One of the most powerful provisions of the Bill of Rights is our right to remain protected against unreasonable searches and seizures by police.
Unfortunately, as technology advances, the line defining what police can and cannot take from you has been muddied.
Which is why dangerous new laws that give police the power to invade private aspects of your life are very concerning.
We now live in an age where every movement and detail of our lives can be captured by the largest collectors of data to have ever existed – big technology companies.
And recently passed laws make it so that police can access an almost unlimited amount of private data about you without your consent.
From the pictures on your phone, to records of people who have visited your home in the last 24 hours.
And it was recently revealed that the terms of service of many of these tech companies play right into the hands of big government by providing legal loopholes allowing police to scour every bit of digital data they have on you.
For instance, data from the video doorbell service known as Ring (owned by Amazon) – which records who comes and goes at your place of residence – can now be given to police uncontested.
In fact, the makers of Ring even made a “special portal that allows them to communicate with and request video from community residents.”
Strictly speaking, the police are supposed to ask Ring users if they can access video footage. However, if they decline, police can ask Ring for portal access and attain data in that way.
Even worse is no probable cause is required.
As Ring explains in their terms of service, it’s at the discretion of Ring and law enforcement to decide when a person’s private data no longer belongs to them and can be accessed under the guise of public safety.
Of course, the police insist the public should have no problem with this.
As Tony Botti, an employee at Fresno County sheriff’s office, said in an interview over police access to Ring data, “The consumer knows what they’re getting into… If you’re a good upstanding person who is doing things lawfully, nobody has concerns.”
Every year, new privacy policies are written in the most convoluted legalese to correspond with what these companies and the government can do with your data.
In most cases, their policies work with new laws that make your data as much as the government’s as it is yours.
That’s a huge issue – one most people aren’t even aware of.
Nila Bala, who serves as the associate director of criminal justice and civil liberties at the R Street Institute, insists this is dangerous. Worse is Bala maintains most people are ignorant of what they do with your data.
She commented on the frightening breach in 4th Amendment protections, saying, “I think right now people assume they own all their data. [They] don’t realize the reach that private companies and law enforcement have on their information.”
Almost all tech companies have privacy policies in place that say they limit data-sharing. However, almost all of them are written with legal trap doors that allow them to share data with authorities (and at your expense).
Sometimes companies will say they require a warrant or subpoena before they’ll turn data over. But in almost every instance, they won’t refuse to keep data out of the prying hands of the government if it’s in the name of “public safety.”
Bala insists technology companies need to be held responsible for their actions. Consumers need to know what they’re signing up for and understand their data is vulnerable and that tech-companies should be more protective of data.
And ultimately, the government needs to be honest about what they’re doing with any data the companies give them.
As Bala said, “We should demand that our government follow best practices for collecting, storing, and destroying data, during and after investigations.”
Keeping data out of the government’s hands will be hard.
At present, only three states have laws in place requiring the police to get a warrant before requesting data.
As you can see, things are skewed towards government policy and away from individual liberty. And it will only get worse before it gets better.