:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/13/opinion/sunday/Silicon-Valley-Is-Not-Your-Friend.html
I would appreciate it if Mitch McConnell and others would stop trying to dismantle our government protections by consistently cutting staff and budgets over years. The government is for the people. Government services and regulations are created to protect us from the monster paradigm of Profits at the expense of people, workers, and our environment.
@A George "Stolen identity" is only a problem if we assume that you are on the hook for vendors who sell you or lend you money because they relied on data alone to "identify" you. We just need a law that protects us from being held accountable without evidence we received whatever the thieves took. The onus should be on those who sell/lend to prove they gave the value to the right person.
1
Although on the surface, regulating data privacy seems to be a good idea, there is a cost. Content is cheap, often free. There is an attitude that we have a right to free content. But, it’s not actually free, or cheap. How can it be? Every time you view a commerce website, make a purchase online, or even send an email, your data is being collected and sold. We are not users, we are commodities. Companies sell us and our information for profit. Even consumer devices such as TVs, as reported in the NYT (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/business/media/streaming-data-collection-privacy.html?searchResultPosition=1) send our data to the manufacturer to be repackaged and sold. And, that’s OK as far as I’m concerned. With the marketing of our personals, tech is cheaper. So, before we start regulating data privacy, think about the increase in the price of EVERYTHING. Look at our most-regulated products: drugs, aircraft, doctor visits, automobiles, etc. They aren’t cheap by a long shot. Regulation multiplies the price. OK, so maybe we are willing to pay for drug and aircraft regulation. Are we willing to pay for privacy and data regulation??? Are we willing to pay double, triple what we are currently paying for tech, because it’s not subsidized by selling it? I’m just guessing, but, I’m thinking that most of us will take cheap TVs over data privacy.
1
The government protects our food and cars far less in this administration.
A crisis is coming in meat slaughtering but no one will pay attention until hundreds drop from salmonella et al.
2
We ended the Tobacco Epidemic by taxing cigarettes.
We in large part cleaned up the air by taxing gasoline more.
....
?
Wanna alleviate the problem of private data on the internet?
OK...
Let's say it together, now....
Tax the Internet.
1
@Wherever Hugo That makes no sense. Who is being taxed and for what? If you add a tax to access the internet, that will do nothing about data theft.
@Wherever Hugo No, that will make the data suckers even more desperate to grab every penny from every source that they can.
"In fact, the United States is virtually the only developed nation without a comprehensive consumer data protection Close X law and an independent agency to enforce it. "
Hmmmm....
You would think at least the Dems would see this as a worthy cause from the beginnings of the press digging into this? Why wouldn't this be a top priority for them to protect "The People" from "Big Tech"? Where are all the laws with teeth prior to 2016?
Unless of course they saw it as a valuable resource to help them win elections too? Or maybe just maybe, they are prone to be complicit by falling into line with Big Tech Lobbyist's?
I am not happy with either party on this issue. Maybe EW will finally do something real when elected, but they will need to win both the Senate and the House. VOTE
1
Small animals in the forest know that lack of privacy will result in being someone's lunch.
In any transaction, if one party has a huge amount of information about you and you have almost none or very little about them you will surely lose.
Right now we are in a fight. We have slingshots they have atomic weapons!
3
@Richard Fried Just don't "take the free benefits of the Internet" and "your data" won't be tracked (it's not your data, just data about you...whoever collects data has the data...lest you think weather/nature owns the data about temps and rainfall)
David, We are all tracked whether we pay or not. Do you realize that when you carry your cell phone your location is tracked. When you buy food or go to the movies you are tracked. When you go to the pharmacy and Are supplied with drugs for medical conditions you are tracked. Tracking is not limited to free services!
1
"Today, the Food and Drug Administration vets new prescription drugs before they go on sale."
Our drugs currently contain glass and bacteria and the FDA approves them because the pharmaceutical companies want to make money. Many drugs are shown not to be effective but the FDA doesn't pull the drug from the market. Read this article and you will understand how poorly our drugs are monitored for safety and effectiveness.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/fda-keeps-brand-name-drugs-on-a-fast-path-to-market-despite-manufacturing-concerns?ref=home
1
How can this article ask that question with any seriousness?
