Privacy in the Public and Private Sectors
A couple months ago my car was hit and totaled. I soon thereafter purchased a new (used) car from a dealership in Maryland. The car came with 60-day temporary tags.
While I’m not currently living in MA, I had to make a trip back to transfer the old registration to the new car…so as to avoid driving around in an unregistered vehicle. One would think that in 2020 this process could be conducted online, but the MA RMV has not yet adopted the technology needed to facilitate such a task.
Because of COVID, the MA RMV is currently open by appointment only. A small number of appointments become available to book exactly two weeks before they occur. To book an appointment, you can either call in and wait on hold for an average of 2.5–3.5 hours, or you head to the RMV website, on which small groups of reservations become available at random and unpredictable times throughout the day.
I booked a flight back to MA, hopped on the RMV website exactly 14 days before the date of my visit, and after a few attempts was lucky enough to secure an appointment reservation.
The week before I was scheduled to return to MA, the Governor introduced a new COVID policy requiring all people reentering the state to “Quarantine for 14 days or produce a negative COVID-19 test result that has been administered up to 72-hours prior to arrival in Massachusetts.” With risk of a $500/day fine for noncompliance.
I found a testing center in Denver at which I managed to get tested 48 hours before my flight. The test came back negative, and I flew back to MA.
I showed up at the RMV the following day, got in line, and was greeted by a police officer at the door who proceeded to ask me a series of questions…
Have you tested positively for COVID in the past 10 days?
Are you experiencing any COVID symptoms?
Have you been out of state in the past 14 days?
To the final question I responded “Yes, I just flew in from Colorado and here’s a negative test result from 48 hours ago.” The cop proceeded to tell me that he couldn’t accept the test, because under the new law they are only accepting tests that have been conducted in MA.
I spent about 20 minutes in bewilderment, attempting to understand how it would be physically possible to get tested for COVID in MA “prior to arrival in MA.” I let him know that I’d flown back to MA specifically for this appointment. I spoke with another cop and then asked to speak with their manager too.
Once I started to feel that I was flirting with an arrest, I gave up and left.
I’m sure that many of you have had similar experiences at the RMV or with other government agencies over the years. This particular experience left me reflecting on three things…
1. A recognition of how privileged I am to interact directly with government agencies just once or twice a year. My deepest sympathy goes out to those who either work for the government or are forced to interact with government agencies on a frequent basis. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to face such inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and general nonsense on a regular basis.
2. An illumination of the growing contrast between customer experiences in the public and private sectors. The degree to which private sector customer experiences have improved over the past decade is astonishing. The internet and social media have brought with them a marketplace transparency that has forced all businesses to raise their bar. This month alone, I’ve had experiences with SouthWest Airlines, Trader Joe’s, and multiple D2C brands (think Warbey Parker, Dollar Shave Club, Casper Mattresses, etc.) that have brought me nothing short of pure joy. Moreover, each one of these businesses have managed to deliver a premium product or service at a drastically reduced price. The elevation of these experiences have cast a dark light over similar experiences in the public sector.
3. A reflection on what this contrast means in the context of personal privacy. I left the RMV feeling grateful that the government’s tech infrastructure likely isn’t sophisticated enough to share personal data between agencies. I wouldn’t want this RMV visit to flag my noncompliance to this preposterous law. If the state of MA was a modern day business, this tech infrastructure certainly would have existed. I don’t feel the same way about data privacy in the context of the private sector though. As long as I’m aware of what is and isn’t private and confident that it’s secure, I’m perfectly happy with Google, Facebook, and Amazon analyzing my personal data to optimize my experience with their platforms. This may be a dangerous perspective, but I can’t deny that it’s true. I’d also venture to guess that I’m not the only one who feels this way.
I’m curious to see how our collective relationship with privacy evolves over the coming decade.
In what ways will we hold on to the belief that we are entitled to it as a human right?
In what ways will our willingness to relinquish privacy to the private sector differ from our willingness to relinquish it to the public sector?
In what ways do the quality of our interactions with these two sectors distort our willingness to cede privacy to them?
