National Data Privacy Day Is Wishful Thinking

The constant collection, sharing and analysis of personal data means companies, governments, groups and even individuals can know more about your private life than ever before. You have to have a supreme sense of irony, or be in major denial, to call Monday, Jan. 28, Data Privacy Day. Given the current state of big data collection and "sharing" (selling) by online giants and telcos, combined with the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to draw intrusive inferences about us from all that data, it would be much more accurate to call it Privacy is Dead Day. Because the modern threats to privacy are not just that your credit card or bank account could get compromised. It is that your life – everything about your life – can be collected and analyzed by companies, governments, groups and even individuals in a way that, collectively, starts to sound very much like Big Brother.