• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Thursday, July 17, 2025
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
39 °f
New York
44 ° Fri
46 ° Sat
40 ° Sun
41 ° Mon
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
No Result
View All Result
Home Opinion

Tech’s Dominant Power Undermines Our Human Right to Privacy

Michael Kleinman by Michael Kleinman
07/28/20
in Opinion
A woman checks her phone as she shelters under an umbrella in the rain on Oxford Street in London on June 18, 2020, as some non-essential retailers reopen from their coronavirus shutdown.

A woman checks her phone as she shelters under an umbrella in the rain on Oxford Street in London on June 18, 2020. Photo: Tolga Akmen/AFP

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Today, a handful of world-straddling corporations control all our information infrastructure with huge data vaults on billions of us, with even less accountability or oversight than that faced by the National Security Agency. Together, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, and Facebook are worth over $5 trillion dollars – equivalent to one quarter of total US GDP.

The concentrated power of Big Tech over the digital world is not just an economic question, but one of human rights.

It’s impossible to overstate the impact and influence of these companies. These aren’t just companies anymore; they’re gatekeepers to the online world, shaping Americans’ experience of the internet, setting the rules of digital interaction – and influencing the lives – of almost everyone in the United States.

The pandemic has only accelerated this process, further embedding these companies into our daily lives.

Data Harvesting and Profiling

Amazon currently controls 45 percent of all e-commerce in the United States (as measured by gross market value), and almost one in every three Americans has an Amazon Prime account. Approximately 45 percent of all smartphone users in the country are Apple iPhone users, while globally, smartphones overwhelmingly operate on Google’s Android. Meanwhile, 223 million Americans use Facebook, making it the United States’ dominant social media company. A staggering 259 million Americans use Google products, with Google accounting for 88 percent of US search engine use.

There is currently no real pathway through that world that doesn’t involve passing through an invisible and pervasive web of data harvesting and profiling, the lifeblood of the targeted advertising model underpinning the internet.

Facebook and Google pioneered this surveillance-based business model and established a duopoly over digital advertising that only Amazon is now challenging. By doing so, these surveillance giants have eroded the very essence of our right to privacy.

Not only that, but Facebook and Google’s platforms also use our data against us, shaping our information environment in whatever way drives the most profit. Repeatedly this results in the platforms’ algorithms amplifying disinformation and divisive content, fueling racism, and even influencing our own beliefs and opinions.

This month alone, Facebook has grappled with an unprecedented advertising boycott over its failure to Stop Hate For Profit amidst the Black Lives Matter movement. It chose to simply shrug off the concerns of over 1000 major advertisers, and its stock price is already bouncing back.

Protect Our Privacy

For far too long, we have let these companies set the terms of participation. The crux of their argument is that we submit ourselves voluntarily to this mass harvesting of our data in exchange for the products and services they provide. They argue: how can it be a violation of our privacy when we ourselves consent?

This where they are wrong. People are effectively powerless to leave these platforms and services when their lives are so extensively entwined with them.

Meanwhile, the companies’ market dominance means there are no genuine alternatives. This is a trap: either submit to their pervasive tracking or forego the benefits of a modern world. This can never be a legitimate choice.

Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the F8 summit in San Francisco, California, on March 25, 2015. Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai will no doubt offer words of reassurance and highlight their ethical frameworks, but these are merely tools to deflect criticism. Facebook even wants to help write federal privacy laws, a fox offering to guard the henhouse.

The public is pushing back against oil companies setting our environmental standards, and the same must be done with Big Tech to protect our privacy.

COVID-19 and Health Data

This is especially pressing now, as these companies focus more of their attention on the health sector, aggregating our most personal health information. COVID-19 presents an unprecedented opportunity for tech companies to get their hands on our intimate health data. And there’s no reason to believe that they can be trusted with this sensitive information.

Google followed its acquisition of fitness wearable Fitbit by signing a deal with a healthcare provider that reportedly allows the company access to the health records of millions of people without their knowledge or consent. The deal raises alarm as to how this data will be used.

Google buying Fitbit means Google taking control over data-gathering infrastructure focusing on health, including partnerships with employers+insurers.

Together with experts from different areas, I'm urging the EU to look deeper before approving the deal:https://t.co/8H5UZFbTTO pic.twitter.com/UcqC5GZoeD

— Wolfie Christl (@WolfieChristl) July 22, 2020

Individuals must be able to control who can access their medical records and how those records are used, but it’s becoming ever harder to escape big tech’s gaze over the most intimate details of our lives.

