I found myself hard-pressed this year to figure out what to say about privacy in 2024. Of course, I wish you all a happy and healthy new year, but what do we say about privacy in 2024?
Have we all become so accustomed to privacy breaches and data breaches by now that we will just shrug most of them off and no longer worry about our privacy as much? As criminals get more aggressive and leak more sensitive data to pressure victims to pay, will we shrug it off, or will we pay criminals in the hopes they will not leak our most personal data?
Will some of us still try to claw back whatever privacy we’ve lost over the years? Will we stand up and fight those who have eroded a woman’s right to make decisions about her body, or the rights of trans people to get supportive therapy? We have lawmakers who think they can dictate what we can or cannot do with respect to our health and our bodies. May those people be voted out of office as quickly as possible.
Yes, we made some gains in 2023 in terms of awareness of the need for better student data security and many organizations eliminated the use of trackers on their websites. But now we have AI to think about and how that may pose significant challenges to our privacy.
We have some big challenges ahead of us in 2024. Buckle up.