Defending Your Privacy

Whether it was the PATRIOT ACT, illegal NSA wiretapping or local police surveillance, our government has used 9/11 to increase its control over us. Corporations increase their spying on employees in order to get more work out of them. Schools spy on students in their homes through hardware enabled cameras that can never be turned off. Companies build psychological models of their users in order to compel real money purchases. Dark software design patterns make sites use you rather than be useful to you. They turn your data against you in order to reinforce corporate power and profits. Mobile websites are deliberately broken in order to push users to download tracking-heavy apps, which immediately help themselves to all your private information.

The ad-tech duopoly compiles and distributes the information they collect on us. Infotech companies package up the information they gather on us, including where we go and potentially who we meet with, and sell it to the highest bidder, including the police. The true purpose of this surveillance is to collect data for bulk resale and to create profiles on everyone. They will soon tie your credit to your internet browsing.

Any connected device or smart camera is a potential covert spying device. Employees use these surveillance tools to keep tabs on family, friends, lovers and love interests. Whether it is for an illicit thrill or to exert control, no one should have such that power!

The arguments for each step on the road to a surveillance state may sound convincing, but that road leads to autocracy, every time. Terrorists cannot abolish our open society. Only governments and their corporate handmaidens can. The Pirate Party will prevent that from happening!

We seek to fix all of this from the bottom up, by first eliminating any potential profit from your information and then pry off the nanny state by removing each invasion of your hard won privacy. We plan to ensure that this is ever more difficult strip from us by enshrining a right to privacy in legislation.

We don't limit our efforts to advocating for your privacy. We have taught people how to protect their privacy for years and will do so as long as needed.

Public advocacy about the inefficacy of internet advertising, and the dishonesty that has plagued the system since it began, can help discourage new money from entering a corrupt system. Widespread adoption of anti-tracking software will deprive the system of the data it needs, but ultimately the Pirate Party will enact legislation to break up the spying economy once and for all!