A Data Privacy Advocate’s Guide To the 2018 Election
How to vote in favor of continuing the data resistance
I don’t have to tell you that we live in uncertain times. Maybe we always have but I think we can admit that nowadays things seem eerily toxic. Whether it’s the fact that a UFC match seems more civil than the state of our political discourse or that several people across the country would like us to believe that the biggest threat to our democracy comes by way of a migrant caravan moving at the speed of an electric scooter towards our border, Americans — rightfully so — are worried about the state of our democracy.
To be clear…
I’m not here to tell you who to vote for on election day. I’m here instead to urge you to consider the grave invisible threat, slithering through our country, suffocating and swallowing our privacy one user account at a time. And because it’s election day, the focus of this blog post is two fold. First, what’s the current state of our election security. And second, which political candidates if any, have risen as strident supporters of protecting our data privacy.
To the first point, ever since the 2016 election when it became clear that the Russian government had hacked our election system, most people probably thought that protecting the US voting system and thence our democracy would become a priority. I’m here to tell you that’s not the case. According to an article in CNET, an election director in Illinois still hasn’t received any federal funding for cybersecurity. “A $13 million grant was provided to Illinois’ state board of elections in May,” reported CNET. “But by September, no county official had received a penny, despite multiple pleas. That’s a striking concern considering that Illinois is the only state to publicly acknowledge that its voter records had been hacked in 2016.”
So this much is clear, our government isn’t really too concerned with making sure the election system that upholds our democracy is protected against hackers. Which is why I want to highlight a few key races where the future of our privacy is at stake.
Vote Against Marsha Blackburn
First let’s look at the Senate race in Tennessee where Republican Marsha Blackburn, a US representative since 2003, and Democrat Phil Bredesen, the former governor of the state, are running to replace senator Bob Corker, who is retiring this year. According to WIRED, Blackburn has a polarizing record on tech. She has been called “Big Telecom’s best friend in Congress,” thanks to her repeated efforts to ease regulation on telecom companies. In fact as chair of the House Communication and Technology Subcommittee, she supported the current FCC’s decision to overturn net neutrality protections. All of which means, if you want to vote along data privacy lines, vote against Blackburn.
Vote For Josh Hawley
Missouri’s Republican attorney general Josh Hawley is taking on Democrat Claire McCaskill for her Senate seat. As attorney general, Hawley was responsible for launching an antitrust investigation into Google’s business practices. The investigation sought answers as to how the search giant collects user data and whether it leverages its market position to push its own products. He also launched an investigation into Facebook’s data-sharing practices, after tens of millions of Americans’ Facebook data was misappropriated by the political firm Cambridge Analytica, and another into Equifax after its historic data breach last year. He’s campaigned on a promise of being tough on tech. If Hawley heads to Washington, he could join with some Democratic colleagues as an antitrust and privacy watchdog.
Vote for Bill Nelson
And finally, in the Florida senate race, Bill Nelson is defending his seat against Republican governor Rick Scott in a tight race. According to the Washington Post, as the ranking member on the Senate Commerce Committee, Nelson has helped oversee recent congressional hearings on, among other things, protecting consumer privacy.
The unfortunate reality is…
That these are the only three races in which candidates have outwardly spoken in support or against data privacy protections. But while our government officials continue to draw our attention towards hollow threats that don’t even exist.
It’s our job as data privacy advocates to demand that privacy continues to be a more prevalent issue on the ballot.
Because while our government continues to largely ignore the issue of data protection even as it further delegitimize our election system. We know that the only real way to uphold our democracy is to exercise our vote, find and contact our representatives and demand that privacy becomes a central issue in the next election.
