On Monday, police in Florida abandoned[1] a pilot program that had put Amazon’s facial recognition powers at their disposal. On Wednesday, representatives from the country’s most powerful technology companies will gather[2] in San Francisco to take a hard look at the industry’s approach to privacy. And on Thursday, the California legislature will vote on a bill[3] that would grant internet users more power over their data than ever before in the United States. Any of these alone would mark a good week for privacy. Together, and combined with even more major advancements from earlier this month, they represent a tectonic shift.
Progress can be difficult to measure; it often comes in drips and drops, or not at all for long stretches of time. But in recent weeks, privacy advocates have seen torrential gains, at a rate perhaps not matched since Edward Snowden[4] revealed how the National Security Agency spied on millions of US citizens in 2013. A confluence of factors—generational, judicial, societal—have created momentum where previously there was none. The trick now is to sustain it.
Awake and Alert
If the US really has found itself in the middle of a digital privacy awakening, you can of course credit the recent spate of headline-grabbing scandals as the kick-starter. Cambridge Analytica[5] illicitly took the personal information of up to 87 million Facebook users[6] and turned it into psychographically targeted political ads. Equifax let slip the sensitive details—including Social Security numbers—of 148 million Americans because it couldn’t be bothered to patch[7] a known vulnerability. And just a few short weeks ago, many learned for the first time that mobile carriers like Verizon and AT&T have for years sold their