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Data Colonialism: How Powerful Nations Control the Digital Lives of the Global South | | | | |
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> | In the 19th century, colonial powers sought natural resources; however, in the 21st century, they seek data. Nowadays, major economies and big tech companies control digital infrastructure and global data flows, often at the expense of developing countries in Global South. Companies like Google, Huawei, Microsoft, and Amazon collect massive user data to expand their economic while controlling key internet infrastructure. As developing nations rely more on these external digital platforms, they face risks of privacy violations, limiting their technological sovereignty. This paper examines how data extraction, weak regulations and imbalance of power lead to data colonialism. It argues that developing nations should increase local people’s awareness, enforce data localization, and strengthen legal protections to lessen reliance on foreign platforms. | | | | |
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> | Under the past colonial, the colonialism refers to the control of physical land, labor and natural resources. Today, with the advancement of technology, a new form of colonial has been emerged, known as a “_data colonialism_”. According to Scholar Couldry and Mejias, data colonialism refers to a “combines the predatory extractive practices of historical colonialism with the abstract quantification methods of computing.” https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/89511/1/Couldry_Data-colonialism_Accepted.pdf. Under this concept, data represents as a new form of resource appropriation dominated by at least two poles of colonial powers: Western and Chinese tech giants. These two create communication networks with the sole aim of collecting data, profiting from it, and retaining it as raw material for data analytics https://globalsouthseries.in/2023/01/25/digital-colonialism-neo-colonialism-of-the-global-south. | | | | |
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< | Introduction: | | | | |
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< | Most people do not recognize that their choice of transport delineates the protections they are afforded through the Fourth Amendment and determines the scope and ability of police to access their data without a warrant. For-hire transportation has been a historically longstanding business, however, its modern-day alternative, ridesharing applications (e.g. Uber, Lyft, or E-scooters), introduce significant legal challenges which highlight the Fourth Amendment’s struggle to adapt to the contemporary realities. First, we will first examine how ridesharing differs from traditional for-hire transportation methods. Then we will illustrate how existing legal frameworks fail to adequately protect the data of ridesharing users. | >
> | Global South countries, including South Asia, Latin America, and Africa, use tech giant companies’ digital platforms, such as Google cloud storage, Amazon internet, or Huawei AI, to store their data. However, because their data resides on external servers, these Global South countries lack complete control over their own information. Meanwhile, the laws from big tech countries also raised legal concern over the privacy of this data. For example, the U.S. Cloud Act grants the authority to government to access electronic data held by US-based technology companies, even if such data is stored on server outside United States. https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/legal-notices/trust-center/us-cloud-act. Therefore, the data that is stored, collected, and used by Global South’s citizens will be used for the benefit of the powerful nations rather than their own, vulnerable to foreign surveillance and corporate appropriation. | | | | |
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< | 1. Not Just Another Taxi | >
> | One case of tech giant’s dominance is the supply of surveillance technologies from China to the Global South countries. For example, the Zimbabwean government installed facial recognition technology from Cloudwalk in public spaces to monitor activists https://adf-magazine.com/2023/01/zimbabwe-turns-to-chinese-technology-to-expand-surveillance-of-citizens/. This has been done with a lack of legislation regulating what happens to the collected data and with no clear safeguard for how to process it. Moreover, Zimbabwe also has a nationwide rollout of mobile phone telecommunications equipment from Huawei. While concerns around the security of this Huawei communication equipment have seen by the United States leading a call for banning usage, Zimbabwe was tied with this tech giant company without having adequate legal frameworks to justify this usage and ignoring the fact that in China itself, these technologies were used to steal data from the Uyghur community https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/4692/huawei-and-surveillance-zimbabwe. The mentioned cases reflect what happened in the past colonial times, where the profits and control remain in powerful hands, while the costs in terms of loss of autonomy and privacy are borne by the poorer nations. | | | | |
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< | Ridesharing companies offer a service which is functionally identical to traditional for-hire options like taxis or busses. However, there is little awareness that these apps collect and monetize extensive forms of data, much of which is irrelevant to the services they provide . By requiring users to upload a photo ID for “security purposes” and banking information for quick-and-easy online payments (e.g. Google/Apple Pay), ridesharing apps deceive users to granting the app excessive access to their devices. This includes access to photos, videos, audio, and other personal information, such as race, sexual orientation, pregnancy and childbirth details, and even biometric data . Crucially, ridesharing apps, namely Uber, have been able to track users’ location even when the app is not actively use , under the pretense of improving services and retrieving consumers’ “consent”. Many companies store data indefinitely , effectively transforming phones into surveillance tools that monitor users’ constant whereabouts and private information, allowing cops to access such extensive data through a simple subpoena.
