The Future of Privacy in an Era of Big Tech and COVID-19
By Cecilia Pang
With the advent of smart devices infiltrating the home and our increasing dependency of using technology within our day to day lives, the opportunity for data collection has grown exponentially over the past decade. As points of contact with technological devices occur over numerous hours during the week, big data accumulation not only has tangible value but also concrete power in influencing a range of activities from market or policy processes to intimate human functioning and relationships. The nascent exploration into privacy concerns have only started to become at the forefront of discussion where, in recent years, issues have become popularized by news outlets and media. This trend of growing surveillance by profit driven companies is resulting in an unprecedented era of surveillance capitalism. The idea of surveillance capitalism coined by Shoshana Zuboff in her 2019 book, was referenced as early as 2013 in a speech by US Federal Trade Commissioner, Julie Brill. Brill points to the potentially insidious intentions of firms “without our knowledge or consent [to] amass large amounts of private information about people to use for purposes we don’t expect or understand.” These concerns, however, have become a lot more alarming amidst the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although individuals are becoming more aware of the profiling actions companies have taken through the use and collection of their digital data, they lack awareness of the extent to which their online and in-person behaviours are being tracked and the complex trails of data they leave behind. The amount of tracking, accumulating, and processing of data results in highly targeted and behaviourally tailored information that results in efficiency within markets or in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, highly sensitive statistics on tackling the spread of the virus. Technology strives to translate data into high impact value and create innovative solutions that lessen the severity of health, social, and economic impacts.
Working from home, tracking the spread of the virus, and the increased time individuals have been spending with their digital devices has resulted in a higher level of overall surveillance. As the spheres of private and public life merge within the confines of one’s home, individuals find their lives being inconspicuously tracked and monitored. Governments across the world in partnership with hospitals and tech companies, use the power of individuals and their devices to track private health details from their day to day behaviour. Whether at home or outside, each endeavour taken by an individual poses an opportunity of magnifying their previously private information. Now, every moment of each day provides an opportunity for surveillance; sometimes by the government or even by the corporation an individual works for.
Individual privacy has often been compared with security aims. But how exactly will the balancing act between privacy, technology, and health play out in the aftermath of COVID-19? Measures such as contact tracing and movement trackers are necessary in the process of reopening offices and ensuring the safety of collective spaces for workers, individuals, and the general community… yet how does surveilling an individual’s behaviours or uncovering information about their health affect their freedoms and rights protected under existing laws especially for those in North America? Previous protections under existing employment laws are eroding. The private information of employees that employers have access to, can and could be used to discriminate against current or future employees; effectively, rendering employees incapacited to defend their working rights. Within the workplace, the infringement of privacy has already begun with many insidious implications.Thermal tools are measuring body temperatures as employees enter their office buildings such as that of the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. Other companies such as PwC is in the works of launching an app for employers that traces contacts by analyzing workers’ interactions in the office.
Living in unprecedented times calls for unprecedented measures like these, especially when all measures being taken by the government and organizations are to ensure minimal human suffering. But the question is what next? What happens after the technology has been leveraged? To truly understand the implications for the future of privacy, it must be contextualized with the current technological trends. Entering into the 21st century, technology has demonstrated how integral and inevitable it is to everyday life; the bulk of its power represented in the phenomenon of Big Tech and it’s overarching powers across society.
Big Tech, often synonymous with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, etc, are companies with the largest forms of market power within the IT and digital industries. Before COVID-19, Big Tech dominated many traditional markets in ways that EU competition regulators would describe as anti-competitive. As COVID-19 restrictions left most individuals locked inside, the amount of time spent online to stay connected or to be entertained through technology platforms have increased drastically. On top of consumer demand and powering much of the stock market rebound, as other companies file for bankruptcy due to the measures of social distancing for the past months that have brought the economy to a halt, big companies are seizing opportunities to further consolidate market power. Big Tech companies are hiring aggressively due to their ability to create services that are seemingly essential in this day and age. The sector has reaffirmed its dominance in the COVID-19 era, technology as represented by Big Tech will come out of the global health and economic crisis, stronger than ever.
The hard quantitative power of Big Tech’s balance sheets are nowhere near as terrifying as its soft power through amassing data of its users and the potential to further leverage this data. With each global crisis, the role that a variety of powerful actors play can impact the post-crisis world in far-reaching ways. Though this has often been explored with the role of government such as during the aftermath of the Great Depression within America. The role of Big Tech spanning across national borders can often rival the role of government on business or societal issues. Global or domestic altering events in the past, have seen expanded responsibilities across government and large corporations. With talent being funneled into technology companies as unemployment numbers continue to rise due to COVID-19 and the ability to revamp social behaviours pertaining to technology during the restrictions of the pandemic, these companies are taking up more social responsibility than ever before. Without foresight of the post-COVID world and the role of Big Tech and technology companies as a whole, these industry trends are on a trajectory towards an unchallengeable type of dominance.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was already a disproportionate balance in power between individuals and the technology companies that derived its power from individuals’ data. But the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the trend of technology’s influences and the gaps that exist in its need for transparent governance and effective regulation. As the easing of COVID-19 restrictions continues to take place across the world, predictions on the future of privacy are wary. It seems undisputed that COVID-19 has brought surveillance to another level within Western democracies. Western democracies have often grappled with fine-tuning the details between the relationship of privacy and overall community security. In the aftermath of crises, individuals are much more likely to accept heightened security measures for their safety even if it means having their privacy or individual rights infringed upon.
The intersections of privacy and technology remain unclear as the world is transfixed at a critical point for leadership and decision making. Before the tide turns and the post COVID-19 world becomes a reality, societies at this time, more than ever, will need to take responsibility for collective awareness on the issue of privacy and what duty it has within the public or private spheres. Both life at home and life at work in a post COVID-19 world depend on questions asked now. Will the lingering effects of surveillance remain even after the threat of COVID-19 disappears? What will privacy look like a few years from now? Despite the existence of privacy concerns since the emergence of Big Tech, COVID-19 has catalyzed the prevailing and insidious trends of technological dominance. Without directed attention and action, the public and private spheres of life may become synonymous. This pandemic has given us an urgent warning and an opportunity; before the next chapter begins, we still have time to decide what that looks like.