On my first night in Washington D.C. I dragged my suitcase into an AirBnB in Capitol Hill, connected to the WiFi, and opened my computer. A blue header, footer, and sidebar were on the first page I reloaded - an ad I had never seen before. The ad advocated against federal antitrust reform targeting big tech.
The ad almost certainly was location-targeted, another chilling example of the potential uses and abuses of personal data. This experience is becoming more and more common, in fact, a fellow last year shared a similar story, even as the systems processing and acting on our data become more interconnected and opaque.
It’s an uncomfortable reality. Online privacy, at the moment, is a myth. And as more and more services are digitized, self-serving and material decisions will get made by actors with access to vast troves of personal data.
And my first month as a TechCongress fellow has taught me this: there’s a good chance I can help do something about it.
Dev is serving with the Senate Commerce Committee, Consumer Protection Subcommittee, under Sen. Cantwell (D-WA) and working on a multitude of issues related to privacy, algorithmic discrimination, and other consumer protection issues.