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Opinion

  • in Opinion
  • 8 min read

Privacy is Also Protecting the Data of Others

Illustration from a photo of two children standing in a grass field. The taller child holds a yellow umbrella protecting the smaller child.

In privacy, we talk a lot about how to protect our own data, but what about our responsibility to protect the data of others?

If you care about privacy rights, you must also care for the data of the people around you. To make privacy work, we need to develop a culture that normalizes caring for everyone's data, not just our own. Privacy cannot solely be a personal responsibility, data privacy is team work.

  • in Opinion
  • 4 min read

No, Privacy is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset

Photo of a protest with someone holding a sign saying Fight Today For a Better Tomorrow.

In my work as a privacy advocate, I regularly encounter two types of discourse that I find very damaging to privacy as a whole. The first one is the idea that privacy is dead, implying it's not worth putting any effort to protect personal data anymore. This is the abdication mindset. This attitude is the one that scares me the most because without giving it a fight then of course the battle is lost in advance. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, privacy is dead if you let it die.

  • in Opinion
  • 11 min read

The Future of Privacy: How Governments Shape Your Digital Life

Black and white photo of a street post at night. The street post has some ripped stickers on it and a stencilled graffiti saying Big Data is Watching You.

Data privacy is a vast subject that encompasses so much. Some might think it is a niche focus interesting only a few. But in reality, it is a wide-ranging field influenced by intricate relationships between politics, law, technology, and much more. Further, it affects everyone in one way or another, whether they care about it or not.

  • in Opinion
  • 4 min read

State of the Web App: Current Woes and Promising Futures

The concept of a progressive web app is enticing: an application using web technologies that is inherently cross-platform (since it runs in a browser) and acts like a native app, even functioning offline. Support for PWAs in traditionally locked-down platforms like iOS means that PWAs can give users the freedom to install apps without having to go through Apple’s App Store. But there are problems with web content that PWAs haven't solved.

  • in Opinion
  • 5 min read

Where are all the Multi-Party Relays?

Multi-Party Relays (MPRs) are a technology that aims to provide better privacy protections than VPNs do. MPRs showed a lot of promise when they first emerged, but years later there are fewer options than ever. What happened?

  • in Opinion
  • 4 min read

Hide Nothing

In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States, the US government enacted laws that weakened citizen privacy in the name of national emergency. This sent up many red flags for human rights and privacy advocates.

  • in Opinion
  • 3 min read

Move Fast and Break Things

Mark Zuckerberg does not look comfortable on stage. Yet, there he was proclaiming that “the future is private”. If someone has to tell you that they care about your privacy, they probably don’t.