I have no desire to scare the pants off of you, so I won’t belabor the threat too much. However, thousands of companies use digital tracking to monitor, analyze, and influence the lives of billions of people. They continuously share and trade digital profiles about you. This occurs in the background and is invisible to you.
Much can be inferred about you from web searches, browsing histories, video viewing behaviors, social media activities, and purchases. This includes sensitive personal attributes such as ethnicity, religious and political views, relationship status, sexual orientation, and alcohol, cigarette, and drug use. Data collectors can predict personality traits such as emotional stability, life satisfaction, depression, and sensationalist interest. Exploitation of your data directly affects your available choices in highly consequential areas such as finance, insurance, and health care. And the data collected or inferred about you may be just plain wrong. It’s often impossible to locate, review and correct bad data.
The U.S. Federal Government purchases your data from commercial companies, bypassing restrictions in privacy law and regulation.
Foreign governments are increasing influence operations activities. The Rand Corporation defines influence operations as “the collection of tactical information about an adversary as well as the dissemination of propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent.” In the minds of some foreign intelligence agencies, you are a citizen of an adversary and a target to be influenced to their advantage.
Given these threats, you must take deliberate action to protect your privacy or you will lose it.
If you wish to explore these threats further, a great deal of information is available on digital surveillance. The Great Courses are an excellent source of information. I recommend “Taking Control of Your Personal Data” by Jennifer Golbeck, “Privacy, Property, and Free Speech: Law and the Constitution” by Jeffrey Rosen, and “The Surveillance State: Big Data, Freedom, and You” by Paul Rosenzweig.
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/
Bruce Schneier is a public-interest technologist, a Harvard Kennedy School fellow and lecturer, and a member of the board of the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF). He has written extensively on security and privacy. I recommend “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World.” Mr. Schneier has an excellent blog and a monthly newsletter that I’ve followed for years. His website is:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, the EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development. Their website has a lot of good information. You will find it at:
As we begin our journey together, while I encourage you to become more informed, I caution you not to focus too much on the threat. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless. This can lead to inaction. Instead, use this knowledge to motivate yourself to take action. Control what is within your power to control. And having first taken action to improve your own privacy and security posture, then add your voice to those advocating for law and regulation that better protects your privacy rights and those of your fellow citizens.
Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.