On Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission opened its long-anticipated
rulemaking on measures to stop corporations and other commercial actors
from abusing people’s personal data. In June, the agency
announced that it was considering this rulemaking to safeguard privacy
and create protections against algorithmic decision-making that results
in unlawful discrimination. Today it released an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“ANPR”)
on the topic. This is the first step in building a formal agency record
for potential regulations that would be based on public comments about
“commercial surveillance and data security practices that harm
consumers.”
In a nutshell, when you use Relay to visit a website or use an app, your
phone will send an encrypted signal to INVISV, which will then pass
that request along to a second relay point which is operated by the
Fastly, a content delivery network. This has the effect of separating
your IP address from your data traffic, with neither INVISV nor Fastly
having all the information required to know which data was sent to which
phone.
[[NOTE: I’m not advocating for this new carrier, I’m just making a note that it exists and will be watching to see how it preforms as it is released]]
“The need for protections against companies’ over-collection and
retention of sensitive data has also come into stark relief as state
prosecutors subpoena tech companies for private information about people
seeking reproductive healthcare information and services.”
“Big Tech has shown again and again that they will choose monetizing user data over protecting individual privacy, and the federal government
has been reluctant to offer serious regulation,” she says. “So if
people want to keep their information private, especially when it comes
to reproductive care, the time to learn the basics of online privacy is
now. Some of my favorite resources are the Our Data Bodies project, the Tech Learning Collective, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.”
[[NOTE: Worth looking at the links in that last paragraph, particularly Our Data Bodies project]]
