What did the digital age mean for privacy in the United States?

Abstract

Over the course of the last 3 decades, the world has seen monumental shifts in how information is collected, transmitted, and disseminated. Every aspect of our personalities that live on the internet, including our browser history, photos we post to social media, our shopping decisions and our selection of online friends, has been collated, quantified, and assimilated into a digital profile, which has skyrocketing value to an increasing number of businesses. With these developments in technology come the inevitable questions of ownership of such data, its use, misuse and even possible theft. This paper takes a comprehensive and comparative look at the data privacy legislature in the two largest data hubs in the world, namely the United States and the European Union. The paper also seeks to address the shortcomings of certain, past legislative decisions, and makes a recommendation for the future. To do this, we analyze the events of the past, using the 2016 Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data scandal as a focal point. On analyzing the major differences between American privacy law and the preeminent document on data privacy at the time, namely the Global Data Privacy Regulations (GDPR), we conclude that data privacy in the United States is in its nascent stages, in dire need of an overhaul. The California Consumer Privacy Act is the legislature that comes close to mimicking the function of the GDPR, albeit at a much smaller scale. The other remedies include the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA), which is already under consideration by Congress, or a state-by-state approach.