AP Report: NSA-Silicon Valley Struggle Centers on Profit That User Data Generates

The Snowden leaks revealed the global reach and evisceration of personal privacy the American military-tech complex routinely conducts. While Silicon Valley's highest profile search and social media firms have cried "foul" over the NSA's stunning data mining and analysis activities, these libertarian entrepreneurs are reticent to come clean about the depth and relentlessness of their collection of personal data. Of course, the money and power firms such as Google (yes, thanks for Blogger), Facebook, and Amazon now command should make one pause. However, few media outlets feel any urge to upset these data titans. (To this day, some major media outlets continue to identity data-driven Amazon's principal business as a retail concern, as if Jeff Bezos' ambition is simply to open an online version of The Home Depot.)

An Associated Press article appearing in today's siliconvalley.com attempts to illuminate certain truths animating the NSA-Silicon Valley struggle. AP reporters Michael Liedtke's and Marcy Gordon's useful piece gets to the heart of the matter: profit. The NSA's "violation of trust," according to the piece, has upset the Valley's expansion plans into emerging nations and their economies. Oops. Now nations such as Brazil are now at least publicly determined to keep close the data its citizens generate. Meanwhile, the Valley's lustful data expropriation and exploitation, along with its trumpeting of the virtues of "sharing," has produced a 21st Century version of colonialism that must certainly rub formerly colonized nations a very wrong way.

Facebook server farm in Sweden

The stakes are high for the Valley. As the AP story noted, countries in addition to Brazil "and international regulators are considering strict rules for data-handling by U.S. tech companies. If that were to happen, it could cripple the companies' crucial drive to grow in overseas markets, and could fracture the Internet's seamless inner-workings."

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FTC Member's "Reclaim Your Name" Campaign

Julie Brill
(Image: law.columbia.edu)

FTC member Julie Brill has shown plenty of chutzpah in her efforts to start a campaign on behalf of an individual's right to their own data. It's been a lonely fight, with very powerful forces aligned to stop any such movement in its tracks. The New York Times showed Ms. Brill a little love by running a brief story about her efforts on behalf of citizens and privacy rights.

Data rights are a dicey issue that the tech world, the "wired" media, and online-dependent businesses really doesn't like to discuss. Brill deserves credit for trying to shine a light on practices many enterprises would prefer kept in the shadows and its suckers in the dark.

Who Owns the Data Your Car's Computer Collects?

Most cars of recent vintage include data collecting computers. The items of curiosity might include, among other items, whether a driver's seat belt was used, the vehicle's rate of speed, or application of brakes. The owners of the vehicles do not have access to this data. It is the private preserve of automobile manufacturers.

According to an AP story appearing in siliconvalley.com, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration "proposed long-delayed regulations requiring auto manufacturers to include event data recorders -- better known as "black boxes" -- in all new cars and light trucks beginning Sept. 1, 2014." Not only that, the NHTSA has proposed adding 30 new data points for collection.

Ironically, Detroit and its automotive peers in Japan, Germany, and South Korea have inserted the devices in their products for years.

As the AP article noted, "There's no opt-out. It's extremely difficult for car owners to disable the recorders." Privacy advocates on the left and the right (yes, liberals, there are many conservatives who care quite deeply about privacy issues) are concerned about this no-choice approach. The question of data ownership emerges here: after all, a purchased car belongs to its owner. Presumably, the data generated by the car should belong to the person or entity on the auto's title.

Privacy, data ownership, and data usage remain important issues. If content yearns to be free, data begs to be owned. Don't forget: it's your data.