Anytime someone logs onto the internet and uses a search engine or social media platform, that individual gives up personal data in exchange for access to the platform. In an unorthodox economic transaction, the 21st century has seen personal data replace traditional currencies — serving as the basis for our emerging digital economy. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple collect, process and use personal data for monetary gain. Analyzing personal data allows companies to create targeted ads and feedback loops that cater to personal preferences. 

But Americans seriously undervalue their personal data, especially when it comes to national security. Despite Edward Snowden’s 2013 publications which revealed that service providers like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook handed over user data to the National Security Agency for surveillance purposes, little has been done to strengthen personal data protection in the United States. Beyond its value as a means of government intelligence efforts, personal data inherently possesses commercial value. Companies that collect personal data (nearly any online service provider) have the ability to use that information largely at their own discretion. 

Personal data might seem like an unusual currency; however, it demands just as much attention and regulation as more traditional currencies like the U.S. dollar. The U.S. government must expand its ability to protect American consumers and internet users, beginning with the establishment of data localization laws. 

In the realm of personal data collection, one structure in particular garners special attention when it comes to the government’s ability to protect citizens: the cloud. In theory the cloud is a network of software and services that does not run locally on a computer. However, in practice, the cloud is a structure grounded in many physical locations and servers. Most consumers do not stress about information stored on iCloud or Google Drive because like their names suggest, this information lives in some non-geographic location. 

Therein lies the problem facing America today: How do we promote a cloud that simultaneously protects personal data and U.S. national security? 

It might make the most sense for large tech companies to tackle this issue. After all, they are the ones that created this issue in the first place. However, countries are not waiting for the private sector to take the lead on personal data protection when it comes to the cloud. The European Union, China, and Russia have already developed frameworks for handling personal data collection and cloud storage within their respective borders. In the European Union, regulators argue that large technology companies use data collection to monopolize the market and create unfair competition. Officials in China and Russia argue that data localization laws are necessary for proper law enforcement practices.

At present, the United States refuses to engage on this issue based on the principle that limiting the free flow of information and data across the internet would be “undemocratic.” But this logic is flawed primarily because the idea of a global free flow is cosmopolitan, but not necessarily democratic. Furthermore, some countries have already established laws on this issue thereby limiting free flow of data across the world. The United States is fooling itself if it believes it can maintain such a free flow of data and information. The U.S. government must abandon “data exceptionalism” or the notion that data is “incompatible with existing territorial notions of jurisdiction” and instead begin developing the American framework for cloud data localization. 

Data localization laws protect American interests by ensuring that American data cannot become subject to abuse abroad. For example, under current U.S. law, if the Russian government demanded that Google hand over all of its data about a certain American under investigation, Google would have to hand over all of the data located on that individual stored on servers in Russia. 

Likewise, if the U.S. government wanted a company to hand over personal data for an individual in question, and that data was located outside of the United States, there is no guarantee that the U.S. would be able to locate the data regardless of the individual’s nationality. 

While it might seem nice in theory for the United States to stay out of debates about data localization, other countries are forcing the issue. If the United States does not establish its own framework for data localization, we may find ourselves adhering to standards and regulations put forth by people and governments in faraway countries. 

The post A Fear of Being Fenced In: It’s Time for the United States to Tackle Data Localization appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

Though the American prison system is drastically complex and the issue has many facets, there is one area in which incarceration practices need to be reformed: inmate employment practices. This piece approaches the issue from a comparative perspective, contrasting current practices in the United States with those of America’s transatlantic allies: the Nordic countries.

Unlike progressive Nordic democracies, in the United States, prisons and capitalism share a uniquely parasitic relationship. America’s aggressive brand of capitalism demands that every trade and industry result in a profit. Prisons are no exception. American prisons sacrifice inmate rehabilitation to earn a profit on individual punishment. Flawed ownership models lead to rehabilitation failures and leave incarcerated individuals ill-equipped to reintegrate into society after completing their sentencing. American prisons fall into one of two categories: privately and publicly-owned prisons. 

