We no longer have privacy..

This week’s reading is “US agencies buy vast quantities of personal information on the open market – a legal scholar explains why and what it means for privacy in the age of AI”  by Anne Toomey McKenna. Just from reading the first few paragraphs it was clear to me that the 4th Amendment right to privacy has a loophole. The article says that the 4th amendment protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures which includes digital searches. This requires a warrant. Although there is some sort of loophole that suggests, “Commercially available information is cheaper to obtain, provides far richer data and analysis, and is subject to little oversight or restriction compared to when the same data is collected directly by the government”. So, we are faced with a law that “Protects” us from invasion of privacy but if the data is collected and sold, that is fine. The article also follows up by saying that the government gets a lot of power by having bought this data. Which ultimately makes just opening my laptop for an assignment seem terrifying. The government can collect data from a google search or see your appointment at an abortion clinic, and then prosecute you for having an illegal abortion. Data collection is digging a deep hole, and we are all falling into it. Hence making it so much harder to come out of this deep hole. 

Alexa, the spy

On the topic of collecting data, McKenna’s article made me curious about AI and smart home devices. I found an article called “ The Data Games: What Amazon Knows about You and How to Stop It” by Kate O’Flaherty. To summarize the article, Flaherty discusses how Alexa and Amazon home collect the data of all of your orders, any questions you ask the device, or even where the package is being sent to. It is said that, “If you are concerned about what Amazon knows about you, you can ask the company for a copy of your data by applying under a “data subject access request”. To me it’s not a complete solution, more of a recognition that we know our data is being collected, let’s just see what they’ve found. Which I have noticed greatly when being faced with the question of “What can we do to stop this”.