When the words “government” and “privacy” get put side-by-side, the knee-jerk reaction is usually harmful. Since the days of Orwell, governments have been poking their noses into citizens’ business. History suggests the association is not without merit.
When the words “government” and “privacy” get put side-by-side, the knee-jerk reaction is usually harmful. Since the days of Orwell, governments have been poking their noses into citizens’ business. History suggests the association is not without merit.
In the last decade, whistleblowers like Edward Snowden have shown the communication boom of the internet era accompanied by an increase in government monitoring and privacy abuses. For example, by the likes of the NSA, the Department of Homeland Security, and other bureaus. A charitable explanation of these practices is that, like many during the era, these actors didn’t fully grasp the full cost and legal implications of the shiny new toys they could access. The less charitable explanation is that they did grasp, but didn’t care enough to stop.
Nevertheless, the truth remains that government institutions are the most important protectors of the digital privacy rights of individual citizens. Businesses must play by the rules that governments make. Also, digital privacy has become a critical governmental concern in recent years. It directly reflects the concerns of the general populace.
A high-profile case in point was Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony in April 2018. Zuckerberg was called in front of Congress to speak on his company’s questionable data practices, particularly relating to the 2016 presidential election. The hearings made two things clear: first, there was a newfound abundance of concern and regulatory intention from the elected officials questioning Mr. Zuckerberg. Second, there was a striking lack of understanding or technical know-how from the same officials. The majority of these legislators are not digital natives, and even if they were, understanding the fine-grains of digital privacy in this day and age requires time and attention to detail that no legislator could realistically afford to spend.
At Ethyca, we accept that warts and all, governments are the chief protectors of digital privacy. However, in the fast-moving technology sector, they will always be playing catch up. For SMEs, particularly those that aren’t digital-first, this creates a nightmare scenario of repeated, costly infrastructure overhauls. Doing a one-time, future-proof data infrastructure upgrade is an investment that, over more extended periods, can prove very shrewd indeed.
Published from our Privacy Magazine – To read more, visit privacy .dev
Ethyca hosted its second P.x session with the Fides Slack Community earlier this week. Our Senior Software Engineer Thomas La Piana gave a live walkthrough of the open-source privacy engineering platform, Fides 2.0. He demonstrated how users can easily deploy Fides and go from 0 to full DSR automation in less than 15 minutes. If you weren’t able to attend, here are the three main points addressed during the session.
Introducing consent management in Fides 2.0. With the coming state privacy laws in 2023, your business needs to have granular control over users’ data and their consent preferences. Learn more about how Fides can enable this for your business, for free.
Ethyca launched its privacy engineering meetup, P.x, where Fides Slack Community members met and interacted with the Fides developer team. Two of our Senior Software Engineers, Dawn and Steve, gave presentations and demos on the importance of data minimization, and how Fides can make data minimization easier for teams. Here, we’ll recap the three main points of discussion.
We enjoyed two great days of security and privacy talks at this year’s Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, aka SOUPS Conference! Presenters from all over the world spoke both in-person and virtually on the latest findings in privacy and security research.
At Ethyca, we believe that software engineers are becoming major privacy stakeholders, but do they feel the same way? To answer this question, we went out and asked 337 software engineers what they think about the state of contemporary privacy… and how they would improve it.
The UK’s new Data Reform Bill is set to ease data privacy compliance burdens on businesses to enable convenience and spark innovation in the country. We explain why convenience should not be the end result of a country’s privacy legislation.
Our team of data privacy devotees would love to show you how Ethyca helps engineers deploy CCPA, GDPR, and LGPD privacy compliance deep into business systems. Let’s chat!
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