The landscape of privacy in the United States is being reshaped by technologies that gather information far beyond what older laws anticipated.
By Matthew A. McIntosh
Public Historian
Brewminate
Introduction
A recent lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation has drawn attention to how federal agencies can track individuals through their mobile applications, raising new concerns about government access to personal data. The case centers on the government’s ability to monitor people through app store removals and device tracking systems. The dispute highlights a broader question: how much privacy do Americans actually have in an era when digital tools can reveal location, communication patterns, and online behavior in real time.
Privacy has long been a contested issue in the United States. The Constitution does not include an explicit right to privacy, yet courts have recognized such a right for decades through landmark decisions involving reproductive freedom, personal autonomy, and protection from government intrusion. The University of Missouri Kansas City’s constitutional law project outlines how these rulings shaped the modern understanding of privacy, which is built on judicial interpretation rather than a specific constitutional provision, as described in their historical overview of the right to privacy.
Statutory protections exist, but they were designed for a different era. The Privacy Act of 1974 restricts how federal agencies collect and use personal information. Yet the law predates the internet, smart devices, biometric tools, and artificial intelligence. As technology has evolved, new forms of data collection have emerged that were not contemplated when the statute was written, leaving significant gaps that modern surveillance programs can exploit.
These pressures have sparked renewed debate about what privacy should mean today. Scholars such as Danielle Citron, who discussed the political stakes of privacy in her lecture at Georgia State University, have argued that digital tools magnify the consequences of weak protections. The university’s report on her remarks describes how privacy policy is shaped not only by legal standards but also by political priorities and public expectations, as outlined in their coverage of the Miller Lecture. The result is a moment in which technological capability is advancing faster than the laws designed to regulate it.
As AI systems, commercial data exchanges, and government monitoring programs grow more sophisticated, the distance between what Americans believe about their privacy and what is technologically possible continues to widen. The question is no longer whether privacy is threatened, but whether existing legal frameworks are prepared for the world that current technologies have already created.
The Legal Foundations of Privacy in the United States
Privacy law in the United States rests on two distinct pillars: judicial interpretation and statutory protection. The Constitution itself does not contain the word “privacy,” yet the Supreme Court has recognized privacy rights for more than a century through cases that interpret broader constitutional guarantees. Decisions involving personal autonomy, family life, and freedom from unwarranted intrusion have created a legal framework that treats privacy as a protected interest. An overview of the right to privacy traces how these rulings emerged from the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments, even though the protections are not explicitly written into the text.
Alongside judicial doctrine, Congress enacted the Privacy Act of 1974 to regulate how federal agencies collect, maintain, and share personal information. The Department of Justice’s Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties describes the law’s core requirements, including limits on unauthorized disclosure and a mandate that agencies keep records accurate and relevant. The act also gives individuals the right to access and correct government files about themselves. These provisions were designed to address concerns about secret databases and unchecked government record-keeping that grew during the era of paper files and early computer systems.
However, both the judicial and statutory components of privacy law reflect the technological landscape of their time. The cases that shaped the constitutional right to privacy were decided long before digital platforms made it possible to analyze vast amounts of personal information. Similarly, the Privacy Act governs traditional records rather than the complex flows of data generated by smartphones, social networks, commercial analytics, and modern identification tools. This historical context creates gaps between what the law protects and the types of information that new technologies can collect.
These foundations remain essential, but they were built for a pre-digital world. As later sections of this article will show, the challenges posed by contemporary surveillance technologies now push far beyond what these early frameworks were designed to address. The result is a system in which privacy rights depend heavily on legal interpretations that are vulnerable to shifting political priorities and outdated statutory language.
Modern Threats: Data Collection, Surveillance, and AI
The most pressing challenges to privacy today come from technologies that generate and collect personal information at a scale unimaginable when earlier legal frameworks were created. Smartphones, cloud services, and social platforms continuously produce location data, communication logs, and behavioral patterns. Lexology’s analysis of global data trends explains how governments and corporations now rely on vast digital repositories that reveal detailed information about individuals, a development that has changed the nature of privacy expectations in ways older statutes do not address. Their 2025 overview highlights the need for new regulatory approaches suited to contemporary data ecosystems, as described in their global privacy review.
Government surveillance programs are also evolving in scope and capability. There is a lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation concerning the federal government’s ability to track individuals through app removals and device data. The case raises questions about how agencies use mobile device information to identify people and monitor their movements. The situation illustrates how technologies that appear to be simple administrative tools can become mechanisms for persistent surveillance when agencies gain access to backend data.
These concerns extend beyond specific programs to broader trends in how data is collected and analyzed. Lexology notes that both public and private sectors increasingly rely on automated systems that monitor online activity, financial transactions, and device interactions. These systems allow organizations to assemble comprehensive profiles of individuals without direct contact, creating a form of surveillance that is both passive and continuous. This kind of monitoring can occur at scale, making it difficult for people to understand how much information is being gathered or how it is being used.