Although prisons in Nordic countries like Finland and Norway are all publicly-owned, two structural variations contribute to successful inmate rehabilitation. Most incarcerated people spend the majority of their sentencing in closed prisons. However, as an inmate’s release date approaches, they are then transferred to an open prison. 

From the outside, open prisons look very similar to ordinary life. Inmates are allowed to wear their own clothes, hold employment located outside the prison grounds, and have greater freedom of movement. However, prisoners must continue to adhere to security measures and return to the prison at the end of every day. Despite maintaining restrictions on inmate freedom, open prisons shorten the physical and social distance between incarcerated individuals and the outside world. This model benefits society as well as individual prisoners because it prepares inmates to hold employment upon release. Having a job allows current and former inmates to provide for themselves and positively contribute to their communities. The idea behind open prisons is simple enough: prisons act as places of punishment, not places for punishment. 

Open prisons act as a “final step” in the lifecycle of an inmate. They allow inmates to transition more seamlessly back into the real world prior to release. However, open prisons do not work for every inmate’s rehabilitation, and some cases require more structured models. 

By contrast, closed prisons in the United States lack this sort of flexible rehabilitation that allows inmates to avoid recidivism. Although American inmates can work under certain conditions, employment looks more like forced labor than an opportunity for skill development and growth. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6917, establishing the Federal Prison Industries, enabling inmate employment. Today, the Federal Prison Industries still exists under the more inconspicuous name, UNICOR. Private companies like Walmart, Victoria Secret, and Oriental Trading contract out jobs to UNICOR. In exchange for contracted jobs, incarcerated individuals produce goods for next to pennies. The issue here is not the employment of incarcerated people but instead how prisons exploit this employment for their own capital gains. 

Although there is very little data concerning incarcerated laborers, a few statistics stand out. The average incarcerated person makes between $1-3 dollars per hour at any given job. In contrast, UNICOR, which employs over 17,000 incarcerated workers, made over $500 million in revenue in 2016. We must scrutinize the conditions and motivations for such employment more heavily. After all, studies show that steady employment gives one’s life a sense of purpose. What exactly does it say about the American prison system that the government exploits the very people they are supposed to rehabilitate? By prioritizing profit over rehabilitation, the American prison system irreparably damages an incarcerated person’s ability to reintegrate into society and avoid recidivism successfully.

It must be noted, however, that change did not occur in Nordic prisons overnight. However, in Nordic countries a period of penal liberalization in the 1960s and 1970s spurred widespread prison research that ultimately resulted in the open prison model that exists today. Increased prison scholarship proved critical to prison reforms during these two decades. Scholars like Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie contributed to research-backed reforms that transformed the very mission of Nordic prisons. 

Rather than profiting off of inmate punishment, Norway and Finland reoriented their prisons to focus on preparing inmates to reenter society through the widespread use of an “open prison model.” Perhaps the first step to reforming American prisons is more extensive research into the impacts of employment conditions and rehabilitation opportunities within private and public prisons.

For the longest time, the idea of a more open prison system in the United States was unthinkable. After all, many Americans pride themselves on the country being “tough on crime.” However, the current prison system in America fails to rehabilitate incarcerated individuals properly, and it also allows the widespread exploitation of inmate labor for private profit. 

The United States must seize 2020’s reform-minded environment to incorporate aspects of the Nordic open prison model into the American prison system. 

The post (In)Correctional Facilities: What America Can Learn from the Nordic Prison Model appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

With relatively painless set up and easy-to-use interfaces, peer-to-peer payment networks become increasingly popular. After all, services like Zelle, Venmo and its parent company PayPal all enable the instant transfer of funds from one account to another. Money that once took days to move from one account to another now disburses in a matter of minutes. 

