Big Brother and Groceries

If I were to mention George Orwell’s famous tome, 1984, I would imagine most people of a certain age would harken back to high school and your English teacher in junior year. For most, I would also imagine that the story itself is a blur, as the passage of time tends to do. However, I can, in turn, almost guarantee that nearly everyone who has read 1984 will remember two words made famous by that seismic novel – BIG BROTHER! In the book, Big Brother is the leader of a totalitarian state in which the rulers control total power, merely for “its own sake.”

Big Brother has, over time, come to symbolize encroachment into personal freedom, as evidenced by the fact is oftentimes bantered about in the discussion of the digital age – on television, in print media, and on blogs. To be honest, however, I had not much thought of Big Brother, or 1984, until this week.

Though innocuous sounding, the reality is that there is increasingly data monitoring of such mundane activities as your grocery store purchases and driving habits. Unbeknownst to me, grocery stores – and nearly all “big box retailers,” in fact – are routinely monitoring your activity in the aisles. In addition, insurance companies are increasingly using monitors in your car (they are often voluntarily installed on the premise that safe drivers get a discount) to keep an eye on your driving habits, both for good and for ill. It was these two examples that caused me to ask, “how do I put a price tag on my privacy?”

As I am a former professor of Constitutional Law, I often remind my students that without the 4th Amendment and its guarantee of “protection against reasonable search and seizure,” the value of the remaining 9 amendments in the Bill of Rights is void. For in codifying protections against overreach – and Big Brother – the Founding Fathers recognized that a person’s privacy is part of his inherent essence.

In an age in which the amount of data we generate doubles every year, and in which the “rules of the road” are not yet fully codified, it is important to monitor the potentiality of Big Brother, as Orwell warned. And, while I can’t (or won’t) stop shopping for groceries, or driving, I can make certain to demand there are better protections for my privacy with Clarip!

Clarip is an AI based data, privacy and consent management platform that can help businesses protect against exposure while also giving consumers the power to tell retailers what information that can have and use. For more information about Clarip’s capabilities, please visit www.clarip.com.

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Are you ready for the new CA privacy law? Start preparing compliance efforts with Clarip for the California Consumer Privacy Act. Enforcement starts January 1, 2020 so better start planning funding in your 2019 budget now.