“Mass collection of sensitive data by government and social services has emboldened the growing surveillance state, creating a reservoir that is far too accessible and carelessly shared amongst agencies with little oversight.”
Outside a New York City public benefits office, a man looks to enroll people in a government supported cell phone service program. Photo by Adi Talwar.
We live in a modern, data-driven society that demands personal information as a prerequisite for access. Privacy is a luxury in a world where everything from social media, ticketing sites, streaming services, to even doorbells require accepting a litany of disclaimers forcing consent of data collection.
Every person in our country is affected by the constant collection and analysis (often automated) of our personal data. And like nearly every aspect of American life, the consequences fall on marginalized and impoverished groups exponentially harder—especially considering the outsized impact oversight has on perpetuating racist divides.
The most vulnerable individuals in our society have no choice but to relinquish nearly every iota of personal information just to survive—rendering the right to privacy virtually nonexistent.
Meeting the most basic human needs of food, housing, medical, and other lifesaving services inherently means the ongoing provision of intimate data into systems built on a history of racism and discrimination. Folks in these positions are fingerprinted, financially surveilled, physically harassed, intimidated and so much more under the guise of “security.”
The most abused tool is the free-flowing data overseen by massive, faceless private companies and government agencies—leveraged to prevent financial assistance, hinder home purchases, or in some worst-case scenarios, lead to deportation.
The ramifications in our society, particularly for the most vulnerable, will be devastating if the current trajectory of public service data-sharing continues. Already, we’re seeing domestic agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) expand their reach and surveillance with full support from the new administration.
In our post-Patriot Act society, these actions demonstrate how the potential use of spyware against people living in the United States is entirely plausible. Failure to further recognize the inherent discrimination built into our public systems endangers these communities even more.
More and more, the public calls on the government to reign in the wanton distribution and surveillance of data, something that they have been successful in culling at the private level (highlighted by this recent decision protecting consumer delivery app data). But the impetus to protect information can’t stop there.
Mass collection of sensitive data by government and social services has emboldened the growing surveillance state, creating a reservoir that is far too accessible and carelessly shared amongst agencies with little oversight.
We see this every day in our work. As a nonprofit, the Domestic Violence Project (DVP) relies on government funding that requires access to data that demonstrates the work we do, the populations we serve, and the impacts we have on communities. Otherwise, we won’t get paid—destroying our ability to provide services to vulnerable survivors trapped in abusive relationships who already feel their rights to privacy and choice being stripped away.
In DVP’s case, we are fortunate that the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) allows organizations like ours to anonymize a large portion of the information to protect survivor safety. We have a unique protection that allows us to provide aggregated data or attestations of success rather than massive Excel sheets exposing client data. Unfortunately, that is not a position that most organizations providing crucial services can take.
I implore public agencies and services to use VAWA’s practice as a model to adopt and expand in the name of human right to privacy. Doing so would be a small but powerful step against the normalization of mass surveillance and the destruction of privacy and information security.
Without a safeguard against the tidal wave of data monitoring like our VAWA carve-out, who can confidently say our public and government agencies are trustworthy in stewarding privacy? On the larger, more bureaucratic scale of the social welfare system in New York, the commitment to security is unclear. Where does that data go? How is it stored? For how long? How much is it thoughtlessly shared with other organizations or services?
The need for robust data management and information security could not be more pressing. We call on our leaders to reject a surveillance-controlled future and make the inalienable right to privacy and security universal.
Madeline Garcia Bigelow, Esq. is the founder and managing director of the Domestic Violence Project at the Urban Justice Center.
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