User Rights Without Remedies: Transparency, Redress, and the Structural Limits of U.S. Data Privacy Governance

Abstract

This capstone examines whether the U.S. sectoral approach to data privacy provides users with genuine transparency, control, and redress over personal data, using the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as a comparative benchmark. A convergent mixed-methods design combines secondary analysis of the Pew Research Center's 2023 American Trends Panel (N = 5,101) with semi-structured interviews with five professionals in data governance, privacy consulting, and corporate technology. Quantitative results show that perceived personal agency over data is positively associated with trust in companies, while concern about data misuse is negatively associated with it. Interview findings show that consent functions as a compliance exercise rather than a substantive protection, that trust tracks a company's business model more than its stated policies, and that redress remains structurally inaccessible even to professionals with direct expertise in the field. The study concludes that U.S. procedural protections exist on paper but are difficult to interpret, exercise, or enforce in practice, and proposes federal legislation modeled on the GDPR.