Privacy is not a Tech thing. It’s a people thing.
Testimony of Em Burnett to the Maine Energy, Utilities, and Technology Committee
In Support of LD 946 (An Act to Protect the Privacy of Online Customer Information)
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
To Senator Lawrence, Representative Berry the members of the Joint Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities, and Technology:
I’m here to testify on my own behalf in support of LD 946.
I come as someone who cares about the equitable access of information. I am a civic technology advocate and someone whose livelihood is made on the internet. I founded a group called OpenMaine, a local Code for America brigade that works to create better & more equitable civic technology systems and I serve on Code for America’s National Advisory Council. We oversee more than 70 grassroots civic technology groups across the country. I grew up in Springvale and currently reside in Portland.
State-run websites in Maine, and their relative inaccessibility, illustrate a value that we too often find to be true with technology. Technology is someone else’s job. Regulating, improving and building tech — even though it has deep, intimate effects on all of us — is the purview of federal regulators or the sole job of big tech companies or huge civic software vendors.
Protecting internet privacy is not solely a “tech” thing. It is a people thing.
The state of the internet in 2019 looks quite a bit different than it did even 5 years ago. We are in a dangerous and unregulated state of internet access, privacy, and rights. Monopolies like Facebook routinely violate user privacy. The activities of the Facebooks and the Googles of the world have the collective effect of weakening our individual liberties and eroding our trust in modern communication vehicles. We are not humans and people worthy of dignity, respect, or protection from these giants. We are nothing more than the sum of our data parts, a million pieces yet to be harvested.
ISPs want in on this game. Aside from the argument that “Facebook and Google are doing it, too” — why does my ISP need to sell any and all of my information? I refer to the FCC rules that were struck down by House Republicans last May. The rollback of FCC rules means ISPs can and quite likely are selling our data, right now. The phone in your pocket could be taking everything you are doing today — your text messages, your location data, your emails and browser searches — and selling it as a part of a marketing “profile” to marketers.
Privacy legislation at the state level is needed, and I urge your support for LD 946. Vague commitments and platitudes about supporting privacy rights mean nothing without this state-level law passed. Absent federal action, this is the least we can and must do on the state level to protect the privacy of our residents because I, like you, see our residents as people and not just as pieces of data.
Thank you.
Em Burnett
Links: (Your browsing data may or may not be harvested and sold while you are visiting these websites)
http://bit.do/ISPprivacy >> “Five Creepy Things Your ISP Could Do if Congress Repeals the FCC’s Privacy Protections” Electronic Frontier Foundation
http://bit.do/voteYESLD946 >> “Privacy, Security,and Digital Inequality” Data & Society Report
http://bit.do/passLD946 >> House Votes To Allow Internet Service Providers To Sell, Share Your Personal Information, Consumer Reports
http://bit.do/LD946 >> “The $24 Billion Data Business That Telcos Don’t Want to Talk About” Ad Age
