Let’s talk about the good things that happened this year.
Yes, 2020 has been a relentless nightmare that’s unspooled at rapidly shifting speeds — and it’s showing no signs of magically abating as the clock strikes 12 this New Year’s Eve. But you, who by some combination of luck or fate are still thinking and breathing, know this already. What you may be less aware of, however, is that despite the undeniable pain and tragedy 2020 has wrought, there are developments worth celebrating.
While each passing year seemingly brings with it news of further digital indignities thrust upon your life, 2020 witnessed genuine progress when it comes to protecting your privacy. It would be a shame to not recognize and celebrate it.
Your face is your own
While face coverings remain a public necessity, it’s easy to push the threat posed by facial recognition technology to the back of your mind. That would be a mistake. In addition to the fact that the biased tech isn’t fully thwarted by masks, it will still be here when the pandemic finally ends and will likely lead to the arrest of more innocent people in the process.
Thankfully, 2020 has seen several prominent bans of the technology in cities around the country:
January
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New Jersey’s attorney general Gurbir Grewal demanded the state’s law enforcement stop using Clearview AI — the facial recognition software that scraped billions of online photos to build its database.
June
September
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The city of Portland, Oregon, moved to ban use of the tech by the city and some private businesses.
November
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Voters in Portland, Maine, moved to strengthen an existing ban on facial recognition. What’s more, the new measure gave residents the right to sue the city for abuses.
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December
These 2020 privacy wins follow various bans on facial recognition in cities like San Francisco which took place the previous year. They prove that, even in the midst of an ongoing pandemic and corresponding demands that we acquiesce to surveillance to combat the spread of the virus, Americans care about their privacy.
That’s worth celebrating.
The force of law
When it comes to the California Consumer Privacy Act, 2020 was the year the proverbial guns came out.
The California digital privacy law officially went into effect Jan. 1, however, there was a six-month grace period built-in to allow companies time to comply. As of July 1, that grace period was up.
The law gives Californians a host of new rights, such as the right to demand companies delete their personal data, the right to access said personal data, the right to know how companies use their data, and a list of who is buying their data. Oh, and for good measure, California residents can also request companies stop sharing their data with third parties under the law.
SEE ALSO: People are fighting algorithms for a more just and equitable future. You can, too.
“Before, if you went to a company and said, ‘Give me my data,’ they could make you pay for it or just tell you to go pound sand,” Justin Brookman, director of privacy and technology policy at Consumer Reports, told the publication in January. “Now it’s a legal right.”
Importantly, even if you don’t live in California, you’re likely to benefit from the CCPA. In November of 2019, Microsoft said in a blog post that it would “honor California’s new privacy rights throughout the United States.” In other words, the tide is (albeit slowly) changing when it comes to the rights people have over their data — 2020 could very well be the inflection point.
The encryption boom
In their own uniquely depressing ways, the twin scourges of police violence and a raging pandemic served as a clarion call for encryption.
As the nation poured into the streets to protest the police killing of George Floyd, and police violence against Black and brown people more broadly, law enforcement responded with abuse piled atop abuse. As police monitored Black Lives Matter protesters and harassed organizers, those same protesters embraced digital security in droves.
Specifically, people turned to the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal. Apptopia, a service that monitors app downloads, confirmed in June that Signal downloads had skyrocketed.
SEE ALSO: All the privacy apps you should have downloaded in 2020
On the flip side, as people across the globe were forced to stay home to blunt the coronavirus’ spread (and are once again forced to do so in some parts of the U.S.), the use of digital communication tools like Zoom exploded. And, perhaps predictably, there was a backlash when people realized many of the tools were seemingly not designed with users’ privacy in mind.
In response to that outcry, Zoom released end-to-end encryption (that you have to turn on yourself), and Signal upped its already admirable game by releasing end-to-end encrypted group video calls. More broadly, people pushed back at the remote monitoring that had become commonplace for many remote workers.
The hard-earned lessons of 2020 aren’t likely to be forgotten anytime soon and now the end-to-end encryption genie is out of the bottle thanks, at least in part, to the ravages of an otherwise brutal year.
Breaking up the beast
Maybe, just maybe 2020 is the beginning of the end for Facebook as we know it.
Over the course of the year, the social media behemoth synonymous with scandal began to show its cracks — and the previously unthinkable possibility of breaking up Facebook became a bipartisan talking point.
That’s right, in a year where even mask wearing was politicized, elected Republicans and Democrats alike managed to agree that Facebook is a force that demands reckoning.
In October, a 449-page congressional report found that Facebook’s “monopoly power” hurts user privacy. In early December, the Federal Trade Commission accused Facebook of “illegally maintaining” its monopoly and warned that a breakup is on the table. Later that month, the FTC launched a separate “wide-ranging” probe into Facebook and other social media companies.
SEE ALSO: The best messaging apps not owned by Facebook
And it’s not just politicians who are taking a long-overdue swing at Facebook (which, don’t forget, owns Instagram and WhatsApp). At the time of this writing, Apple is engaged in an ongoing beef with Facebook for having the gall to show users how Facebook tracks them.
Will we look back at 2020 as the beginning of the end of Facebook’s vice-like grip on America’s politics, communications, and privacy? It’s too soon to say for certain, but this year has been nothing if not full of surprises — maybe we’re due for a few positives ones in 2021.