Read this article by Joseph Stiglitz (see bio below) in Project Syndicate about the nascent steps to protect data privacy in the US. In February 2024, the Biden administration published an executive order to ban the transfer of “certain types “sensitive personal” data to some countries.
This is a drop in the ocean and the US is way behind in terms of protecting their citizens’ data from being exploited by the players in the data economy (compared to the EU for example). However, it is probably the beginning of a trend toward increased protection against a predatory system that has created too many anti competitive practices and social harms to be listed here. Admittedly, the US is walking on eggshells because regulating the digital seems directly at odd with the US competitive advantage in this domain.
“The firms that make money from our data (including personal medical, financial, and geolocation information) have spent years trying to equate “free flows of data” with free speech. They will try to frame any Biden administration public-interest protections as an effort to shut down access to news websites, cripple the internet, and empower authoritarians. That is nonsense.”
Over the past 20-25 years, the narrative about digital technology has been consistently driven by Big Tech to hide the full extent of what was really happening. The idealistic beliefs of democratisation, equality, friendship, connection from the early internet served as a smokescreen to the development of a behemoth fundamentally exploitative data industry that pervades all areas of the economy and society.
Today, large tech monopolies use indirect ways to try to quash attempts to change the status quo and counter Big Tech abuses.
“Tech companies know that if there is an open, democratic debate, consumers’ concerns about digital safeguards will easily trump concerns about their profit margins. Industry lobbyists thus have been busy trying to short-circuit the democratic process. One of their methods is to press for obscure trade provisions aimed at circumscribing what the United States and other countries can do to protect personal data.“
The article details previous attempts to ban any possible provisions preventing executive and congressional power over data regulation and establish special clauses in trade pacts to grant secrecy rights (an ironic state of affairs considering that the early Internet was developed on exactly opposite values). It is important to realise that most efforts are spent on surreptitious (INDIRECT) ways to limit any possibility of regulation through trade agreements for example, what Stiglitz calls “Big Tech’s favoured “digital trade” handcuffs“.
Stiglitz concluding remark reminds us that the stakes are high: ultimately, the choices made today have the potential to impact the democratic order.
“Whatever one’s position on the regulation of Big Tech – whether one believes that its anti-competitive practices and social harms should be restricted or not – anyone who believes in democracy should applaud the Biden administration for its refusal to put the cart before the horse. The US, like other countries, should decide its digital policy democratically. If that happens, I suspect the outcome will be a far cry from what Big Tech and its lobbyists were pushing for.“
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, is a former chief economist of the World Bank (1997-2000), chair of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and co-chair of the High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices. He is Co-Chair of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation and was lead author of the 1995 IPCC Climate Assessment.