Description:

Privacy is a human right and, moreover, it is essential to the exercise of other human rights. Our ability to control what governments know about us and when they know it, is essential to our well-being, our safety, and our ability to participate fully in society both online and off. We are also increasingly in need of protections for personally identifiable data used by private companies that take into account all human rights. Nevertheless, and despite decades of governments, civil society, and technology experts raising the alarm, the data practices of technology companies and data brokers are of increasing concern. Data brokers purchase data from apps on mobile devices, including precise location information and sell it to governments around the world. Facial recognition technology is being used to track the movements of dissidents, journalists, researchers, and activists. Large technology companies collect information about their users not just on their services, but across the internet. This data is then used to power algorithms that are designed to maximize capturing users’ attention to generate advertising profit.

But other online spaces have found success without using privacy-invasive tactics and technologies to operate their services. The Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, does not track its users and allows people to edit its projects without ever creating an account. The Foundation is a non-profit that operates in the public interest, engages in strong data minimization practices and does not sell its user data. Web browsers like DuckDuckGo also do not engage in user-tracking, but still manage to operate a successful business. And secure messaging apps like Signal provide total privacy for their users’ end-to-end encrypted communications.

The GDPR and ePrivacy were two of the first steps taken by government toward ensuring privacy protections for users of internet-based services, but some would argue that they did not go far enough in some cases to rein in harmful practices or create confidence that people could engage safely and equitably in the free exchange of knowledge online. The failure to truly restrict harmful uses of data and to create meaningful privacy protections for users of online services has significant consequences, as does a lack of harmonization surrounding the ways in which certain provisions can interact with the freedom of information. Data gathered can be used to track people that seek abortions where such procedures are illegal. It can be used to track journalists reporting on war crimes or human rights violations. Furthermore, knowledge that online activities truly are not private can create a chilling effect for online engagement, discouraging participation in the sharing of information by marginalized groups that society needs to hear from the most.

This session will examine some of the new data protections in the DSA and DMA. It will also discuss how privacy-protective platform practices encourage their users to engage more freely with their services and allow more equitable participation in online spaces and how privacy protections can accommodate the equally important freedom of information. Finally, the session will discuss what more governments and companies should be doing to protect privacy online and how those additional protections will benefit the movement for free knowledge, equitable access to and participation in the exchange of information. and increase the global store of knowledge.