A Guide to US Privacy Law

A Guide to US Privacy Law

In a technologically driven society, it is becoming increasingly easier for information to be transferred from computer to computer, and from person to person, so the concept of privacy is always being questioned. People upload their personal information to social media websites, to chat rooms and websites. All online information that is stored online runs the risk of being accessed by other people, regardless of how much security is protecting the information. Privacy is something that should be granted to everybody, but where does privacy end and a need for legal intervention begin? To what extent is data transparency there to protect people, and to what extent is it an infringement on their human rights? Here is the big legal debate that has been circulating the US over the past couple of years…

Big data vs. privacy:

Companies across the US will have an even greater obligation to protect the personal information that is in trusted to them, regardless of how it is processed after the US internet privacy law was repealed. This means that US internet providers do not need the consent of their users to share their browsing history with third parties, government officials and advertisers.

This decision has caused mass debate up and down the United States, with arguments claiming that this decision regarding the legislation is too intrusive. In the coming years, the US is expected to elaborate on their use of big data, and capitalise on the information they find. The data and volumes we have at our fingertips is now going to being processed and actioned with practical experimentations. By 2021, it’s been estimated that the big data market will reach $66.8 billion.

Security issues:

As internet browsers and third party businesses are looking to capitalize on this, consumers and internet users are becoming much more wary of how their browsing history and data is being used, as there has been an increasing number of high profile, damaging data breaches that have been brought to light and are continuing to make the headlines. In order to protect the privacy of the user, there needs to be a balance between profit and privacy.

The House of Representatives has voted to repeal the privacy law, which offered a level of protection and anonymity to internet users. Now that this legislation has been revoked, there is no protection against the protection of an individual’s online personal data, including the location of the user and Internet Service Providers (ISP) are free to share this information with third parties.

The revoking of this legislation means that ISPs will be able to share everything from the “precise Geo location, health and financial information, information regarding children, social security numbers, browsing history and the content of communications” without prior permission for the user. Critics have warned that this will have a chilling outcome.

Concerns have also been raised about this perspective, and an industry specialist has revealed that big data distributed systems only have a single level of protection from hackers. This could result in an unregulated and unwanted breach of data in the future, as non-relational databases are actively evolving, which makes it harder for security solutions to keep up with their advancement.

So, looking forward to the future, it will be interesting to see how this information is cultivated and how it is used. Will global data transparency help to keep the world a safer place, and how will security measures be intensified to ensure that data is being used in the right way, by the right people. Unfortunately, we are currently living in the speculatory stages and only time and actions will indicate whether this change in legislation has been a positive one.