The public is finally waking up to the nightmare that is the digital surveillance economy, writes DavidZMorris. Experts say policy reform is the best solution — but investors are also betting big on new privacy services. PrivacyWeek
a sweeping proposal from its predecessor that would have required crypto exchanges to verify the identities behind crypto wallets their customers transacted with. Still, Yellen’s recurring case of legislative foot-in-mouth disease betrays a strange and disturbing openness to testing the boundaries of the right to privacy enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Similar impulses have gone even further outside the U.S.
“That’s why we’re very much in favor of federal privacy legislation,” said Samir Jain, policy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology “That legislation should have protections that don’t involve paying money, but are basic rights applying to everyone … regardless of your ability to pay.”
At the state level, California, Colorado, and Virginia have enacted broad privacy regulations, some modeled on Europe’s data protection act, GDPR . The appearance of a patchwork of state laws can sometimes make federal regulation nearly inevitable, as the regulated companies themselves eventually start wishing for simple uniformity. Unfortunately, according to many experts, companies often aim to subvert the process by proposing intentionally toothless legislation.
One of the most important would close a major loophole in data available to the federal government. There are, at least in theory, strict limits on the government’s freedom to surveil its citizens. The protections against “unreasonable search and seizure” in the Fourth Amendment were expanded and clarified by a 1967 Supreme Court case to include electronic communications.