SOCIAL MEDIA: FREEDOM OR CHAINS, VOICE OR PUPPET MASTER?

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, apologized for the Cambridge Analytica scandal with ads in multiple U.S. and British newspapers, and in an interview with CNN, saying the social media platform does not deserve to hold personal information if it cannot protect it.

The ads said a quiz app built by a Cambridge University researcher leaked Facebook data of millions of people four years ago. “This was a breach of trust, and I’m sorry we didn’t do more at the time. We’re now taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” the ads said. During his interview with CNN, Mark Zuckerberg suggested the question was not whether Facebook should be regulated so much as how best to do it.

Facebook’s privacy practices have come under fire after Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm affiliated with President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, obtained data inappropriately. The firm is alleged to have created psychological profiles to influence how people vote or even think about politics and society through micro-targeting of thousands (if not millions) of Facebook subscribers.

According to data from the FEC, the Trump campaign paid Cambridge Analytica nearly $6 million for services during the 2016 election cycle. Seventeen other Republican political organizations, including Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign and a super PAC headed by incoming National Security Adviser John Bolton, also paid the firm a combined $16 million for services that included research and micro-targeting of voters.

As social media becomes part of life and often an extension of our thoughts, it is time to question whether it is a tool to enhance or restrict our rights. Furthermore, now our concerns must go beyond governmental acts and extend to the actions of private parties who may use social networks for a profit or to influence us by exploiting our personal information.

Social networks implicate our right to free speech but also our right to privacy. To be clear, most rights are not absolute, and neither the right to free speech nor the right to privacy is an absolute right. The right to free speech means that we are allowed to express ourselves without interference or constraint by the government, and that the government can limit both the content of speech and the ability to engage in speech only when there is “substantial justification.”

Likewise, our right to privacy is not absolute, and governments can intrude into our right to privacy to protect society. However, governments generally have had to justify their intrusions in our privacy to achieve the higher goal of protecting society and have had to make use of legally mandated due process safeguards, such as obtaining a wiretap warrant to listen to our private conversations. This is no longer the case with social networks being given direct access to our information and even our most intimate thoughts, which they may then exploit for their own benefit or simply lose track—as in the Cambridge Analytica example.

We might think that social networks allow us to express ourselves in ways that we could not before, and to do it anonymously. But how much of what we post on social networks is private? How much of our information is used for profit? How much control do we even have over our data on social networks? Will social networks provide greater freedom for people to express ourselves and our thoughts, or will they turn out to be a weapon that allows our governments and even private agents to control and monitor our communications?  More importantly, how much of what we think is determined by what’s posted on social media? How much are we being influenced by our online social networks?

These are all questions that as a society we must consider to be able to maintain our individual freewill. The alternative would result if a society where we become puppets of our social media accounts.

 

 

THE FEAR OF CYBER ATTACKS, THE GOVERNMENT, AND THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY

In response to a series of major data breaches at US companies in recent months including Sony, Anthem and Target, President Obama unveiled a series of cyber security proposals in his last State of the Union address in January. Obama followed up on this declaration of intent by signing a new executive order during the Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection organized by the White House at Stanford University in February.

Obama’s executive order encourages the development of Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations (“ISAOs”), providing legal-liability protection to make it easier for businesses and government to share online threat data specific to their industry or geographic region. The order also increases the role of the Department of Homeland Security in the data-sharing process by permitting it to enter into agreements and coordinate the ISAOs.

Mr. Obama’s renewed focus on cyber security has been mostly welcomed by the tech industry, however, the president continues to encounter some of the same suspicions over the privacy of online data that were so effectively highlighted by the Edward Snowden revelations about the NSA in 2013. Although Cyber terrorism is a reality, the concern is that unless there is a balancing between governmental intrusion and the individual’s right to privacy, people’s rights will be violated as they have in the past.

The right to privacy has been affected previously by extraordinary events around the world such as terrorism. While society has not been willing to sacrifice individual civil liberties lightly, it has done so in circumstances where the prevalent belief was that personal security has been threatened. In recent times, surveillance regimes that have been adopted as anti-terrorism measures have had a profound, chilling effect on other fundamental human rights.

The most drastic change affecting privacy in the laws of the United States occurred in response to the 9/11 attacks, when President Bush signed into law the anti-terrorism statute titled Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism, more commonly known as the USA PATRIOT Act. Among other things, the Patriot Act expanded the wiretapping and electronic surveillance powers of federal law enforcement authorities, and increased the information-sharing powers of investigative agencies. It also allowed law enforcement to demand libraries, bookstores, and businesses to produce tangible items, such as papers, books, and records, about persons of interest, while forbidding disclosure of such a demand. It further authorized searches conducted without giving contemporaneous notice of the search or an actual warrant for the search.

At the end of 2005, an article appeared on the front page of the New York Times chronicling widespread monitoring of telephonic and Internet communications by the NSA—National Security Agency.   These intercepts occurred with the direct authorization President Bush, and were undertaken without approval or oversight by the judiciary, beginning shortly after the 9/11 terrorists attacks. This wide-ranging program targeted interception of email and telephone calls with the number of those targeted ranging from the hundreds to possibly thousands. The effect of such wholesale violation of the right to privacy caused uproar among regular citizens who thought that such governmental intrusion on their personal affairs was overreaching and unwarranted.

Acts of terrorism and a fear for our personal security have historically intersected the privacy protections recognized by governments, and at times, served to take a few steps back in the universal recognition of the right to privacy. However, the government’s unsound arguments positing that the only way to offer protection was to infringe in our right to privacy have not been successful in the long term. People have recognized the obvious flaw with the proposition that there must be a trade off between privacy and security. Our willingness to sacrifice our privacy for security has been short-lived, and eventually, the tide has had to turn back by popular demand.

Upon further reflection and discourse on the effect of excessively curtailing civil liberties, the conclusion must be that a balance between security and respect for human rights is necessary in a civilized society. The two are not mutually exclusive; it is possible to demand cyber security and the protection of the right to privacy at the same time. The government must be very careful not to institute measures that will encroach on peoples’ hard fought civil liberties. The efforts made by Obama through his new initiative must carefully be monitored so that the right to privacy of individuals is sufficiently protected both by government and private entities.