In the late 20th century, a number of transformations occurred on the world stage; arguably none were as large as globalization. The advent of the internet and advances in shipping and infrastructure allowed individual corporations to expand their business into other countries, territories, and lands. Suddenly, companies were no longer unreasonably limited by physical boundaries or borders. Companies in Europe could sell their products in Asia, Japanese corporations could market their cars in America, and American businesses could take advantage of something new called outsourcing.
However, another large impact to be paid attention to is the growing influence of corporations. Banks, spurred by globalization, invested in untouched areas of the world: South Asia, Africa, South America, etc. Investments poured in, lands were exploited, and portfolios grew. As previously-untapped resources were opened up with new technologies, money poured into investing corporations, and they grew larger.
This led to where we stand today. Companies are the new powerful entities that transcend governmental boundaries. Political leadership, once a source of much power, have been reduced to minor annoyances in corporation’s eyes. Need to avoid taxes or regulations? Set up shop in Delaware, to avoid those pesky state governments who meddle too much.
Companies nowadays have the option to choose where they want to operate, thus giving them the flexibility to avoid local laws particular to a specific country. Some companies even have more power than them–Google, by tweaking some of its search results, can probably influence more people than the Chinese communist leadership while Apple already has more money than the US Government!
Facebook, however, arguably has more power than any other government in its own specific way. Because it gives users the ability to upload and post personal files, it as a corporation must store those sensitive files on its servers, distributed worldwide for everyone’s public information to see. No other government in the world (maybe except China) has that much personal information that can piece together one person’s life so easily. However, a entity’s files are only as secure as its weakest link. Just as how Bradley Manning transferred classified files away from the US Government’s database, it is not at all implausible to think that a disgruntled engineer at Facebook would have the power to access those sensitive files and retrieve them. Not only can certain information be used to blackmail individual users, I will venture a guess to say that many people have the answers to their security questions listed somewhere on their profiles: The name of their first pet, the street where they grew up on, their mom’s maiden name, etc. With this information, a lone individual could hack into a somebody’s personal email account, bank statements, and retrieve other personally identifiable information.
While it is true that simply storing the information is not exactly the same as having power, it certainly doesn’t hurt Facebook’s case. With all of the information Facebook is sitting on, it is conceivable to think that we are only a few steps away from some sci-fi movie. The only thought we have is that we trust Facebook not to misuse our information, and for governments to intervene when something goes bad. However, none of that is exactly foolproof.
Governments were made to protect the rights of the public, but when individuals willingly give up their personal information to large international corporations, there is not much they can do. Sharing is good, but we all need to be careful not to share too much information, lest it be later used against us.