However, like many bi-products of the digital age, government regulation has not kept up with the high speed expansion of online payment networks. As a result, digital payment platforms create massive vulnerabilities in global financial systems. In some instances, P2P payment networks enable terrorism financing. In the United States in particular, consumers sacrifice financial security in favor of instantaneous economic transactions. In order to fully understand the destabilizing power of peer-to-peer payment networks, it’s important to first understand its relationship to classic money laundering techniques. 

The idea behind money laundering is relatively simple. Criminals and kleptocrats alike must find ways to disguise ill-begotten funds in order to use them openly on the market without arousing suspicion about their origin. Traditional money laundering schemes like the Black Market Peso Exchange allowed drug cartels in Columbia to launder over $5 billion worth of profits from drug sales in the United States every year. In order to convert drug profits from U.S. dollars to pesos the cartel concocted an intricate scheme involving drug money couriers, money launderers, electronics exporters and importers as well as money brokers. All of these actors worked together to enable drug cartel members to openly spend drug profits without any ramifications.

The scheme starts with on-the-ground cartel agents in cities like Miami that have millions of dollars’ worth of profits from illegal drug sales lying around. The agents then purchase millions of dollars’ worth of consumer electronics like laptops and computers under the guides that the products would be exported for sale abroad. The agent would pay for the products in U.S. dollars and then transport the exports to Columbia. The cartel converts their illicit U.S. dollars into pesos via offloading electronic products. The Columbian electronics importers pay the cartel for the products in pesos and in doing so avoid excessive currency conversion fees. The cartel manages to cleanse its profits of a criminal past and can now freely spend pesos on the free market. Electronic importers are just one example of industries used to launder U.S. dollars into Columbian pesos. The cartel also dealt with cigarettes, liquor, and dishwasher importers. 

The Black Market Peso Exchange represents just one of many run-of-the-mill money laundering schemes. Money laundering remains necessary for the continuation of criminal activity everywhere and so methods constantly evolve to stay ahead of law enforcement. Unlike money laundering of the old world order, today’s digital economy allows criminals to move money legally via thousands of small cash transfers rather than huge lump sums. Peer-to-peer payment providers enable widespread money laundering due to their relatively lax account creation requirements and lightning fast payment transfers. 

Although companies like PayPal explicitly forbid the use of its services for illegal financial transactions, in reality, the company has few means of enforcing such rules. This enforcement failure allows terrorist groups to move money in and out of countries in order to finance attacks. Consider the case of Mohamed Elshinawy, an American citizen who in 2015 was convicted of assisting ISIS coordinate a terrorist attack in the United States. Although the FBI arrested Elshinawy before the attack came to fruition, his ability to procure funding from ISIS via eBay and its payment partner PayPal speaks to the vulnerabilities of online payment methods. 

According to the FBI report, Elshinawy pretended to sell computer printers on eBay and, in return, received funds from ISIS for “operational purposes” via PayPal. Law enforcement intercepted Elshinawy before he could execute an attack, however, his experience points to glaring flaws in the digital financial system primarily the ways in which it promotes anonymity and reduces accountability. Elshinawy’s experience using PayPal is not a unique and similar terrorism financing schemes have been uncovered in places like Indonesia in 2017. 

Despite acknowledging the growing threat posed by digital asset exchange platforms in the documents like the“National Strategy for Combating Terrorist and Other-Illicit Financing” the government has done little to stop the expansion of digital payment platforms. Social norms broaden P2P range and visibility as consumers increasingly turn to apps like Venmo and PayPal for every day transactions. It then becomes more difficult for law enforcement and financial regulators to identify and uncover illegal activities. 

In short, if terrorism financing is the needle in a haystack, P2P platforms quadruple the size of the haystack. Even more alarming is the fact that there are no signs of digital payment trends slowing down. In 2020 alone the use of Venmo has increased by 52% compared to the same time last year. The coronavirus pandemic will only increase consumer dependency on digital payments as individuals and businesses seek contactless payment methods. 

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