What do your grandmother's fall, Amazon ads, and democratic collapse have in common? Surprisingly, quite a lot - let's find out together.
Imagine your grandma is out on her usual Saturday morning stroll to the park. When she reaches the pond where she responsibly feeds the ducks with oats (seriously, stop feeding them bread), she accidentally stumbles and inevitably falls over.
Being the good grand kid that you are, last Christmas you gifted her a smart watch that has fall detection - in case of emergency. Right here is no emergency however, so she dismisses the alarm and goes home after feeding the ducks. I want you to consider two scenarios now.
Scenario 1: No Information Privacy
The smart watch provider immediately shares the incident with data brokers and tracking companies. Within seconds, Amazon and co know that your grandma has had an emergency. At home she gets blasted with ads for pain killers. Eventually, she even gets nudged to buy some even though she has no pain. At Amazon. For an inflated price. Amazon knows that there is a need and exploits it with expert turbo-capitalist precision.
Scenario 2: Information Privacy
The incident remains private. Your grandma can choose freely if, and where to buy her medicine. She also gets the same price as everyone. She maintains control - and dignity.
"But how the fuck does that relate to democratic collapse? When I think of democracy, I think of elections and free speech and not some granny taking a tumble while feeding the ducks." - Good question, I am glad you asked. What seems like a harmless personal anecdote is actually a microcosm of a much bigger crisis. To grasp that, let’s break down the foundations of democracy - and how each one is under attack when privacy is lost.
Modern democracy is built on 6 Principles
- Popular Sovereignty
- Separation of Powers
- Human Rights
- Constitutionalism and Rule of Law
- Free and independent Press
- Pluralism
Information privacy relates to the person’s right to determine when, how and to what extent information about him or her is communicated to others.
Each of the democratic principles is not only relating to information privacy, but built upon and relying on it to work. Here is how.
Popular Sovereignty is what most people associate when thinking of democracy. Free elections, all power derives from the people, either directly via referendum or indirectly via a representative governing body.
It is trivial that free elections cannot happen without information privacy. If its public who one votes for, it's not free. Women will fear repercussions of her husband in our patriarchal society, a closeted queer will fear voting for a queer friendly party etc.
What is not so trivial is that our digitalized world is subject to voter manipulation and election interference. Recall the Cambridge Analytica scandal where Facebook data was illegally acquired to build psychological profiles in order to serve micro-targeted dark ad campaigns, a practice in which different target groups get served different advertisements. Elections and important votes like the Brexit vote or the 2016 US election were manipulated via algorithmic influence. And lets not forget the role of social media's latest star TikTok as tool for misleading and manipulating the next generation. Nevertheless, research also stresses that overrating the impact of misinformation, while it does represent a big threat, is also a slippery slope.
But it doesn’t stop with commercial manipulation or political ads. The same data flows become weapons in geopolitical conflict.
Hybrid warfare is omnipresent and leverages data leaks and public knowledge for cyber attacks, espionage, disinformation / discreditation campaigns, economic blackmail and more general political influence in order to destabilize democracies.
One pillar of a democracy's stability is the separation of powers - legislative, executive, and judiciary powers keeping each other in check. However, if the executive branch gains excessive access to citizens’ data, it disrupts this balance.
This disruption of balance is unfortunately not just theoretical. Even across supposedly liberal democracies, personal data is already being used to intimidate, silence and target political opposition. At its center? The executive branch.
In Germany, neonazis, the far-right and fascists continually threaten political opponents using data illegally obtained via police computers. These threats are linked to a network dubbed the "National Socialist Underground 2.0 (NSU 2.0)", referencing the original NSU movement from 1998 - 2011 that was responsible for a series of racist murders, bombings and robberies. In the case of the NSU 2.0 , over 170 people have received threats on their life. In a series of arson attacks, data of over 586 people was found on a hard drive, presumably obtained from police data.
This misuse of state-collected data is not unique to Germany. In the US, ICE has contracted with a data broker in order to circumvent laws that prohibit state agencies and employees from sharing personal identifying information with federal agencies without a warrant or criminal investigation. I don't think we need to address the well documented unjust behavior and crimes of ICE here.
