Digital privacy is the political issue of our time
In the past few days, two major political events occurred in the world of Big Tech and digital privacy. First, bending to U.S. export laws and sanctions, Github has confirmed that it has blocked users from Iran, Syria, and Crimea. As a result, some developers in affected regions woke up to find that they have lost access to repositories and services without any prior warning. Second, Forbes reported today that WhatsApp may be implementing government surveillance technology on user devices, in effect bypassing WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption.
Both of these events are turning up the volume on an ever-growing set of issues around personal digital privacy and the intrusion of inter-government competition into the digital domain at the expense of users.
In my opinion, there are only two outcomes to the so-called “debate” around personal digital privacy: either we choose a world in which our personal data is protected as a matter of basic human rights, similar to the the doctrine of free speech. Or, we will all eventually live in an authoritarian surveillance state akin to the sci-fi film Captive State or George Orwell’s novel 1984.
What we see consistently in the political arena is that Big Tech companies, driven mainly by business considerations, have little incentive or desire to withstand government assaults on the personal digital privacy rights of their users. Instead traditional, centralized companies like Microsoft-backed Github fold to government pressure without much ado or — as in the case of Facebook — proactively work toward surveillance state technologies.
Luckily, there are alternatives to handing over all of our data to centralized companies and surveillance-seeking governments. Decentralized data projects like 3Box and decentralized platforms like Ethereum or BlockStack create legally-compliant solutions for storing, accessing, and securing individual data by eschewing centralized control. The effect of storing data in “interdiction-resistant” networks is that it delegates compliance to the edges, as an issue to be worked out directly between users and governments, instead of creating massive and far-reaching negative externalities by co-opting communication networks themselves. This keeps digital networks politically neutral public utilities, the way it should be.
If you use digital technologies, please fight for your digital freedom. Support end-to-end encryption. Support privacy-enabling technologies and decentralized networks. Fight corporate capitulation to surveillance governments. And, most importantly, support legislation that protects the personal digital privacy rights of users worldwide, regardless of their jurisdiction.
