Millennials, here’s how you can save internet privacy before it’s gone

Hey you! Yeah you! After reading this article, look up from your phone for a minute, take a walk outside and smell the air. Perhaps ponder your life.

Listen to me, I’m an old man in your eyes — it goes pretty fast. I was in my twenties before I got my first mobile phone. My parents were the hippies of the Vietnam era and they thought all of us GenXer’s were going to be complete failures. Much like all of us 40 and older think you are a bunch aimless tech-junkies with no drive or purpose staring in zombie-like trances at one screen after another. My kids are your peers. I have great hope for them to kick butt in life because your generation is setting such a low bar. It appears that will be easy for them to rise above the crowd and differentiate themselves from the masses of lackluster people that make up the Millennials.

Here’s your chance to prove all of us wrong.

This a great opportunity for you to care about something near and dear to your heart. Tech privacy is the issue, and we are looking to you guys to lead on it. If any generation needs to get this, it’s yours. More information than ever is being transmitted via phone and cloud computing while being stored all over the world. Your demographic is never parted from your phones. They are an integral part of your everyday life. The first thing you do in the morning is grab your phone and the last thing you do at night is plug it in. While you sleep it’s your alarm clock. Your whole world is in there. Your pictures, your friends, your games, your music, your calendar, your internet favorites, your banking, emails, texts, and all that social media too. It’s all there, but is it safe. No, it is not, and our laws are stacked against you.

Our laws have pitifully fallen behind leaving everyone exposed to all manner of abuse. From hackers to unlawful search and seizure to simply thinking something is private when it’s not. Privacy in the age of the cloud is an issue screaming for modernization. Much of the laws currently in force were written when AOL and dial up was all the rage.

Millennials, it’s time for you to begin to take the mantle from the older generations, because to be honest, we don’t get it. I still think the cloud is a fluffy white thing in the sky, and have no idea why you all use your thumbs so much. We need your help. You must educate yourself about the future of privacy in America if you want to protect yourselves from, well, everyone. You wouldn’t let someone just walk into your house and rummage through your personal files. It’s time to secure our cyber files just like that.

Privacy is boring. No one cares about it until they lose it. With all the flashier headlines privacy has a way of getting pushed aside. Right now, a bill titled the LEADS Act, is pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee awaiting a hearing. Senator Orrin Hatch, the former chairman of the committee, sponsored the bill, S. 512. This is a bipartisan effort and the bill currently has the support of eight other Senators from both parties. The House bill, H.R. 1174, has the sponsored support of over 70 representatives. This privacy protection idea is gaining momentum but it needs the public to care.

It really needs the Millennials to care, because it’s going to affect your generation the most.

Here’s the skinny: Let’s protect the data just like a document. The bill would require government officials to get access to electronic data on the same basis as other material that is held in non-electronic form. In essence, this legislation would mandate that the government would need a warrant for data stored in the cloud and stored abroad by domestic companies. For law enforcement to get access to data stored outside the U.S., the request must either belong to a U.S. citizen or the government would have to use a mutual assistance treaty for access to the data.

Oh yeah, and let’s protect the emails too. Maybe you can tell me where Snapchat fits in here, because I don’t really get that whole duck face thing. However, I know emails still make up the most common form of electronic transmission, just ask Hillary how secure or protected those are. This legislation also puts in law the idea that your emails have privacy protections after six months. This change is critically needed because when the original law was written limiting privacy to six months for electronic communications, citizens had a different understanding of how they use email. Right now the letter of the law does not recognize that right.

A number of conservative movement leaders have authored a letter to Senator Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Chair and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia. In the letter, groups including Americans for Tax Reform and the Institute for Liberty argue, “the legislation will protect the privacy of American citizens, promote cross-border data flow and our global trade agenda, and provide the tools law enforcement needs.”

Now is the time for privacy to be an important issue. The LEADS Act is a great place to start, and it is just a start. The laws pertaining to privacy need a complete overhaul. Millennials have the power to make it happen and become a great generation of leaders.