Last week my wife’s car e-mailed me.
Each month I get four pages of data on mileage, oil life, major systems performance, tire pressure (that left rear rolls one pound below its siblings), along with links to recalls and “programs.” The On-Star® connection constantly monitors her car, always knowing where she’s at and what she’s doing.
My iPhone knows where I am. And, despite throwing-out cookies and history regularly, my computer, iPad and phone leak.
For example, I recently searched for dress pants. The ad space on websites now offer me Ralph Lauren wool-mix dress slacks, classic Dockers and affordable custom tailoring.
And, while it’s amusing to get e-mails from the Market Conservative and Dr. Kelli Ward for U.S. Senate (talking to “conservative voters like you and me…”), those wingnut missives remind me that none of us has any privacy on the World Wide Web. Every search, every social media read gets noted, catalogued and sold.
John Reese: I never understood why people put all their information on those sites. Used to make our job easier at the CIA.
Harold Finch: Of course, that’s why I created them.
Reese: You’re telling me you invented online social networking, Finch?
Finch: The Machine needed more information. People’s social graph, their associations. The government had been trying to figure it out for years. Turns out most people were happy to volunteer it. Business wound up being quite profitable too.
“Person Of Interest” episode, Identity Crisis, 2012
While “Person Of Interest” was a TV show, well, how fictional does an all-seeing government surveillance effort sound in the age of Trump?
Yesterday a picture of a TSA agent holding a 20 pound live lobster filled the web. [ http://boston.cbslocal.com/2017/06/26/lobster-logan-airport/ ] Triggered by a TSA Tweet, the amusing story actually documented yet another example of government overreach: the lobster was legal, checked luggage. While the TSA probably had probable cause to investigate after the lobster went through their x-ray, did they have the right to show the world the contents of an airline passenger’s suitcase? Would people have chuckled if that mustached government employee held up a teenage age girl’s underwear for Twitter?
Each day greater portions of our lives get caught by unseen algorithms. Each day it becomes a tad harder to exercise that most American of traits, the right to be ignored.
Now, it’s hard to get toothpaste back in the tube – but not impossible.
Back in 2012 part of my campaign platform called for a formal, delineated Right to Privacy amendment to the United States Constitution. I proposed that we own ourselves, that commercial data specifically linked to an American cannot be sold or shared without the citizen’s permission. While I believe Missouri and the other states have a need to know who is driving cars – and carrying concealed weapons – what information states keep ought to be limited. And, obviously, the federal government can’t collect limitless data on law-abiding Americans nor can it offer corners of our lives up for public amusement.
More than the dignity of a 20 pound lobster is at stake: do you ever wonder if, in some dark room, eyes peer at a screen, laughing at where you are?
Submitted by Glenn Koenen, WCD Member