There are two things happening in America:
First, the amount of lobbying money (read: bribes) flowing from the data thieves like Facebook, Google, and Amazon to both parties is unprecedented. When you give money to both parties, it is no longer lobbying - it is out and out bribery.
What politician of either party in their right mind is going to propose putting and end to that cash flow? Especially when a corrupt Supreme Court ruled that bribing politicians is free speech.
Second, the legal liability of corporations who have sloppy security on their servers (around 75% are worthless in terms of security) is exactly zero. Not one single American corporation has been fined in any meaningful way when they lose millions of customer records to hackers. NOT ONE. A piddling fine, an offer of credit monitoring for a year, and move along, nothing to see here.
I don't have solution to the legalized bribery, but the second problem is easy to solve if the will exists to do so and pass the following law: Any corporation that has their client database breached and records stolen should have to pay a $100 fine FOR EACH AND EVERY stolen record.
The first time some big outfit loses 10 million customer records and has to pay a one billion dollar fine, you can bet the rest will have a Come-To-Jesus moment about radically tightening down their security, and data breaches will mostly end.
6
@WeAreWeary Bribing politicians is a crime, not free speech. That you suggest others can limit your speech because you have too much money to promote your cause is like saying big budget movies drown out the little movies and we should no longer allow them.
Do you have evidence SCOTUS is corrupt? Who corrupted them with what money/threat?
This will change when Sanders or Warren are president.
4
I have no use for Facebook, Twitter or any of the rest of them.
Stuff I want to keep track of, I write down in the old black and white notebooks, the same kind I used back in the third grade. I must have 20 of them now. The old ones I keep in my attic.
The U.S. government and corporate America already have or can easily secure access to my bank, tax, health, credit card, driving, library, school and juvenile court records. The only thing they don't have and never will get are my old love letters, and that is because they are safely stored away under my bed in Macanudo cigar boxes which are guarded night and day by Kota the Wonder Dog in the picture here.
Macanudos are world-renowned for their savory flavor, consistency and smoothness. If you are looking for top-level security protection for your most important secrets that no Russian or Ukrainian agent will ever be able to penetrate -- together with a great smoke rolled by hand in the Dominican Republic incorporating tobacco from the rich farmlands of the San Andres Tuxtla Valley of Mexico -- I heartily recommend their cigar boxes.
1
Which is why Facebook helped the Russians elect Trump, and why they will again do everything in their power to keep him and the GOP in office.
"The Government Protects Our Food and Cars. Why Not Our Data?"
Natasha: Since when?
We eat glyphosate and penicillin in practicaly all our food.
5
Consumer protections of all types is a partisan concern in the U.S. Simply put: Democrats care about consumers, Republicans care about producers. And while Republicans claim to care about consumers and Dems say they care for business, over the decades a delineated line has been drawn w/ each taking sides.
Why has the U.S. done so little in protecting citizen data? Because Republicans control 2.5 of the 3 seats of political power: the White House, the Supreme Court, and the Senate. When the balance of power changes so will our approach to protecting consumer data.
1
Quoting Ralph Nader as an authority?
This is the man who brought us the Bush administration and its loathsome “Patriot Act.” (His campaign in 2000 ensured a Republican victory).
Nader is a despicable, self-righteous and hypocritical individual.
Furthermore he has nothing of substance to say about privacy.
Tax the Internet.....excessively.
That wasnt so difficult? Now, was it?
@Wherever Hugo Sure, tax communications because our free speech constitution allows such tyranny and control over mental slaves.
Our data isn’t protected because the lobbyists for the industry pay more than the average citizen can to “persuade” legislators, and no one can be obviously shown to have suffered a “harm.” Bad air? There’s coughing and asthma. Bad food? You get a terrific belly ache and end up in the hospital — worse case you could die. Bad data? You have your identity stolen, your info is used to persuade millions of others, your credit goes bad etc. Guess what? The government, your legislators consider that YOUR PROBLEM. That’s why they don’t protect it. They also don’t protect your voting ballot though the legislation is sitting on Moscow Mitch’s desk.
And why don’t they? Also because the Republican majority in the Senate believes that every man needs to do his own thing, needs to depend upon himself, needs to go it alone! They are the party of least government, caveat emptor, least protection, most gun ownership so you can “protect your own.”