While the traditional taxi companies have technologically evolved, their data collection practices are limited compared to the extensive data harvesting by ridesharing applications; they only track location during rides, and consumers have the easy option to remain anonymous by merely hailing a cab and paying with cash, preventing any link between the ride and their identity. This (or any) level and ease of anonymity is not available with ridesharing services, which leads to the assumption that Fourth Amendment jurisprudence would recognize the risks associated with ridesharing and evolve to adequately protect individuals’ data from unreasonable searches. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
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> | The challenges faced by the Global South countries are not purely a failure of governance but also a result of the lack of awareness and imbalance of power in the structure of the global digital system. People in many developing countries lack knowledge about the collection or use of their data. As Couldry and Mejias said, the digital platforms usually become people’s everyday interaction without them realizing what they are giving up. At the same time, unlike European countries that have strong data privacy regulation like GDPR, countries in the Global South mostly lack such legal protection, making it easy for big tech companies to use these data for their own profit. Moreover, even where the law exists, the penalties are sometimes too weak to stop the violation by these tech giant companies. For example, Uber still operates even in breach of local law since the cost of penalties for running a business is lower than the benefit of operating it (e.g., in 2016, a French court fined Uber for running illegal services) https://www.csis.org/analysis/real-national-security-concerns-over-data-localization. | | | | |
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< | 2. (The Shortfalls of) Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence: | | | | |
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< | The “reasonable expectation of privacy” doctrine espoused by the case of Katz v. United States (1967) forms the bedrock of Fourth Amendment protections, for which the foundational question is one: whether there was a reasonable expectation of privacy. Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 402 (2018) at 346.
The legal framework of Fourth Amendment protections is inadequate to address the unique issue presented by ridesharing companies. “You cannot solve today’s problems with yesterday's solutions”. Foundational cases in this field focus on protecting data collected from “intrusion to the private space” (Katz), and prevent the applicability of Fourth Amendment protections from “company data” (Miller at 440). This allows police to obtain the extensive data gathered by ridesharing companies, robbing citizens of their Fourth Amendment protections while “legally justifying” their actions based on these foundational precedents: The collected data is not collected by intrusion to a “private place” (Katz) and is labelled as “company data”.
Although this data is technically “company data”, per Miller, and is “voluntarily” shared with rideshare applications “in the ordinary course of business” Sanchez v. LADOT , this argument fails to contextualize the data acquired with the extent of the intrusion into user’s privacy, as illustrated above. Hence, users are held to not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the continuous stream of all the forms of data listed above, just because they use a ridesharing app for the purpose of transportation.
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> | Global South countries need to take clear steps to reclaim their digital futures and fight back against data colonialism. One solution is to build strategic knowledge and culture for local people and to find new space for internet and digital governance. This new space should be supported by the United Nations rather than by the U.S. or other tech giants’ institutions in order to help developing countries create their own fair data laws and strategies to combat the data privacy violations done by powerful nations. One strategy that could be led by the United Nations is to emerge South-South cooperation as a tool for strengthening data statistic and capacities between Global South countries to develop common standards to stop further exploitation. Moreover, countries may adopt the regulation about 'localizing digitization,' which mandates the local storage of consumer data. While this might limit global data flows, it could be a beneficial step to give countries better control of their citizens’ data and build a fairer power balance. Alternatively, the ‘nationalizing data’ approach may be done by requiring tech companies to pay for data they collect. In this way, the data will be used not just for private profits but for the benefit of their public. | | | | |
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< | a. Third-party Doctrine; long live the outdated King
The third-party doctrine entails that information that is voluntarily entailed to a third party is not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Miller, 425 U.S. at 443. However, this does not extend to data forming “an all-encompassing record of the holder’s whereabouts.” Carpenter, 138 S. Ct. at 2217. Claiming that users fully comprehend the extent of data gathering and location tracking would be incredulous, particularly considering that some ridesharing companies allow users as young as 13 years old to *create their own profile* . While not all SCOTUS Justices have been oblivious to inadequacy of the third-party doctrine and this false notion of ‘consent’ in today’s era of heightened data-sharing practices , the law evolves at an inadequate, glacial rate. This is exemplified most recently by Sanchez unequivocally affirming the applicability of the third-party doctrine in ridesharing cases, ruling that the Defendant affirmatively shared his data with the ride-share company by agreeing to the app conditions. Sanchez, 39 F.4th at 559.
Considering the breadth and depth of data gathered by such ridesharing companies, one would expect that the Carpenter limitation to the third-party doctrine to apply. However, defying all sense and in an impressive display of naiveté, Sanchez deemed the captured data as limited and occurring “during discrete trips”, thus falling outside of the scope of the Carpenter limitation. Sanchez, 39 F.4th at 560. This decision sets a troubling precedent for future data privacy challenges against ridesharing companies, paving a dark future for the safeguarding of user privacy in this industry.
Conclusion:
The judiciary’s ancient approach to what constitutes a reasonable expectation of privacy, and their (mis)understanding of the deceptive tactics embedded in rideshare companies’ Terms of Service regarding consent, undermines US citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights, facilitating unfettered access by law enforcement, and authorizing the erosion of privacy rights as envisioned by the Framers.
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> | Today’s tech giants control data similarly to how colonial powers appropriated land and resources. The control over their data falls beyond reach for countries in the Global South. To reclaim digital sovereignty, developing countries must have stronger data legislation and educate their citizens, while keeping data within national borders and work together to create regulations that protect their digital rights.
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