Corporations have created a surveillance-driven economy, harvesting people's most sensitive data and selling it—often without consent—to unknown entities, including the government. This risks our safety, exacerbates inequality, and threatens our democracy.
Big Tech is Watching Our Every Move.
Tracking and selling our information:
Tracking systems are built into nearly every website and app, collecting information about your every click, search, and action across the web, across apps, and across devices – whether you give them consent or not.
For instance, a seemingly benign exercise app has the ability to track your every movement – including attending a political event, a place of worship, or a healthcare appointment.
Big Tech can, and does, sell that information to anyone willing to pay – and that includes the government, who can skirt Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections by purchasing your personal data from a third-party broker, without a warrant.
No company needs to collect and sell information about your daily movements. All people should have the freedom to move about without being tracked or surveilled.
Discriminating based on race and gender:
Tech giants are increasingly feeding our data to algorithms to make automated decisions about hiring, offering loans, accepting students, and more. This brings discrimination into the digital age. These proprietary algorithms can decide someone's future, and they are buried in opaque code.
Risking our safety:
The more personal information a company collects about us, the more vulnerable we are to the security risks that result from data breaches. These risks increase when companies store data for long periods, share our information with other companies, or sell our information to anyone willing to pay.
In addition to stealing something like a credit card number, which can be replaced, hackers can gain access to your most sensitive information: your biometrics.
Biometrics, such as the finger- or palm-print, are increasingly being pushed as payment methods in grocery stores like Whole Foods. Unlike a credit card number, you cannot change your biometrics. A stolen fingerprint or palm print puts you at risk for a lifetime of dangerous security risks, including identity theft.
Moreover, data collection has made it easy for the government to spy on people outside the bounds of the law, and for private actors – like hackers – to purchase personal information for nefarious use. For example, in 2020, the ACLU sued ClearView AI after it collected and sold millions of internet users’ information that some buyers then used to stalk former partners. The simple act of using the internet should never expose people to violence.
Spreading misinformation and threatening democracy:
Companies use our personal information to target us with tailored disinformation that may influence the decisions we make on a daily basis.
This rampant spread of disinformation can be used to undermine our democracy. Ten years ago, Cambridge Analytica created and sold voters’ psychological profiles to political campaigns after acquiring millions of Facebook users’ private data. That data was used to misinform voters and destabilize our democracy. Ten years later, threats like this have only grown.
It's Time to Implement Nation-Leading Privacy Protections in Maine.
Most states receive a failing grade on data privacy, but pending legislation could provide Maine's people with the strongest protections in the nation. Read more about the data privacy scorecard here.
LD 1822 would implement sensible guardrails for tech giants operating in Maine. These policies would not restrict small business owners that make Maine's economy vibrant.
Limiting Data Collection and Storage:
“Data minimization” is the limiting of the collection and use of personal information to what a consumer would expect a company to collect to provide a good or service.
When companies collect unnecessary personal information, it puts us all at risk of surveillance, discrimination, and even persecution. When you purchase a good or service, companies can collect reams of private data about your identity, health, reproductive status, political affiliation, personal interests, and more. While this data is ostensibly used to provide users with a more targeted ad experience, in the wrong hands, it can be used more nefariously. For instance: the government could purchase data to find out things like your location at a certain time on a certain day, if you attended a protest or political rally, if you’ve visited a reproductive healthcare clinic, if you own a gun, and more.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution was created to keep the government from accessing our private information without a warrant. By purchasing our data from third-party data brokers, the government can side-step these protections, effectively keeping us under constant surveillance without our consent.
Data minimization would require that companies only collect the information necessary to provide that good or service. The limiting of data collection helps keep our most private and personal information out of the hands of people who might use that information to exploit or surveil us.
Civil rights protections:
Our information is increasingly used by algorithms and AI to make decisions about us in employment, education, credit, and more. LD 1822 would make sure technology is not used to discriminate.
Safeguarding biometrics:
People must be able to protect their most sensitive information. When hackers steal your fingerprint, you cannot reset it like a password or replace it like a credit card. It cannot be undone, creating a lifelong security risk.
Looking Ahead:
In addition to the protections in LD 1822, Maine's people need avenues to hold Big Tech accountable when these tech giants break the law. We will continue fighting for Maine's people to have the right to hold Big Tech accountable in court.