In Sweden, police have unlawfully used a facial recognition app in breach of the Criminal Data Act, some officers even using it without prior authorization.
These examples also show the violation of constitutionalism and the rule of law. In Europe there are deeply rooted laws for information privacy through the GDPR. Germany even has a basic right to informational self-determination. The US also has privacy laws such as HIPAA.
Without those legal guardrails, data exploitation becomes normalized, abuse becomes harder to detect and stop.
The relation of Pluralism - the coexistence of different lifestyles, beliefs and opinions - and information privacy is once again a trivial one. It's obvious that individuals need to be able to control how their personal information is processed and collected in order to preserve their autonomy, dignity and freedom of expression.
In the modern age, it must be mentioned how algorithms and artificial intelligence are discriminating against minorities. Surveillance and predictive policing are based on collected personal information and therefore result in discrimination against marginalized communities. For instance, France used the Olympic to sportswash a mass surveillance system based on AI, that Humans Rights Watch have criticized as posing risk to the right of privacy and non-discrimination. France has a longstanding problem of abusive and discriminatory identity checks.
Especially in countries where diversity is frowned upon or even illegal, it is essential that people can protect their identity by safeguarding their personal information.
Every person has human rights that should enable them to live their life freely as they desire. In the thought experiment with your grandmother, it is shown how lax information privacy and data protection can have unjust, undignified and unequal consequences. The aforementioned threats to pluralism obviously apply to human rights as well.
Most obvious, there is a human right to privacy, but rights to freedom of expression and assembly are also threatened as the previously mentioned examples of Hungary or Poland show.
There also is the Chilling Effect, which describes the human tendency to self-censor due to threats of prosecution. China's Social Credit System perfectly abuses this effect in order to force citizens to stay in line with the CCP.
But how do we even know all this is happening? Who holds power accountable when it hides behind NDAs, security clearances and encryption? In a democratic society, discovering out these violations is the responsibility of a free and independent press. Information privacy ensures that journalists are independent, free to investigate, challenge and expose power.
When journalists cannot guarantee the confidentiality of their sources, or operate in fear of being tracked, monitored or targeted the integrity of investigative reporting is compromised. This not only endangers the individuals involved - journalists, whistleblowers, and informants - but also weakens the public’s access to truth and accountability
High-impact revelations such as the Panama Papers, WikiLeaks disclosures, Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks, as well as the Cum-Ex and Cum-Cum tax fraud scandals or the Wirecard affair, all relied on secure channels of communication, anonymity, and protection from state and corporate surveillance. Without robust information privacy protections, these landmark investigations—many of which led to legal reform, resignations, and public awareness—would not have been possible.
How quickly these ground principles for democracy can tip, is shown by the current fall of the US democracy to a authoritarian and fascist state. At the center are DOGE and ICE, using and abusing social media, surveillance software, and big data; all backed by tech oligarchs like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Jay Chaudhry and Jeff Bezos. Other democracies are experiencing similar movements.
"But I have nothing to hide and surveillance makes everything safer!"
Firstly, as Edward Snowden put it, saying that one doesn't need information privacy because they don't have anything to hide is like saying that one does not need free speech because they don't have anything to say.
Secondly, while there is a field of tension between the liberties rights of individuals and justified interests of the public, the state and private data processors, surveillance does not make everything safe, not even anything safer.
NSA surveillance techniques have stopped only one out of 255 planned terrorist attacks, the others having been stopped by traditional police work. A UNHCR report outlines how authoritarian states use terrorism and security as a scapegoat for expanding surveillance programs that have "devastating" impacts on privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of association and political participation. The EU commission has made it clear: surveillance undermines the principle of innocence until proven guilty and leads to discrimination.
This isn’t just about individually deleting your Instagram account or tweaking privacy settings. It’s about recognizing and resisting the structural damage caused by unchecked surveillance. Privacy isn’t a niche personal preference—it’s the scaffolding that holds democratic society together.
Hold your government accountable.
The question is not "what do I have to hide?"
It is: "What do we lose when the vulnerable have no place to hide?"
(Also text your grandma to check up on her) (preferably via Signal)
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
- Martin Niemöller