Internet & Privacy — Your Data Belongs to You

Americans have almost no legal rights over their own digital lives. There is no federal privacy law. A 20+ state patchwork creates confusion for consumers and compliance arbitrage for corporations. The EU has levied €5.65 billion in GDPR fines; the largest US state fine is $2.75 million — less than what Meta earns every four minutes.

Algorithms decide who gets hired, who gets a loan, who sees what news — with zero accountability. Amazon's hiring AI penalized résumés containing the word 'women's.' The COMPAS recidivism algorithm has a 45% false positive rate for Black defendants vs. 23% for white defendants. Facial recognition error rates run 0.8% for light-skinned men but 34.7% for dark-skinned women — a 43-to-1 disparity. At least three Black men have been wrongfully arrested on facial recognition misidentifications.

Federal agencies buy personal data from brokers to bypass the Fourth Amendment entirely. Fog Data Science sold police access to billions of data points on 250+ million devices for $9,000 per year — no warrant required. The FBI confirmed purchasing Americans' location data without warrants. Planned Parenthood visitor location data was purchasable for $160.

Children are particularly exposed. COPPA was written in 1998 — before smartphones, before social media, before algorithmic feeds. Three-plus hours per day of social media doubles a teen's depression risk. Design patterns (infinite scroll, autoplay, streaks) are built specifically to exploit developing attention systems. The UK's Age Appropriate Design Code alone produced 91 documented platform changes; the US has produced none.

For users, the surveillance business model ends. No more broadcasting your location, browsing history, and health conditions to thousands of companies in milliseconds. Private right of action ($1,000–$5,000 per violation) means individuals can hold platforms accountable. Families with means no longer need to opt out of tracking to protect their children; all minors default to privacy-first, chronological feeds, no targeted advertising.

For people subject to algorithmic decisions, hiring, lending, insurance, housing, education, and criminal justice AI require mandatory bias audits, human review, and public accountability. Facial recognition error rates collapse when algorithms are tested against diverse populations. COMPAS-style recidivism tools get subject to disparate impact standards. The three Black men wrongfully arrested on facial recognition become impossible cases under these rules.

For the Fourth Amendment, federal agencies stop purchasing Americans' location data without warrants. The Fog Data Science model ends. $9,000/year surveillance budgets eliminated. Fourth Amendment protections apply to digital life, not just physical search and seizure. Encryption is protected by statute — no backdoors.

For competition, tech monopolies face structural separation. Google no longer operates search engine AND ad-tech marketplace AND app store simultaneously. Data portability becomes real — users can move to competitors. Section 230's core protection for user-generated content stays; the algorithmic amplification carveout ends the 'feed as editorial choice' escape hatch.