Big Tech and the Intelligence Community: A Case Study Analysis of the Effectiveness of Recent Legislation in Protecting Consumer Privacy

Abstract

This thesis highlights the current inadequacies within online privacy policy in the United States. Its limitedness encourages government conglomerations of personal information without consumer consent. This research is different from existing scholarship in the field in that it looks at the failure to regulate law enforcement’s purchase of datasets without a warrant at the judicial branch, and the state and federal legislative branches of government. The intersection of the two branches' failure to control Executive agencies provokes questions that force the reader to question the sanctity of their privacy in the hands of government officials. Instead of implementing legislation that would curtail the efforts of public entities, this thesis examines how regulating the private tech industry could create more robust safeguards for consumers when their data is in the hands of federal authorities. It uses a qualitative approach, mainly comparing legislative and judicial inadequacies in the policy area. The conclusions reached in this paper indicate that current conceptions of privacy teeter between concentrated enforcement efforts that push out small businesses or limited oversight, leading to misuse of user data. In a revolutionized digital economy that not only relies upon individual information but makes predictive models based on user behavior, adequate protection against State agents is necessary. This thesis finds that the key to policy solutions related to government usage of data involve implementing heightened standards for anonymization and better balancing consumer protections against corporate interests.