If you want data protection you need to believe that there is safety within group action. You need to believe that good government works for the “commonweal.” You need to believe like the Founders that government must work for the safety and betterment of the nation, not that no government or little governance works best. Voters who think of themselves as cowboys, alone on the prairie, vote Republican and get as we city dwellers call it “bupkis” (little) also “goornisht” aka nothing.
2
@B. Rothman What is "our data"? If you collect data, then that data is yours. If I collect data, then it's mine. Nobody takes that data unless you can't protect it.
If you give away data about yourself to another by using the other people's products and services, then you can only blame yourself. What next, blaming the bakery for making me fat because I keep buying donuts?
our gov't first has to get out of the bribery business but that will never happen
1
Feature, not bug of the America that is wagged by our corporate overlords. Just your premise indicates how pathetic and mediocre America is:
"The United States is virtually the only developed nation without a comprehensive consumer data protection law and an independent agency to enforce it."
1
@Mogwai Yes, no more corporations. Poverty for all.
If you would stop voluntarily giving people data you wouldn’t have a problem. You are the cause of your problems. With food you have to eat. With cars you also cause problems by driving too fast or drunk. Take responsibility for your own actions.
1
Some fat fingered donut detective employed by the All-America City of Santa Clara California created my criminal rap sheet out of thin air in 2003, according to the Federal Bureau of Insinuation. Alias names I never used. Two distinct birth years. Two distinct sex/gender markers, lots of false claims, no convictions. DONALD J. TRUMP is no cure for an unaccountable government. Now you know why TSA puts their gloved hand down your trousers. They're looking for something that's not there.
Let’s get it done!
1
Until we get rid of the Trump moron and his sycophants, personal profit motive for them will rule every decision, including gutting every single consumer protection capability we now have.
Our Supreme Court has been seized (legally!) by the Profiteers. Unless and until we choose to address that, the Citizenry are merely consumers, commodities, and/or the collaterally damaged.
We, the people need to take back our Country.
9
The short cut and the first step to protecting personal data is to extend copyright protection (which is Federal law and will bypass state by state initiatives) to personal data so that if I find out my copyright has been violated I can seek redress in courts. I may catch every violation but enough us will pose significant uncertainty and threat to change behavior. We should not need a huge regulatory agency to check on every company. We need full disclosure and every agreement we are asked to tick the check box to have language that acknowledges our copyright to the data we relinquish. The current practice implies that there is rights transference because we tick that box. This can be negated by copyright that is perpetual unless there is licensing and royalty contract to cover specific uses of our data that we agree to.
1
There is no evidence that today’s administration has any desire to protect the consumer from anything. Large corporations are a different story, and they must be protected from any regulation which restricts their profit taking. Consumer protection by a conservative government is an urban myth.
5
Thank you, Ms. Singer. The government can only protect our data if it wants to. Judging from how poorly it protects our food, the problem of getting it to want to is as much of a challenge as the problem of getting the necessary legislation passed.
5
You're right, the government is overstretched. So, it should have no business as your parent for private data. You're honestly more tech literate than any government lemming you're hoping will babysit you. Passing around the blame won't help you become a better, more responsible adult.
We have always had the technical capabilities of having a car top out at the legal speed limit, not start without screening for alcohol, GMOs to create food we thoroughly understand at the molecular level and determine what mutations could hurt us. Yeah regulation really just rearranges the chairs on the Titanic.
@Chad
No Chad...your argument is woefully flawed. Its not about me being better at the tech, its that the controlling parties of the tech and things that make the tech go "Vroom," that they purposely design mesmerizes us - are deliberately taking advantage of us. In that they take our data, and make mega-millions - and we get nothing but more bells and whistles to further mesmerize us.
I'm a better builder/contractor then any inspector in my local govt offices chartered to enforce building codes...but they have a proper job to do...in spite of my skills and better knowledge. The Regs are in place to protect those who are not as knowledgeable as me. Do not know the difference between the electrical needs of an electric range, versus a temporary appliance.
Regulation is not a simple rearranging of chairs. Not even close. Its about creating a system of uniformity and fairness for all those who engage in those systems. In your POV, auto building and maintenance would be a willy nilly system and wholly dangerous.
17
Until we hold our politicians accountable for failing to pass a universal privacy law banning unwarranted surveillance, not much will change.
