President Trump signed a repeal April 3 to reverse broadband privacy protection laws. The week before this repeal was signed, it was narrowly passed by Republicans in Congress and received no Democrat support. You would think within a calendar year after a massive leak describing undercover surveillance techniques, the American people would not stand for any action like this from the federal government.
Americans have been letting their rights to privacy slip away from them for far too long. It is only getting worse, and it is not going to stop until the average citizen takes a stand.
In May of 2016, WikiLeaks published one of the largest leaks of Central Intelligence Agency documents in history. These documents detailed advanced software technology used to break into a variety of consumer products and transformed the average cell phone or smart television into a spying device.
Very serious and troublesome allegations were made in this report. For example, if to be believed, these WikiLeaks documents states the CIA has access to both Apple and Android devices and can even access data from encrypted messaging and communication apps. These apps are used specifically to combat this type of spying, surveillance and insecurity.
While it is not clear from the reports whether these tools have been used on people, these processes still exist, so if it has not happened yet, it could be happening any day. I for one would not be surprised to learn that the CIA has been spying on American people, but if not, the agency has still been purposefully leaving these vulnerabilities into these devices.
When these reports first entered the news cycle, you could not go a day without hearing a remark or two about the infamous CIA data dump, but these conversations have ended.
Americans can no longer allow for things as crucial as our right for privacy to fall out of focus the instant the media stops covering it.
If the average United States citizen does not stand against this abhorrent stripping of our privacy and internet security, no one else will.
I am in no way saying that the Republican party is 100 percent responsible for this degradation of American privacy. In many ways it is quite the opposite. Former president Barack Obama repeatedly extended the power and scope of the NSA well into his presidential tenure. He even expanded its reach in the last few days of his presidency.
With this said, I do respect that no Democrats supported this repeal. I hope in the coming years the American people realize how big of an issue this is. We need to band together, whether we’re Democratic, Republican, Libertarian or Green party members, and fight for our right to privacy.
sareynol@umail.iu.edu
