What’s next for our privacy?
The US still has no federal privacy law. But recent enforcement actions against data brokers may offer some new protections for Americans’ personal information.
MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here.
Every day, we are tracked hundreds or even thousands of times across the digital world. Cookies and web trackers capture every website link that we click, while code installed in mobile apps tracks every physical location that our devices—and, by extension, we—have visited. All of this is collected, packaged together with other details (compiled from public records, supermarket member programs, utility companies, and more), and used to create highly personalized profiles that are then shared or sold, often without our explicit knowledge or consent.
A consensus is growing that Americans need better privacy protections—and that the best way to deliver them would be for Congress to pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation. While the latest iteration of such a bill, the American Privacy Rights Act of 2024, gained more momentum than previously proposed laws, it became so watered down that it lost support from both Republicans and Democrats before it even came to a vote.
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