2
Because seeing ads that are more relevant instead of seeing ads that are less relevant isn't a horrible thing. In fact, it is a positive thing.
1
@Polaris I don't care about ads. I ignore them.
Why I completely understand how people don't trust government, without any rules the data currently being gleaned from mobile phones, credit card transactions, internet searches etc. are up for sale and use of many kinds (some legal and some with questionable legality). Also, any data can be traced back to the original owner no matter how encrypted it is. Something must be done similar to the European Union to establish individuals rights to their data. Until then it is a free for all with people's information both personal and financial at risk.
17
Well, I don't agree that the government does such a terrific job of protecting us from hazardous cars, SUV's and behemoth 4-door pickups. And I haven't even gotten to global warming and climate change and insulin price gouging.
The hope that government will protect our data is more a fantasy than a hope. We have a tradition, rooted in our capitalist economy, that encourages and rewards entrepreneurs who assemble and market data. It began with the publication of city directories in the mid 1800s. It continued with Telephone Directories in the mid 1900s. It continues with Doubleclick, Facebook and even the electronics in your car.
Strong regulation is needed, but the wealthy donors who have the ear of the best Congress money can buy are not likely to accept that putting the interests of people over profit is a legitimate role for government to play. Too many Generation Zs, Millennials and even Baby Boomers drive data collection and earn their livings from exploiting personal data to make data privacy a cause for either party.
Nothing will happen on the regulatory front until commercial exploitation of private data produces a tragic calamity that provokes a groundswell of demand for change.
5
@OldBoatMan
Your post is contradictory. You dont think regulation works, but you think strong regulation is needed? Why?
You dont think that how autos are built and standardized isn't making you safer? Imagine if those standards were absent! There would be cars coming off the lines with sub-par breaks for their engine power and weight. "We just need breaks, not a specific kind."
You confuse what the driver/owners do with those products, with what the manufacturers are regulated to build. A 5'1" person behind the wheel of a large truck, who cant see over the steering wheel or see where the front/back-end of the truck is in time and space - is not the fault of the manufacturer. But the one buying it! The vast majority of auto accidents are due to human error, not the manufacturing standards of the vehicle. Those are now extremely rare, in the grand scheme of things.
Remember the Pinto? Enuff said.
1
it's necessary to put forward a pragmatic proposal to understand the impediments here.
the pragmatic proposal is not that individuals get paid for the use of their data, as jaron lanier proposes. it's that corporations can only hold and use the individual data necessary for transactions with their customers, and cannot share the data with any other corporation.
amazon.com, for example, could hold data about you such as name, address, credit information, and past purchases or product views that are relevant to their business operations. but they could not share that data with any other corporation.
readers who do not have ghostery added to their web browser may not realize that "amazon associates" has tracked your reading of this page. my interest here has nothing to do with my purchases at amazon.com, and it should be illegal for amazon to connect one with the other -- or resell that information to its "associates" such as the NY Times.
the impediment is, of course, profit -- specifically corporate profit -- and the infrastructure imperative to tag each of us individually through our phones, computers, automobiles, credit transactions, travel reservations, retail purchases and online postings as just another herd animal to be manipulated to further consumption by the big data, carbon gulping infrastructure.
my data with my providers? fine. my data being swilled around among "associates"? i say, write a law against it.
3
We won't be able to keep the protections we have, let alone acquire new ones, unless we vote Republicans out of every position of power for a generation or longer.
94
@spehnec And then hold the Dems feet to the fire.
6
You mean forever. Never again should we allow men who claim they are “Republicans” (and falsely represent themselves as conservative) into any position of government or influence in government. Republicans represent only capitalist, oligarchic interests. These men/people are actually sociopathic grifters and grafters who know how to con the public with red meat semantics and propaganda.
I challenge anyone to name even ONE policy that Republicans have implemented in the past 50 years (or ever, really) that is good for America and average Americans, let alone the world... I won’t hold my breath.
7
Ridiculous. This is an issue that pulls from across the political spectrum.
I’m not convinced this administration protects anything including food, water, air, etc. I don’t eat meat out much, I source mine carefully and only on rare occasions, and thank god I have lots of garden beds so I can grow my own veg next spring.
Data is seriously the least of my concerns at this point.
