The absolute prevalence of communication tools and devices in our modern network, from social media applications to Wi-Fi routers, is afflicted by a unique rise of populist sentiment. Your data may not only be sold to corporations, but the very act of such may be used as a carte-blanche excuse to subdue a foreign adversary - real or otherwise.
This phenomenon - one I call privopopulism, describes the rising sentiment of the use of data privacy in populist sentiment in particularly Western nations, along with the rising far-right in many of these nations. The Latin privo- prefix, one shared with the term ‘privacy’ itself - ultimately refers to the act of robbing of someone; the very act of deprivation of our data is exactly what politicians and heads of state use as ammunition for their sentiments.
One example of this phenomenon is the recent ban (and later divestiture) of TikTok. The de-jure ban of the short-form video application under the Protecting Americans’ Sensitive Data from Foreign Adversaries Act (PADFA Act) was originally promoted under the basis that Bytedance, the Chinese steward of TikTok, was exfiltrating the data of US citizens. However - under the very same Act, proscribed companies can no longer be considered party if they’re divested to a US-based company. The intentions of the PADFA Act are very clear to even casual onlookers of the situation, it was never about a foreign country hypothetically surveilling citizens of the United States using this application, but to utilise national security concerns to bring control of such app. The fallout of this Act, and the reactions have turned the app’s users, who are already polarised against the very concept of data privacy, have no choice but to turn into the belief that their privacy on the Internet can’t be reclaimed - especially since Oracle, the American company who is currently the steward of the (now separate entity) American application in the aftermath, have their own anti-privacy concerns - shuttering the very act’s claim of “protecting Americans’ sensitive data”.
Continental Europe is also not immune to the phenomenon of privopopulism. With the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws, it has not only served to boost the regulations protecting user data - it has become a cornerstone of the plurinational union’s standard of privacy. While the GDPR has been a boon for privacy advocates both within and outside the European Union, it has also arguably shielded the European Union from more widespread criticism of its less privacy-respecting bids. Outlining this phenomenon in the European context is Chat Control, a ‘dual-versioned’ approach to prevent the distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), was criticised for its initial, temporary option for email & communication providers to scan for possible CSAM (dubbed Chat Control 1.0), as well as for its revised option to grant the legal power for the EU and its member states to bypass device & application encryption to scan for possible CSAM (referred to as Chat Control 2.0). While the Chat Control 1.0 proposal is no longer in effect as recently as March 2026 - repealed on the margin of a single vote, the revised proposal of a permanent regulation in Chat Control 2.0 is still continuing to be debated in the European Parliament. The existence of a wide-reaching policy such as this runs counter to the posturing of the EU’s pro-privacy stances in public debate, and only serves to harm the view of data privacy within the context of not only privacy advocates, but also within the voting public.
Odder still, the most interesting phenomenon relating to this political tactic is that it has also extended not only to governments, but also to private companies. As a side effect of these laws, companies who want to sell a more private service, whether as a communications provider, or otherwise - use the country that the user data is processed in, as important marketing material, resulting in pro-privacy advocates even specifically selecting for particularly European alternatives to large providers. The result of shifting the ideal of privacy to specifically European-hosted alternatives, only enshrines that the view of privacy is only in reach to citizens of a smaller set of nations.
In short, the phenomenon of using data privacy for populist means is difficult to justify in the modern political climate, serving to ironically turn its citizens against the notion of data privacy. In the context of the PADFA Act in the United States, the notion that the administration of the time had concerns of the exfiltration of US citizen data was paper-thin, particularly noted through its later divestiture to an American company. In the European Union, it’s important to note that the phenomenon exists in a different form, one that shields it from further criticism of the less privacy-respecting actions of its member states - and one that permeates outside of the governmental body. While this essay isn’t an examination of the notion of data privacy itself, it should worry onlookers that we are heading to a view among the public that privacy is a privilege given to certain citizens, and not a right.