Artificial intelligence adds another layer to these systems by accelerating the processing and interpretation of massive datasets. AI tools can identify patterns, flag anomalies, and link information across platforms far faster than human review ever could. Analyses of AI’s role in global privacy debates, such as the reporting on the European Union’s regulatory efforts, show how machine learning systems challenge existing privacy norms by enabling new forms of inference and prediction. Proposed changes to the GDPR and the AI Act outline how European policymakers aim to regulate algorithmic decision-making with greater transparency.
The availability of commercial data further complicates the picture. Companies that collect information for marketing, analytics, or platform optimization often store data in ways that can later be accessed by government entities. Lexology’s review highlights how commercial data brokers play a key role in expanding surveillance capacities because they aggregate information that can be purchased or requested by authorities. This indirect access creates routes around traditional privacy protections, allowing agencies to gather personal data without always triggering statutory safeguards.
These technological developments combine to create a modern environment in which personal information can be analyzed, shared, and repurposed at unprecedented speed. Traditional privacy tools were designed to regulate records and activities that were limited by physical constraints. Today’s systems operate continuously and invisibly, transforming privacy from a question of what people choose to share into a question of what technology can discover without their involvement. The result is a landscape in which the boundaries of privacy depend heavily on how laws respond to tools that did not exist when those laws were written.
Privacy Politics and Public Debate
Debates about privacy in the United States increasingly reflect broader political divides rather than a shared understanding of what privacy should protect. Danielle Citron, speaking at Georgia State University’s 70th Miller Lecture, emphasized that privacy rights influence people’s safety, autonomy, and participation in public life. The university’s report on her lecture explains how privacy policies shape opportunities and vulnerabilities across different communities, as summarized in their overview of the Miller Lecture. Her remarks highlight that privacy is not merely an abstract legal principle but a political issue tied to real-world consequences.
Political leaders continue to disagree about how much power the government should have to collect and analyze data. The Electronic Frontier Foundation lawsuit shows how federal agencies can track individuals through mobile device information, even when the public is not fully aware of these capabilities. The dispute underscores the difference between what agencies believe is necessary for security and what privacy advocates see as overreach. This tension shapes legislative debates about how much authority agencies should have to access personal information without explicit consent or judicial review.
Public expectations also play a significant role in shaping privacy policy. Many Americans assume that their personal data is protected from government use, yet the Privacy Act of 1974 and the judicial right to privacy do not address the full range of technologies that exist today. As documented in the constitutional law project on the right to privacy, the modern privacy framework was built on cases that predate social networks and smartphones. This gap between expectation and legal reality fuels political debates about whether privacy protections should be expanded through new legislation, executive action, or updated judicial interpretation.
International developments have added further urgency to the conversation. The European Union’s work on the AI Act and GDPR reforms, described in reporting from The Verge, illustrates how other democratic regions are updating privacy rules to address algorithmic decision-making and automated surveillance. Their approach has prompted comparisons with the United States, where federal privacy legislation remains fragmented. These contrasts reflect differing political priorities and influence ongoing discussions about how aggressively the United States should respond to the challenges created by modern technology.
International Contrasts and Lessons
Privacy protections in other parts of the world provide a useful comparison point for understanding the gaps in American law. The European Union has taken a more comprehensive approach, combining the General Data Protection Regulation with new rules designed to address emerging technologies. The EU’s AI Act introduces requirements for transparency, risk assessment, and limits on high-risk algorithmic systems. These measures aim to ensure that people understand when automated tools are used to evaluate them and how those tools operate.
The changes show how European policymakers are attempting to keep pace with advances in artificial intelligence by creating dedicated rules for algorithmic decision-making. The reforms also strengthen existing privacy rights by requiring companies and governments to disclose what data they collect and how it is processed. These provisions mark a sharp difference from the United States, where privacy regulations remain largely sector-specific and fragmented across federal and state laws.
Europe’s approach highlights the value of a unified privacy framework that applies across industries. Under the EU model, people have clearer rights to access their data, correct errors, and challenge automated decisions. The new rules extend these protections to AI systems, reflecting a broader commitment to transparency and accountability. This stands in contrast to the American environment, where individuals often have limited visibility into how their information is used by public agencies or private companies.
The international comparison also underscores the strategic implications of privacy regulation. Countries with strong privacy laws tend to shape global standards because companies operating internationally must comply with their rules. The European Union’s enforcement of GDPR is an example of this influence, as organizations worldwide have adapted their data practices to meet EU requirements. As debates continue within the United States, the European experience offers a practical model for how governments can balance technological development with robust privacy protections.
Everyday Impacts: Policing, Identification, and Public Space
Privacy concerns do not arise only from large databases and AI systems. They also shape everyday interactions with law enforcement. “Stop and identify” statutes, which exist in many states, allow police officers to request identification from individuals who are lawfully stopped. These laws have been upheld in certain circumstances, particularly when officers can articulate reasonable suspicion. These statutes intersect with privacy rights by defining what information people must disclose during encounters that begin with limited justification.
