Should the government regulate the flow of information among private organizations using extreme measures?
The article by Helen Nissenbaum penetrates the data-hungry world where information is the supreme currency. Tech giants are ready to take extreme measures to collect their user’s data in the name of competition causing a serious breach of data protection. The lenient working of governmental bodies has failed as pointed by the article which leads to the fact that there is a need for a neutral governmental body which keeps an eye on these organization using extreme measures. The body should define the information that is allowed to be assessed by which private organization. For example, search engines should be limited to extract data used for indexing, organize, and locate the site. There is a need where it should properly define the actors, attributes, and transmission principles. Also, it should expect a proper report on cookies, latencies, clicks, IP addresses, and browsing histories accessed by private organizations.
One way these bodies can create fear among these tech giants by promoting media to expose and critique prevalent data tracking. Also, neutralization of power can be mean to reduce this online corruption. For example, Google owns the market share and at time oppress smaller search engines like DuckDuckGo, a track by the government could help these smaller companies grow and dilute the power leading to breaking the monopoly.
At last, I feel that in today’s fast pacing world with fickle privacy policies it’s easier for tech giants to exploit their customers. A check from a powerful governmental neutral body is a must protect the right of privacy of the naive customers who are exploited by a handful of deep experts owning these organizations.
References:
- A Contextual Approach to Privacy Online by Helen Nissenbaum
- DuckDuckGo slams Google’s Android search engine auction as ‘fundamentally flawed’ after losing to Bing By Verge https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/29/21494316/microsoft-bing-android-google-search-alternative-option-download
