Grubaugh: With each passing day, we’ve lost a little more privacy

By DENNIS GRUBAUGH

Most people tend to agree there is no privacy in public.

Fewer agree whether we have any privacy in private.

I’m afraid our so-called “right” is fading away, if a right ever really existed at all.

People demand it, but privacy is not called for in the U.S. Constitution and certainly it’s not guaranteed in a digital society run amok. And, we’re at a time when the government is taking increasingly authoritarian measures to gain our personal information. Business, too, is complicit.

This summer offered a showcase of our national plight, most notably the July 16 Coldplay concert when a kiss cam caught a corporate exec and an underling canoodling on the venue’s jumbotron. Mortified as they appeared, they became a voyeuristic sensation (or perhaps a sin-sensation?) after it was determined that they were married but not to each other.

Thems the risks in public. Everywhere you go, doorbells, dashcams and private security systems contribute to the flow of available information, much of which should probably never see the light of day.

I remember a couple of years back when a car speeding down our street slammed into a neighborhood retaining wall. The whole thing was caught on household cameras, down to the car being towed away. The flummoxed driver was left to explain it all to the law.

Such incidents draw attention, fair or not. Misdeeds, errors in judgment, accidents and the like are constant fodder for Instagrammers and other social sensationalists.

Though not a Constitutional right, privacy has been greatly debated by the Supreme Court.

Justice Louis Brandeis once said that the right “to be let alone” is “the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.” He believed people should expect a zone of personal privacy, free from unwarranted governmental or societal intrusion.

That was in 1928, and, oh, how far we’ve come in the opposite direction. Today, government itself is one of the biggest invaders of our privacy, while businesses make millions getting in people’s business.

For years now, government agencies have gone after a wide segment of people using sophisticated measures allowed by law. Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. government engages in mass, warrantless surveillance of Americans’ and foreigners’ phone calls, text messages, emails, and other electronic communications.

Today, immigration authorities are resorting to a variety of questionable tactics to gather information on suspected illegals, many of whom have turned out to be innocent.

According to an agreement obtained by The Associated Press, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials will be given access to the personal data of the nation’s 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including home addresses and ethnicities, to track down immigrants who may not be living legally in the United States.

The information will give ICE officials the ability to find “the location of aliens” across the country, says the agreement signed between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Homeland Security.

Such tactics are being tested in the courts, but the most powerful people on earth — the current administration —prioritize policy over privacy. It’s been nigh impossible reining them in.

Can artificial intelligence make all this worse? It appears so.

“America’s surveillance state is spreading as the federal government collects personal data of hundreds of millions of Americans. In the age of artificial intelligence, with data collection accelerating at an unprecedented rate, our privacy has never been more vulnerable,” said opinion columnist Peyton Hornberger, communications director at The Alliance for Secure AI, a nonprofit organization that educates the public about the implications of advanced AI, writing in USA Today.

The American Civil Liberties Union sees assaults on privacy as violations of civil liberties of peaceful protestors, journalists, political figures and ordinary individuals. The agency is constantly in court — and frequently losing.

Sadly, we seem to be OK with a lot of this. When’s the last time you clicked “OK” on a standard service agreement with a bank, insurance company or other trusted business partner? Those agreements clearly say that the companies have a right to share your personal information. It’s all there, in the fine print. We’d rather not read all that stuff.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re tucked in, behind closed doors, someone, somewhere is keeping track of your life.

The kiss cam fiasco was just the latest in a long line of reminders about the value of privacy, but it shouldn’t have surprised anyone.

This is the drone age, not the stone age. You’re being tracked with every camera and every keystroke.

Dennis Grubaugh is the retired editor of the Illinois Business Journal.