The scope of these laws varies widely across the country. Some states authorize officers to request only a name, while others permit broader questions or require the production of identification documents. These differences create uneven standards for public interactions with police, which can influence how much personal information individuals are compelled to disclose. For many people, the extent of their obligation is not always clear, which can increase the risk of disputes or misunderstandings during a stop.
Technology amplifies these concerns by making identification faster and more expansive. Law enforcement agencies increasingly use tools that can scan license plates, match faces, or query databases during routine encounters. While the sources you provided do not address each technology individually, the broader surveillance issues illustrate how digital systems can supplement traditional policing methods. When used together, these tools expand the information available to officers in ways that earlier privacy statutes never anticipated.
The use of mobile device information is one of the clearest examples of this shift. Government tracking capabilities can extend into the personal devices that people carry throughout the day. Because smartphones store location data, contact lists, and communication histories, they create a detailed picture of a person’s movements and associations. When law enforcement agencies gain access to this information, even as part of broader immigration enforcement or security reviews, the result can be an encounter where officers know far more about an individual than the individual knows about the scope of the investigation.
Privacy concerns increasingly emerge during ordinary interactions with public institutions. From identification requests to the use of mobile data, people face situations where information gathered for one purpose becomes relevant in another context. The intersection of traditional police authority with modern digital tools demonstrates how privacy in public spaces depends not only on constitutional rules but also on how technology reshapes the balance between individual rights and governmental power.
The Editorial Argument: Why Privacy Protections Must Be Strengthened
The current legal framework does not match the realities of modern technology. The Privacy Act of 1974, outlined by the Department of Justice’s Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties, was designed to regulate paper records and early computer systems, not AI tools, biometric identifiers, or commercial data exchanges. This gap has allowed agencies to use digital information in ways that fall outside traditional oversight. Tracking tools embedded in mobile devices can be repurposed for monitoring, raising questions about how far government access should extend when the underlying technologies were never addressed by older statutes.
Judicial interpretations of privacy are equally strained by new capabilities. Many of the landmark rulings were decided long before continuous data collection became a feature of everyday life. These decisions remain central to privacy doctrine, but they were crafted for a world in which personal information was far less accessible. As surveillance tools evolve, courts face increasing pressure to revisit how constitutional protections apply in situations that earlier cases did not imagine.
Digital ecosystems also allow government agencies to gather information indirectly through commercial sources. Private companies collect enormous volumes of personal data for routine business purposes. When this information becomes available to law enforcement or federal agencies, traditional protections often do not apply because the data was not collected directly by the government. This indirect pathway widens the scope of surveillance while keeping many processes outside public view.
The political debate has intensified as awareness of these practices grows. Privacy is not only a legal question but also a matter of public policy. Privacy rights shape safety, opportunity, and democratic participation, and this highlights why stronger protections are necessary at a time when AI and digital tracking tools are rapidly expanding. Without legislative action, the balance between individual autonomy and government authority will continue shifting toward greater surveillance.
The case for strengthening privacy protections rests on a clear reality: technological change has outpaced the laws that govern it. The sources you provided show a consistent pattern in which modern systems collect and process information in ways that earlier policymakers could not foresee. Updating privacy laws, increasing transparency, and establishing firm limits on data use would align legal standards with current technology. Without such reforms, Americans will continue navigating a digital environment where their rights depend on outdated statutes and a patchwork of judicial interpretations that no longer reflect the world they live in.
Conclusion
The landscape of privacy in the United States is being reshaped by technologies that gather information far beyond what older laws anticipated. Reporting from CyberScoop on the Electronic Frontier Foundation lawsuit and documentation of the Privacy Act of 1974 by the Department of Justice show how the government can access data through tools and channels that were unimaginable when the current framework was created. These developments reveal a widening disconnect between the protections Americans believe they have and the capabilities now available to agencies and private-sector partners.
Political and academic voices are drawing attention to this gap with increasing urgency. Privacy is not a niche issue but a central feature of democratic life. Privacy influences safety, autonomy, and participation, which reflects a broader concern that modern surveillance and data practices have outpaced courts and lawmakers. International efforts, such as the European Union’s work on GDPR reforms and the AI Act, demonstrate that other regions are taking steps to address these challenges directly.
The question now is whether the United States will adapt in time to preserve meaningful privacy in the digital age. The sources you provided show that without updated laws, clearer limits on government access, and stronger oversight of AI and commercial data systems, individuals will continue to face environments where their personal information is accessible in ways they cannot see or control. Modern privacy requires more than historical doctrines and aging statutes. It requires deliberate action that recognizes how technology has changed the boundaries of everyday life.
Originally published by Brewminate, 11.27.2025, under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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