It’s Time We Ring the Alarm: What Do the Bigwigs Do With Our Data?

TCAST

One petabyte of information is equal to 500 billion pages of standard printed text.

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), the EU’s watchdog, has made a shocking discovery: Europol has a data cache that’s at least four petabytes, filled with sensitive personal information that was unlawfully collected and held.

Join Alexander and Jason as they discuss Europol’s massive, controversial data cache–and the disturbing implications of the institution’s actions.

They’re Watching You

Have you ever given a second thought about what it means to turn on your smartphone’s Location setting? Or what would happen if you clicked on Accept All Cookies whenever you entered a new website?

Since most of us live as creatures of habit, our small decisions to use these settings and forget about them can have a big impact. Without your informed consent, they could plot out your entire schedule. Your favorite places to eat and hang out, the gym you go to, your workplace. Everything can be accessed and filed away.

Europol is primed to become the center of machine learning and AI in policing. And yet, the bloc’s watchdog has uncovered a dark truth: that they have been unlawfully storing information secondary or tertiary to their investigations. Hacked data from encrypted phone services and information from asylum seekers who were never involved in any crime have been stowed away without the full, informed consent of those involved.

Nobody is Safe

It’s true: we need to trust that our government institutions have our best interests at heart. But if they can’t even be upfront about the amount of information they have on their citizens, then that leaves so much room for misuse and manipulation.

In this episode, Jason narrates the story of Frank van der Linde. Van der Linde, a political activist, was placed on a terror watchlist in his native Netherlands and later removed. However, he had moved to Berlin before the removal and this prompted the Dutch police to share his data with their German counterparts and Europol.

After discovering this, he attempted to have his personal data removed from any international databases. But Europol told him that they had nothing he was “entitled to have access to.”

Van der Linde’s situation is a wake-up call to the harms associated with a lack of transparency. Behind his back, Europol shared his personal information with the German police. In the name of public security, it’s possible for police to share data with other police in other countries. But why is it so difficult to share this data with us? How quickly can we get persecuted for speaking the truth to power?

Your data is worth your life. Entrust your personal information to platforms that know how to treat it with dignity and respect.

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