1
What makes you think that THIS government is protecting our food and cars? You know very well that most regulations, that protect citizens, have been trashed by tRump and his criminal gang. What we NEED is a government that DOES protect us, one that can be trusted to honor the wishes of the majority of the population, that honors the value of human life. Everybody knows we don't have that, at this moment in history, and if we don't sweep out the current tRump regime, a lot of people, around the world, are going to die from the consequences of profit at any cost.
48
We're the only developed nation w/o universal health care and we're also the only one to pull out of the Paris Accord and fail to work towards mitigation of Climate Change.
But we're also the only nation with Citizen's United.
Think there's a correlation?
133
@Monty ...yes, where are the frequent op eds we need to trace cause/effect of corporate mega donors dominating our lawmaking--for their gain, our loss? And how this sets political norms, keeping politicians in line, with a narrow range of solutions for national problems.
So, HC for all, common for generations abroad, is here still too left wing, as are most govt regulations to serve the public interest.
The effects of Citizen United on our laws is the most under-covered issue in US media. I recall only 1 op ed column directly on this by T. Edsall some time ago. It's never ever mentioned on cable tv news.
Is the media intimidated? US media gets profits from our legal, paid campaign advertising, needing big donors to finance. In many countries, says Wiki, these campaign ads are banned on their media. Big ripple effects on public policy.
These operating democracies have long standing health care for all, and recent EU laws for consumer data protection, the GDPR.
This is never mentioned on Cable TV news, and rarely on NYT op eds. Consumer and public protections aren't trendy when corporate money has such clout over lawmaking.
This leaves the US public lacking clout, and vulnerable to manipulation.
Our health, our environment, and our data are unprotected, compared to other capitalist democracies.
9
@Monty
Our government may be hopelessly corrupt.
Corruption is accepted.
Most of the government has been taken over by the rich.
The Republican Supreme now controls decisions that favor corporations over people.
Republicans are furiously defending a authoritarian President who doesn’t believe that he needs to follow the laws.
Money is not speech.
Corporations are not people.
Decisions like these are made because of the corrupting influence of money.
5
I was wondering when someone would actually get this, it took a while.
The internet right now is a global crazy Wild West. There are no police, regulations, enforcement, penalties.
There needs to be a full law and order justice system just to police and maintain civilization at this point.
We can’t have a “live by the rules” real world life while online is free-for-all anarchy.
There needs to be a full police force on the internet or society will crumble.
See rise of Trump.
See dark web.
See companies selling us to whoever pays the most.
See the spam calls you get every night.
Society is broken.
Start with “services are responsible for what they broadcast” just likes it’s always been.
Need to get control of this nonsense.
33
I am amused that most of the comments here are filled with ill-informed anti-government tropes, because that is what corporate America wants us all to think.
Of course government regs and agencies keep us safe from food poisoning, death-mobiles, and choking pollution. Of course regs and an agency can help protect us from those who would harm us with our own data. Duh.
The problem, of course, is that free and easily available personal data is in the best interests of giant corporations that contribute huge amounts of money. This effort will get nowhere unless people wake up and vote in their own best interests.
62
California deserves a lot of credit for moving ahead on data privacy. Federal agencies and legislators have moved slowly, not likely to pass a bill for at least a year.
And in 2020 California is likely to pass another ballot initiative that strengthens their Consumer Privacy Act, including a new agency that focuses on data privacy.
The FTC will say that this should be in their territory but they are understaffed and out gunned by big data companies.
So the California law will become the de facto national law on January 1. We can learn from California’s experience and write a strong federal law at some point.
2
And while we're at it, it's high time for more regulation of the credit reporting agencies who have been hacked and put our personal data at risk yet are allowed, without our permission, to hoover up our data and make determinations that can negatively impact people's lives.
45
If you want to drive your car - Thelma and Louise style - over a cliff - no government regulation will change that.
If you want to sniff that two-week old milk, take a chance and take a swig - no government agency will change that.
I now have to click through a meaningless waning banner that this and that website collects info via cookies all over the internet - Thanks Europe!
There are some things in life that do not need a government 'hammer'.
"A spate of high-profile data protection failures"
Yeah, no. They succeeded in NOT protecting it.
Don't assume good faith with bad companies. Or bad parties.
