Ancora sullo Stato di sorveglianza, e cosa si può imparare, al
contrario, dall'esperienza dell'Estonia, per impedire che la massiccia
raccolta di dati sui cittadini sfoci in abusi di vario tipo:
...
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was sold to the
American people as a cost-cutting initiative. Instead, it is clearly
something far more sinister: a sprawling data-harvesting operation
that threatens the constitutional foundations for American
democracy.(...)
The end-game is reportedly a "master database" combining information
from the Social Security Administration (SSA), Internal Revenue
Service (IRS), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and health
agencies, as well as voting records. As a senior DHS official told
the tech news publication, Wired, “[t]hey are trying to amass a
huge amount of data. It has nothing to do with finding fraud or
wasteful spending.”
Meanwhile, key offices that had protected against data misuse have
been gutted, including DHS's Office for Civil Rights and Civil
Liberties (CRCL). While this is horrifying enough, it is, evidently,
just the beginning. When combined with data from private brokers that
sell information on us and our online habits, the amount of
information available for government misuse is staggering.
...This is particularly insidious because the government is playing
gotcha with data provided by individuals and families in good faith.
Housing assistance applications, tax filings, and health records were
submitted for a single purpose under specific legal frameworks. Now
they are being used against them, without consent.
When the government can track where you go, whom you associate with,
and what you spend your money on, it violates the Fourth Amendment. It
also chills First Amendment freedom of expression, undermines your
freedom to travel, and destroys what Justice Louis Brandeis famously
called “the right to be left alone” — the fundamental privacy
right that underlies American liberty.
...
The advent of artificial intelligence to analyze reams of data
brings further risk that conclusions will be biased, inaccurate, or
uninformed by context. We have already seen how the ridiculous
attempts to track DOGE’s cost-cutting bore no relationship to
budgetary reality. But even when it is effective, AI in the hands of
a weaponized government could be dangerous, enabling governments to
micro-target highly persuasive messages to sell their preferred
policies.
...
We can meet this moment by looking to democracies abroad that have
found workable solutions. Surprisingly, Estonia, often called the
world's most digitally advanced democracy, built its government
infrastructure around the principle that citizens control their data
in response to its experience with autocracy. Every Estonian has a
digital identity that allows them to access government services
securely, and can see who accessed their information, when, and why.
Government agencies are barred from sharing data without explicit
citizen consent or a court order.
Estonia proves that efficient government and strong privacy
protections are not mutually exclusive. While imperfect, their system
processes everything from voting to tax filing with stringent
safeguards and citizen oversight. Most importantly, its data
architecture is designed to prevent mass surveillance.
Privacy technologies also offer solutions. For example, computers
can be trained to perform calculations on encrypted data without ever
decrypting it. Another system, called multi-party computation, allows
multiple agencies to analyze data while keeping the information
secure. Government systems should be built with "privacy by design,"
embedding basic protections in the technology.
Strong legal frameworks are needed as well. Both data minimization
requirements and purpose limitations would ensure that agencies can
collect information only when necessary and that the government
cannot repurpose data to adversely affect people. Everyone should
also have a right to know when their data is being used, and for what
purpose, and be empowered to seek redress for privacy violations.
While we await an opportunity for reforms at the federal level, state
constitutions and laws could be a critical new bulwark against abuses
by the federal government.
The American people never voted for a surveillance state. The truth
is now unavoidable: data privacy and ownership are fundamental
preconditions for a functioning democracy.L'articolo completo è qui:
https://www.techpolicy.press/the-new-surveillance-state-why-data-privacy-is-now-essential-to-democracy/
Ciao,
Federico
***
http://www.forbes.com/sites/federicoguerrini/
