Which brings us to an axiom of our digital age: law enforcement will exploit any database built, if it makes it easier to figure out what the rest of us are up to. Lucky for them, there's a wealth of data out there and available. Experian, one of the largest data aggregators, told the Senate Commerce Committee that "government agencies" regularly purchase information from them.
Often, those agencies don't even have to pay for the privilege of accessing our data. In many cases, such an agency can simply issue its own subpoena (not seen by a judge) and compel companies to turn over our sensitive data. The culprit here is known as the "third party doctrine," which some courts have aggressively (and wrongly) interpreted to mean that any information disclosed to a third party isn't really private.
The danger of the rise of Big Data and the Internet of Things is straightforward enough. Whenever data is perpetually generated, collected, and stored, the result is going to be a virtual ATM of user information that government agencies can withdraw from with ease. Last year, for instance, local, state, and federal authorities issued 164,000 subpoenas to Verizon and more than 248,000 subpoenas to AT&T for user information, while issuing nearly 7,500 subpoenas to Google during the first half of 2013.
The Internet of Things means that, soon enough, the authorities will have yet more ways to learn yet more about us.
Big Data, Little Democracy?
Here are two obvious questions for our surveillance future: Who controls the data generated by our devices? Without doing anything except buying and installing them, do we somehow consent to having every piece of data they generate shared with Big Business and sometimes Big Brother? No one should have to isolate themselves from society and technology in the ascetic mold of Henry David Thoreau -- or more ominously, Ted Kaczynski -- to have some semblance of privacy.
In the future, even going all Jeremiah Johnson might not have the effect intended, since law enforcement could interpret your lack of a solid digital footprint as inherently suspicious. This would be like a police officer growing suspicious of a home just because it was all dark and locked up tight.
When everything is increasingly tracked and viewed through the lens of technological omniscience, what will the effect be on dissent and protest? Will security companies with risk assessment software troll through our data and crunch it to identify people they believe have the propensity to become criminals or troublemakers -- and then share that with law enforcement? (Something like it already seems to be happening in Chicago, where police are using computer analytic programs to identify people at a greater risk of violent behavior.)
There's simply no way to forecast how these immense powers -- disproportionately accumulating in the hands of corporations seeking financial advantage and governments craving ever more control -- will be used. Chances are Big Data and the Internet of Things will make it harder for us to control our own lives, as we grow increasingly transparent to powerful corporations and government institutions that are becoming more opaque to us.
Catherine Crump is a staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. She is a non-residential fellow with the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and an adjunct professor of clinical law at NYU. Her principle focus is representing individuals challenging the lawfulness of government surveillance programs. Follow her on Twitter at @CatherineNCrump.
Matthew Harwood is senior writer/editor with the ACLU. A TomDispatch regular, his work has been published by Al-Jazeera America, the American Conservative , the Columbia Journalism Review , the Guardian , Guernica, Reason, Salon, Truthout, and the Washington Monthly . He also regularly reviews books for the Future of Freedom Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @mharwood31.
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Copyright 2014 Catherine Crump and Matthew Harwood
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