TED Talks Daily The shift we need to stop mass surveillance | Albert Fox Cahn
Sep 12, 2022
Albert Fox Cahn, a lawyer and technologist, passionately advocates against mass surveillance and defends public privacy rights. He reveals the alarming tactics used by law enforcement to gather vast amounts of personal data without consent. Cahn emphasizes how these practices disproportionately affect marginalized communities. He suggests that simple yet effective legal solutions, like stronger protections against geofence warrants, could help end the growing dystopia of mass surveillance. Our right to privacy, he argues, is crucial for a secure digital future.
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Government Data Exploitation
- Governments can buy data collected by advertisers to track individuals and groups.
- This data can be used to monitor protests, abortion clinics, and even business activities.
Geofence Warrant Overreach
- Police used a geofence warrant in Virginia, obtaining data from everyone near a crime scene, including people at a church.
- An Arizona man was wrongly arrested because someone else logged into his Google account near a crime scene.
Ban Geofence Warrants
- We must ban geofence warrants and other surveillance abuses now.
- Don't wait for the Supreme Court; focus on changing how governments abuse data, not how companies collect it.