Episode Details

Data privacy has often been an after-thought in software and platform development. Data breaches have increased consumer awareness and laws such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) have been enacted. Programmers and engineers need to think about what data they are collecting, how it is being stored and accessed, and how it is shared to protect their end users.

Today's guest is Nishant Bhajaria. Nishant leads the technical privacy and strategy teams for Uber that include data scientists, engineers, privacy experts, and others as they seek to improve data privacy for the consumers and the company. Previously, he worked in compliance, data protection and privacy at Google. He was also the head of privacy engineering at Netflix. He is a well-known expert in the field of data privacy, has developed numerous courses on the topic, and has spoken extensively at conferences and on podcasts.

• [1:09] - Nishant shares his background and how he got started in the field of data privacy. He started at Intel and explains the changes in data collection in the early 2010s.
• [2:47] - Nishant started in the field "before it was cool," because of his strengths as an engineer and writer.
• [3:33] - GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation and Nishant describes what this law means and how it came about in Europe.
• [4:47] - CCPA is the US's approach and first step into data privacy laws.
• [5:53] - Consent is going to be a big topic in 2021. Nishant describes how the events of the last decade have led to data privacy laws.
• [6:56] - Nishant points out that a problem with data privacy laws as they stand right now is that they are not written by people who have the technological and engineering background.
• [8:39] - The data privacy issues that have arisen in recent years did not happen all of a sudden. Nishant explains that many mistakes across the board have led to them.
• [9:00] - Nishant lists some of the conundrums and ethical questions that come up when discussing data privacy.
• [10:23] - One of the biggest problems with data privacy is the different understanding of what that means. European countries and the United States do not have the same understanding of what privacy is.
• [11:46] - Security features exist for very good reasons, but people are generally very impatient with them.
• [12:12] - Nishant gives an example of microdecisions that come in to play when data gets into the hands of the wrong person.
• [14:17] - Nishant gives an example of how some decisions, made by companies in response to GDPR, are making sure they are in compliance but are not always consumer friendly due to a lack of understanding of the law.
• [15:56] - The internet was not designed with privacy in mind. Privacy was an afterthought.
• [17:06] - Nishant describes the challenges that we face when consumers want to access apps and sites quickly and the domino effect that takes place.
• [18:29] - There was a huge systemic change in the workforce in the field of data privacy and data collection that Nishant describes was due to most people joining this career after 2009.
• [19:43] - A problem arose when engineers would think that they were always the ethical ones because they were collecting data or designing apps and platforms to collect data for the right reasons. But that isn't always how that data is used. More to Nishant's point that data collection needs to be regulated from the get go.
• [21:03] - Privacy is all about not accessing or using data without the owner's consent, but people don't realize how much can be known about someone just with combining easily accessible data online.
• [22:10] - We have built the internet for fast access and use. Customers sign up for a lot of access to sites and apps and don't think about the use of their data