Believe it or not—and contrary to popular belief—there is no express right to privacy written into the U.S. Constitution. But what we do have is what is inferred from the Bill of Rights and the interpretations of those rights by the Supreme Court. As explained by Wikipedia: “The right to privacy is an element of various legal traditions to restrain governmental and private actions that threaten the privacy of individuals. Over 150 national constitutions mention the right to privacy.
There is now a question of whether the Privacy Act can co-exist with the current capabilities of intelligence agencies to access and analyze virtually every detail of an individual’s life. A major question is whether or not the right to privacy needs to be forfeited as part of the social contract to bolster defense against supposed terrorist threats.
And under the guise of “terrorist threat,” we have freely given up many of our rights in the name of “security.” We wrongly believe that we are immune or somehow protected from the prying eyes of the government, and that is simply not true.
On June 21, 2018, the Associated Press ran a story about the Orlando International Airport. In the cacophony of daily news and soundbites, it was barely a blip on most citizens’ radars. But it should scare the crap out of you.
According to the report, Orlando International Airport is now actively scanning all travelers arriving from or departing to international destinations. Through the use of artificial intelligence, the busiest airport in Florida is now able to scan the faces of every person using international flights.
What is even scarier is that the Department of Homeland Security has been using artificial intelligence and facial recognition software for years. According to Associated Press reporting, passengers at the Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Washington, and New York airports are scanned for some departing international flights.
But Orlando takes it to a whole new level. The project was pitched under the Screen Partnership Program, an official Department of Homeland Security initiative. Here in Orlando, the scans will be automatically verified against biometric data contained in the federal agency’s database. If the scan and the boarding pass check out, the passenger should pass through unobstructed. Remember, this is scanning every single person using international flights, every single day. In fact, the Orlando airport processes six million passengers annually.
So what is driving this constant, unrelenting invasion of our privacy? Well, believe it or not, it isn’t necessarily the government, it’s big business.
Consider back in 2016, Amazon used its web cloud services along with some amazing artificial intelligence and their massive database of “anonymized” stored pictures from its Amazon Prime members to create and build a new image and video analysis program called “Rekognition.”
In short, this new AI can identify objects, texts, activities, and even the scenes the pictures are taken in and perform extraordinarily accurate facial recognition for both images and video. The engineers who developed the AI even boasted that their software was capable of scanning large crowds to identify up to 100 persons of interest.
But here is the scary part. Amazon has made “Rekognition” available to any AWS (Amazon Web Services) developer through an easily accessible API (application programing interface). Meaning you do not need any computer or AI expertise to develop applications that can analyze billions of images daily. All you have to do is build an API and point it to “Rekognition” and it will do the rest.
Amazon was in a very unique position to create this software given it already had vast cloud computing, an even larger open API architecture, and a management team flush with billions in cash and who are not easily dissuaded from new opportunities.
So how easy has the invasion of your privacy become? In May of 2018, the Washington Post reported that the sheriff’s department of Washington County, OR uses “Rekognition” to scan a database of 300,000 mugshots. Police officers can run real-time video footage of potential suspects coming from fixed security or police body-cameras.
So why are companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, and more moving into the sphere once dominated by the National Security Agency (NSA)?
Back in April of 2018, the global research and consulting firm McKinsey & Co. published a discussion paper regarding the potential applications of this new AI software. They investigated 19 different industries and purport a $3.5 trillion to $5.8 trillion value for stakeholders. That is not a typo. We are now talking about an industry that is almost a full 1/4 of the entire national deficit. That is an astronomical number, and as the Internet giants look for other revenue streams, you know they cannot ignore this one.
And don’t think for a minute that the government won’t take advantage of the opportunity. In fact, Amazon Web Services (AWS) already has a massive amount of business with the Pentagon, and according to inside sources, Amazon is the “shoe-in” for a new contract that could be worth over $10 billion.
Then there is the entire Facebook debacle that further illustrates my point. According to their SEC filings, Facebook has been making money off your data for years by selling your details to anyone who was willing to spend the right amount of money to acquire it.
As the Facebook debacle continues to unravel and more and more users delete their accounts, they are realizing that the social media giant has been lying to them and holds far more data on them and their families than they could have possibly imagined.
In fact, depending on how you set up your account and whether or not you use Facebook on your smartphone, they very well could be holding complete records of your incoming and outgoing calls and SMS messages.
This has now gotten so bad that when former users ask to delete their Facebook account, Facebook actually suggest to them that they may want to download a copy of their information from the Facebook database. Honestly, everyone should, because you are going to be amazed at the sheer amount of data they have harvested on you, your actions, buying habits, political leanings, family, and so much more.
Thankfully, some companies are actually taking a stand on moral grounds and are listening to the concerns of their employees. For example, in the aftermath of the migrant child separation saga, Microsoft employees called on Satya Nadella, chief executive officer, to walk away from a lucrative cloud computing contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
And then in early June, Alphabet (Google) employees complained to management about the research and AI development they were involved with for drone research on behalf of the Pentagon. Alphabet listened and walked away from a $250 million/year contract.
But here is the thing, folks. When it was the government stealing our data and spying on our conversations and habits, we fought tooth and nail. But some big social media comes along and offers you some free shiny trinket and you give up your rights willingly. Perhaps it time we start holding these social media companies accountable. Perhaps it is time that we demand our government take action. Because otherwise we will be living in an Orwellian society where every thought, movement, and conversation is recorded and stored in a massive database to be used against us at the worst possible moment…oh wait, never mind, we are already there.
