It is more than 10
years ago that the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was held
in Geneva (Switzerland). On June 10-13 the WSIS returned to Geneva as the ITU
WSIS+10 Review High Level Event. The World Summit Award
(WSA) has been part of WSIS and its goals since its first conference. Now at
this time of WSIS+10 review and the UN agenda, it seems prudent to take a clear
stand and start an
initiative of great merit which also signals that WSA and its network has grown
into more and addresses issues beyond e- and m-content excellence and the
sustainable developement of content industry. In other words, WSA is going into
a higher gear, moving from a Human Rights and Citizenship based approach to
Personal Data and the Virtualisation Society.
Below you will find
the text of the submitted document by Peter Bruck, the chairman of the Board of
theWorld Summit Award.
“My Data belongs to
Me”
Given the explosion of data and the staggering amount of
misuse, one must conclude that data protection is not enough. We need to switch paradigms.
The issue is not protection, but rights, not safeguarding, but property ownership.
Today we live in societies with data everywhere, globally
accessible, combined and analysed in entirely new ways. From the biggest metropolitan areas to
the smallest villages, we are entering a new age.
The trend is clear. We are going to always be online, the
things with which we work and live are going to always be connected and everything including
nature will be continuously ICT assisted and monitored. Consequently, data is pervasively
generated, collected and stored. Already now and more so in the future, data is being
generated and stored automatically. It is part of the many applications of ICTs which facilitate
our activities from the hospital visits to online shopping, from family chats to professional
business exchanges, from TV viewing to birthday celebrations, from driving cars to jogging for
fitness.
ICT systems and technologies create a virtual skin for us, a
“data skin”. This skin will increasingly represent our total being. Outside of or
disconnected from the data skin, a person ceases to exist at both the social and economic
level. Without the data skin, we will not get credit at the bank, be able to book a holiday, cross
borders or be admitted to an emergency ward.
Data is our virtual face and our factual administrative
being. Through data, we find friends and mates, interact with authorities and institutions, do
business, engage in politics or entertain ourselves.
Yet this skin does not belong to us, nor is it defined by
us. Rather, the data skin belongs to those who operate the
systems, who provide applications, who control the technologies, who trace what we do. The data
of our phone calls belongs to telecom firms, the data of our social media chats to
Facebook or Google, the data of our medical records to health insurance companies, the data of
our vacation bookings to the hospitality portal operators. These players monetize our data and turn it into the biggest
source of revenue and fastest growing profits of the future. They mine the
data, analyse it, and model our behaviour. They shape our data skin.
The hype about big data is justified. The analytical
exploitation of the global data deluge is driving new businesses and offers
hitherto unknown commercial and political opportunities.
Edward Snowdon has shown us the astounding depth and
shocking breadth of data collection by a national security agency and the
recent US$ 19 billion purchase of the 150 employee text chat company WhatsApp
by Facebook puts a clear price tag on the value of data. One might note that
WhatsApp has achieved this company price tag without having any revenues from
its users. WhatsApp does not need to collect money from its users. It garnered
US$ 19 billion by gathering our data. Data delivers direct cash value.
With such big money at stake, data protection does not
suffice. It is the wrong approach. It is too weak a concept to withstand the combined onslaught
of technology and profit motives. We need to move to a much stronger concept,
one that has cornerstone character and a foundational impact for open and
democratic market societies. There is only one such concept: namely, ownership.
Considering the intensifying trends, data protection and
privacy have to be replaced by property ownership as the basis and principle of
order for all data which refer to an individual person.
Since the English revolution in the 17th century, this
approach became anchored in all democratic constitutions. The right to property
ownership created the foundation for all modern societies and states through
the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, article 17.
When the Internet was developed in the 1970s, few people
considered the issue of who would own the data packets transmitted and switched
through interoperable networks. Data and wire were thought of as legally one.
As the internet grew and was adopted outside its original national defence
context (ARPA) by academics, the basic philosophy regarding data was still
naïve and even anarchistic. The founders sought to develop open and
interoperable networks to unlock closed vendor based and proprietary
technologies generating monopolies. They based their work largely on the basic
idea of a commons. Data was thought to belong to no one or collectively to all.
The right to use data was limited to those from whom it originated or to whom it
was addressed.
On top of this, the philosophy and approach of data
protection was developed. It is now enshrined in most developed countries by
laws and acts of parliament and relates to issues of privacy or misuse. Special
agencies enforce data protection, ombudspersons guard it.
This approach seemed reasonable and worked as long as data
was relatively scarce, locked into distinctly separate systems and used for
limited purposes. This is no longer the case.
The facts of technology today, of Big Data and a globally
connected society, have annihilated the basic assumptions of the data
protection paradigm. Today and in the future, data needs to be secured by property
rights. This axiom provides that the person from whose behaviour the data
originates is also and remains the owner. As an owner, the person has the power
and right to decide on the data, including the right to alter, share, exchange,
sell, give away or destroy it. More importantly, he or she has the right to
exclude others from doing these things.
This regime would put the citizen as a person with rights
back into the basic equation of globally operating social media platforms,
voracious data collecting governments and all commercial exploitation. It would
require these players to obtain explicit permission to use data referring to a
person. They would need to be transparent about all usage and limited in the
extent of usage.
If we as citizens are to be the owners, we must not only
remain the subjects of data, but also the sovereign owners. We need to regain
the rights set out by the Universal Declaration 65 years ago. We need to stop
these rights from slipping away from us due to the virtualisation drive of ICTs
in our societies.
The motto of today needs to be “My Data belongs to Me”.
About the author
Peter A. Bruck is the
CEO and Chief Researcher of Research Studios Austria Forschungsgesellschaft
mbH, the honorary President of the International Center for New Media and the
Chairman of the Board of the World Summit Award on e-Content and creativity,
the global best practice initiative in more than 170 UN member states as part
of the United Nations Action on World Summit on Information Society (2003-2015).
URL:
www.peterabruck.at | www.researchstudio.at | www.wsis-award.org
Contact: bruck [a] research.at
Tel: +43 662 834 602 |
Fax: +43 662 834 602 222
