Trust in government data practices is rapidly deteriorating

0:00It's hard to find topics of broad consensus in American life, but data privacy is one of them. From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty-Karino. For years, consumers have worried about how the private sector, namely big tech, handles their personal data. Now a new survey from the Center for Democracy and Technology suggests a large majority are also concerned about how the federal government uses their data. We spoke with Elizabeth Laird, Director of Equity and Civic Technology at CDT to learn more. So we conducted, Nash represented a polling, and what we found is the vast majority of people still are very concerned about the personal data that the federal government has about them. And not only that, it's consistent across demographic groups.

1:01So regardless of your political affiliation, your race, ethnicity, your gender, where you live, all of those groups share high levels of concern, and to put that in real numbers, three and four people are concerned about what the federal government knows about them. Yeah. I mean, the stability of the response across all of these different, you know, kind of subsections that you break down is pretty remarkable. I agree. And I have to say, you know, we weren't sure that's what we would find. I think we were very open to the possibility that people have resigned themselves, and they're so used to getting a notification every other week that an organization takes their privacy seriously. And we are, fortunately, you're notifying you that your data has been breached. And that's just all we found. We found that concern levels still are quite high. And we asked, do you agree that the government has a lot of data about you, and there's nothing you can do about it?

2:02And the majority of people agreed with that too. And so I think for policymakers and practitioners, the ingredients of a pretty significant backlash are there, and that concern levels are very high, and the American people feel helpless that there's nothing that they can do about it. We'll be right back. If you're a business leader, Intuit QuickBooks Payroll is an essential tool that completely integrates payroll, time tracking, HR, and your financials in a powerful all-in-one command center. No more juggling platforms are switching between vendors. All your data, synced into one platform, offering clarity and confidence to make smarter decisions and focus on what matters. This summer, QuickBooks Payroll evolves to support the entire team life cycle. HR, time, benefits, and payroll all working together in one connected system that fully integrates with your books. You'll be able to onboard employees in one seamless flow that feeds directly into payroll, configure automated HR workflows for things like promotions or off-boarding, and track performance

3:06time off, and benefits alongside payroll. Create your workflow with QuickBooks Payroll today, and get ready for the brand new tools coming soon. More at QuickBooks.com slash workforce, that's QuickBooks.com slash workforce. You're listening to Marketplace Tech, I'm Megan McCarty-Koreno. We're back with Elizabeth Leard at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Were there specific kinds of data or uses of data that respondents in your survey were particularly worried about? The one that I've been thinking about a lot, and it's in part because of my background working in state government, we spend so much time thinking about how do we remove barriers so that people who are eligible for benefits and services access them? And those can be lifesaving benefits. They can be related to someone's education or their housing or their health, their nutrition, and that translates into a jargon-y term, a chilling effect, in other words, that people

4:10may not access benefits that they're otherwise entitled to. We asked the American people if you weren't sure it was going to happen with your data, how would that affect your signing up for benefits, and nearly half said that they would not sign up for benefits. This is not just a hypothetical or theoretical risk. This actually will result in a society that is less educated, less healthy, more on health. These are real-life implications of that. The other one that we've heard a lot about in the past year is not all recipients of this information are the same. There's been a ton of coverage and discussion about how personal data can be used to support immigration enforcement, for example. And that is something that the majority of the American people are concerned about. So they are worried about their personal data being shared with law enforcement or the Department of Homeland Security. What are the implications of this kind of mistrust in federal data practices? I think we've all worked. Your trust in government right now is that it's lowest it's been in decades.

5:14So I think this is giving the American people another reason to not trust their elected officials and their public servants. I will say something else that came through clearly in our research is that the American people want government to be held accountable. And again, that is consistent across political affiliation, across race and ethnicity, across a variety of different groups of people who these days feel like they don't agree on anything. But one thing that they agreed on is that Congress should be conducting oversight and they should be holding agencies accountable when they are potentially misusing people's data. And so I think even though there certainly was a feeling of helplessness that came through in our survey, I think even stronger than that was a call for action. That was Elizabeth Laird at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Daniel Shin produced this episode, I'm Megan McCarty Carino and that's Marketplace Tech.

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