I recognize that, in this modern world, there is so much we have to care about. Immigration, criminal reform, voting laws, Palestine, the food we eat- it’s just a lot. And unfortunately, one of the costs of being well informed is that you’re just stressed out a lot. But we all cannot collectively check out. Anything and everything will be perverted to extract the maximum amount of capital if we don’t keep on top of lawmakers.
Exhibit A: privacy laws.
When you shop online, data gets collected about your shopping habits. It may be getting sold to other companies. Those companies are not collecting this data out of a love for the humanities; they are doing it to figure out how to manipulate it to make more money. We see that now with surveillance pricing; it uses bought and sold data to figure out the best way to get more money out of people.
I cannot wait for judgments to come out about the legality of surveillance pricing. I think about how you can’t charge quadruple the cost for groceries after an emergency/natural disaster in most states because laws prevent that. It’s understood that it’s wrong to prey on people’s vulnerabilities. To me, surveillance pricing echoes the same moral hazard as raising costs when there’s food scarcity.
We need to be massively skeptical of why companies want our data and what it is they intend to do with it. It is all intended to generate profit, and things are already bad enough as it is. The more information companies have, the more they can fine-tune their technique to get as much money out of you as they can.
There’s also a rise in people filming content. That’s nothing too new, but the way it’s being done has been (somewhat) revolutionized with the introduction of the Ray-Ban Meta glasses. I wrote an article about why I think the public backlash against them is a bit misguided. The main point is that the issue is not the technology; it’s a lack of regulation. One concern about the glasses was that they would lead to a “surveillance state.” I think that’s a tad dramatic, but it wouldn’t hurt to write a lawmaker to ensure laws/regulations are in place to limit how the footage can be used. That also falls under privacy laws.
I think many people don’t fully realize the broad implications of privacy law. Honestly, I didn’t either for a long time. My attitude was, “Whatever, I’m not hiding anything.” But it goes beyond that. You want to be sure that your info isn’t being weaponized against you for economic gain. You should be sure a standard of security and ethics is met when technology poses a risk of nefarious surveillance. Also, (because this is the one that usually makes necks snap to attention), it would also be the area of law that protects how often your data gets leaked, including your PornHub login and dating profiles.
It took me a very expensive law degree to learn to care about privacy law. Take the information I learned there for free.