Government Regulation

These companies have a responsibility to respect our human rights wherever and however they operate, including the right to privacy. To make sure they fulfill that responsibility, we need effective government regulation to set stricter limits on the kind of data these firms collect, what inferences can be drawn from that data, and how that data is used to target and influence us by third parties, including advertisers.

Governments are required under international human rights law to protect our rights against abuse by companies. Crucially, that also means challenging the dominance of the platforms through regulatory tools including antitrust.

As a first step, companies must be prevented from making access to their services conditional on individuals “consenting” to the collection, processing, or sharing of their personal data for marketing or advertising. We have a right not to be tracked and we need to be able to exercise it.

For too long Big Tech has been held unaccountable. As the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary is set to hold an unprecedented hearing bringing together the CEOs of four of the world’s most powerful tech companies to investigate their dominance of the online economy, our legislators cannot allow Big Tech to continue to abuse its colossal power over our everyday lives unchecked.

It is time to reclaim this public digital space from a powerful and unaccountable few and demand that it is accessible to all, with human rights at its core.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Globe Post.
ShareTweet
Michael Kleinman

Michael Kleinman

Director of the Silicon Valley Initiative at Amnesty International USA

Related Posts

Google logo
World

Sweden Orders Four Companies to Stop Using Google Tool

by Staff Writer
July 4, 2023
A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
Opinion

An Inspired Choice to Lead the CDC

by Edward C. Halperin
June 13, 2023
A woman undergoing COVID test in China
Featured

Soaring Covid Cases Shine Light on China’s Healthcare Gap

by Staff Writer
January 11, 2023
Google logo
Business

Google to Pay $90 Mn in Settlement With App Developers

by Staff Writer
July 1, 2022
Apple
Business

Apple, Google, Other US Tech Titans Look to Ditch Passwords

by Staff Writer
May 5, 2022
European Medicines Agency
World

EU Watchdog Approves Second Covid Booster for Over 80s

by Staff Writer
April 6, 2022
Next Post
Novel coronavirus outbreak / China

COVID-19 Cases on the Rise Again in China

Protesters hold banners reading "Women's Strike" as they take part in protest against the Polish government plans to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention on prevention and combatting of home violence, in Warsaw, Poland on July 24, 2020.

Polish Government Walks Back Plans to Abandon Treaty Protecting Women

Please login to join discussion

Recommended

People from Nordic countries participate in the 2025 WorldPride DC parade and celebrate LGBTQ rights in Washington DC, USA, Saturday, June 7, 2025.

Sweden Cuts Red Tape for Changing Legal Gender

July 16, 2025
Ursula von der Leyen

EU Ministers Weigh Response to Latest Trump Tariff Threat

July 14, 2025
UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese

UN Says US Sanctions on Expert Sets ‘Dangerous Precedent,’ Must Be Reversed

July 11, 2025
Women in Afghanistan wearing a blue burqa

ICC Seeks Arrest of Taliban Leaders Over Persecution of Women

July 9, 2025
Kenya, Nairobi, 2024-07-16. Protesters in the streets

Nairobi Tense as Kenya Marks Democracy Uprising

July 7, 2025
President Donald Trump

Trump Wins ‘Phenomenal’ Victory as Congress Passes Flagship Bill

July 4, 2025

Opinion

Donald Trump

Fact vs. Fiction: The Trump Administration’s Dubious War on Reverse Discrimination

June 18, 2025
Tens of thousands of protestors shut down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Saturday, April 5, 2025, protesting the Trump administration's abuse of the separation of federal powers as well as the deep cuts to governmental services overseen by presidential advisor Elon Musk.

Civil Society Is Holding the Line. Will Washington Notice?

June 17, 2025
A Black Lives Matter mural in New York City.

Fuhgeddaboudit! America’s Erasure of History

April 2, 2025
Bust of Deputy Rubens Paiva in the Chamber of Deputies

Democratic Brazilians Are Still Here

March 18, 2025
A woman from Guatemala

Dispatch From Central America

January 28, 2025
US President Donald Trump

Dear Trump Supporters: Is This the America You Wanted?

January 28, 2025
Facebook Twitter

Newsletter

Do you like our reporting?
SUBSCRIBE

About Us

The Globe Post

The Globe Post is part of Globe Post Media, a U.S. digital news organization that is publishing the world's best targeted news sites.

submit oped

© 2018 The Globe Post

No Result
View All Result
  • National
  • World
  • Business
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Democracy at Risk
    • Media Freedom
  • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Columns
    • Book Reviews
    • Stage
  • Submit Op-ed

© 2018 The Globe Post