6
Keep in mind that the gov regulation agencies the article referenced, over time and in general, do a terrible job of protecting the public. Funding & staffing are often a primary issue, but hardly the only one.
One reason is that these agencies become revolving doors for industry experts who come from high-paying jobs in the industry and/or leave for high-paying jobs in the industry. It is a case of the foxes guarding the henhouse.
Some of these agency’s poor protection records are due to their having a split mission: promote the industries and protect the public. The Food and Dairy industry is like this. They also have a revolving door of industry experts.
The SEC is arguably the worse simply because the stock market has gotten so complex that they are incapable of even doing the job. Having a fraction of the staff to do so is also routinely remarked as one of the major factors as well. This situation is cited as one of the reasons Bernie Madoff was able to get away with his Ponzi for so long
Finally, the industries that these agencies are supposed to police are incredibly profitable and, like the SEC, as soon as new protections are put in place to protect the public, the industry immediately starts to systematically dismantle it.
The point is that even if we get an agency to protect our data, its unlikely to be effective, and not for long.
We need a new system to protect the public….
.
17
@SMcStormy Maybe we just need the old system back. You know, the one that actually did the job the law required them to do and staff the agency adequately and with competent people who know something of what they do — not the temp workers Trump insists work as well.
4
I applaud any effort to reign in the power of so-called 'Big Data", but the notion that the government protects our food is suspect. What it really protects is the makers of food from liability in the event of illness, and then, to a far greater extent, it protects those producers from other kinds of danger, such as competition. The use of antibiotics in livestock has put the entire world at risk, but I can get arrested for selling raw milk cheeses that are available all over Europe. Do I really need protection from Camembert and Prosciutto?
What agency has overseen the nearly one million deaths from opioid abuse in the past few decades? It's called the FDA, which stands for Food AND Drug Administration. Their role in these two related areas of health is one of the great scandals of our nation. If Government oversight is going to protect us from Google's algorithms , we'd better look elsewhere for a model.
And, while I'm here, the use of the phrase "financial products" in reference to legal bank schemes, piracy, and outright fraud, is laughable. Or are the banksters still pretending that they produce something? The only 'product' of most of these scams is the Lamborghini in the driveways of their $10,000,000 homes.
4
I thought the government WAS protecting our data. Isn't that what the gigantic data storage facility in Utah owned by the NSA is for?
/snark
Government has been working WITH these companies to collect data on us. Who was the guy at the CIA that said Facebook provided data that the CIA could never have come up with on their own?
Who created the backdoors - hardware and software - that allows access to pretty much anything?
I wonder how much of the information collected is being used by intelligence insiders to boost their retirement savings? Nobody ever collected on those airline trades made just before 9/11 but how many trades are made based on intercepted corporate e-mails and such? You've got people passing around intercepted naked photos... you really think ANYTHING is private?
12
@cynicalskeptic
I was thinking the same thing!
Recital 14 of the European Union General Data Protection Regulation states:
"The protection afforded by this Regulation should apply to natural persons, whatever their nationality or place of residence, in relation to the processing of their personal data."
That means this law applies to Americans who have visited any EU country since the law went into effect on May 25, 2018 and used the internet while they were there.
Privacy concerns with Facebook etc. after you have stopped using them? Send a letter saying you want all your data deleted and no longer collected in any way, sent by trackable mail to Zuckerberg and all members of the board of directors. Mention any disabilities you may have, which additionally brings the matter under state and federal disability law. Give them 30 days from receipt of the letter to comply. If they don't, sue.
5
There's a visious cycle at work here. Facebook provides Cambridge Analytica with detailed psychological profiles of a majority of voters. Carefully targeted ads and misinformation result in the upset victory of a wildly unqualified, pro-corporate, anti-consumer chief executive, whose government will only transfer more agency from citizens to corporations and allow even more abuses of data. If this isn't stopped soon, it will be too late.
22
@Andy It may already be too late. People in the Midwest continue to think DT can walk on water and that his phone calls aren’t extortion for personal gain and that his Party knows all about morals and ethics except how to call out anti-Constitutional behavior when it smacks them in the mouth and assaults their eyes and ears. And they’ll tell you:it’s all good.
1
The government doesn't want to protect your data because they want your data too.
30
The Chinese model of total control from total surveillance seems to be in vogue. Not good.