{"id":18123,"date":"2025-09-09T14:07:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T18:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/?p=18123"},"modified":"2025-09-09T14:13:49","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T18:13:49","slug":"privacy-paradox-with-vt-ag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/blog\/privacy-paradox-with-vt-ag\/","title":{"rendered":"Unmasking the &#8220;Privacy Paradox&#8221; with Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Ever feel like your life is an open book that you didn&#8217;t write? In a digital marketplace where &#8220;post-privacy&#8221; is marketed as the new normal, it&#8217;s easy to feel like the battle for privacy is already lost. Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark doesn\u2019t buy that for a minute, and she\u2019s fighting to reclaim it as a fundamental right in her state.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clark is one the fiercest lawmakers in the nation when it comes to our collective digital dignity, and she joined us this week to talk about that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Why Your Data Matters<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Attorney General Clark laid out two core reasons you should care about data privacy. First, it\u2019s arguably a foundational right. The Constitution protects your reasonable expectation of privacy, which, again, arguably, includes the freedom from surveillance. The second reason is more practical. Whether we\u2019re talking about health records or location history, your data is a goldmine for scammers and criminals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Highlighting how our information is easily re-purposed in the commission of identity theft, scams, and extortion, Clark is not just floating some abstract idea: Our personal information makes us vulnerable.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"On Our Podcast This Week:\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZOsV_JuelOA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Swagger Eats Ethics for Breakfast<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The conversation veered into some wild territory, starting with Attorney General Clark\u2019s view of the current administration&#8217;s hiring practices. Focusing on a Trump Administration hire that wasn&#8217;t even Googled before being given access to highly sensitive data, Clark calls to question best practices.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The average person knows you don&#8217;t even go on a date with someone until you Google them,&#8221; she quipped. This &#8220;swagger,&#8221; as Clark calls it, is a dangerous component in the rapid evolution of technology like cryptocurrency and AI, where the drive for innovation and market dominance often eclipses ethical considerations.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The disregard for privacy goes hand-in-love with the above tendency, extending to the bizarre world of meme coins and beyond.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"On Our Podcast This Week:\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5oOIN4VgISA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AI and Deepfakes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clark thinks the biggest threat to our privacy may be the runaway train that is artificial intelligence. The technology is advancing so fast that it&#8217;s out-pacing legislation in a crony-driven&nbsp; environment where a 10-year ban on state-level AI regulation was recently buried in a recent federal statute\u2013and thankfully scuttled before that bill was signed into law.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clark pointed to Europe&#8217;s proactive &#8220;AI Act&#8221; as a potential model, noting that their historical and political experiences have fostered a greater emphasis on data privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Under her leadership, Vermont is looking to expand revenge porn statutes to include AI-generated deepfakes.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Enter the shadow of AI chatbots and romance scams, \u201cthe romance scam using AI chatbots is a deadly combination and it is coming,\u201d Clark warned. \u201cYou know, the idea that I could literally be living my life, making a sandwich, doing whatever I want\u2026[and] my evil AI bots could be romancing victims by the thousands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Kids Aren&#8217;t Alright&nbsp;<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>We also talked about the privacy of children. A significant privacy paradox is that parents consent to data collection through school-mandated educational technology (EdTech) apps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Violation of privacy has been so normalized that people think they&#8217;re being like a Karen if they say, &#8216;No, I don&#8217;t want that information shared about my kid,'&#8221; Clark pointed out.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"On Our Podcast This Week:\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/a8D5_L01szU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Collective Responsibility<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Our privacy is at risk, and we&#8217;re all complicit. Through our online behavior and willingness to share information, we participate in the erosion of our own privacy. The couple caught on the Jumbotron at that Coldplay concert we talked about a few episodes ago provides a perfect example: they weren&#8217;t identified by a big corporation or the government, but by fellow citizens using publicly available data. We have all become participants in a culture of mutual surveillance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Attorney General Clark is not without hope. She believes a shift in awareness is possible. She advocates for a society where individuals can experience freedom without ambient surveillance, where private companies are held to the same standards we expect of our government, and where &#8220;minding your own business&#8221; is not just a quaint Yankee notion but a protected right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever feel like your life is an open book that you didn&#8217;t write? In a digital marketplace where &#8220;post-privacy&#8221; is marketed as the new normal, it&#8217;s easy to feel like the battle for privacy is already lost. Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark doesn\u2019t buy that for a minute, and she\u2019s fighting to reclaim it as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":18119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-deleteme-news","category-data-privacy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}