Unger, Wayne, How Disinformation Campaigns Exploit the Poor Data Privacy Regime to Erode Democracy (December 14, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3762609

“The U.S. is under attack. It is an information war, and disinformation is the weapon. Foreign and domestic actors have launched information operations and coordinated campaigns against western democracies using dis/misinformation. While the U.S. is both a disseminator and recipient of global or regional disinformation campaigns, this article focuses on the U.S. and its people as the recipient. From Russian election interference to COVID-19 conspiracies, disinformation campaigns harm the presumptive trust in democracy, democratic institutions, and public health and safety. While dis/misinformation is not new, the rapid and widespread dissemination of dis/misinformation has only recently been made possible by technological developments that enable mass communication and persuasion never seen before. Today, social media, algorithms, personal profiling, and psychology, when mixed together, enable a new dimension of political microtargeting—a dimension that disinformers exploit for their political gain. These enablers share a root cause—the poor data privacy and security regime in the U.S. At its core, democracy requires independent thought, personal autonomy, and trust in democratic institutions because an independently thinking and acting public is the external check on power and authority. However, when the public is misinformed or disconnected from fact and truth, the fundamental concept of democracy erodes—the public is no longer informed, independently thinking, and autonomous to elect its representatives and check their power. Disinformation, not rooted in fact and truth, attacks the core of democracy, and thus, the public check on governmental power. This article addresses a root cause—the lack of data privacy protections—of the dis/misinformation dissemination and its effects on democracy. This article explains, from a technological perspective, how personal information is used for personal profiling, and how personal profiling contributes to the mass interpersonal persuasion that disinformation campaigns exploit to advance their political goals.”