To Protect and to Project: Another Take on Digital Privacy

What If… ?

In a democratic society, it is thankfully easier for governments to fix limits than to enforce models of behaviour. Laws will more often say “you can’t” rather than “you may.” Furthermore, when the first privacy laws passed in Europe, in the 1970s and 1980s, only the rich and powerful had access to computer technology. The fissure between bare naked individuals and heavily armed organizations seemed distinct and profound.

These imbalances have endured, and preventing or correcting the abuse of personal data by organizations remains as necessary as ever. Yet something essential has changed – individuals now have powerful means at their disposal to handle and exchange information. They use these means to affirm their identity, express themselves, share, collaborate, engage, and learn.

Let us now imagine that individuals could use, to their own ends, the masses of data that organizations hold about them, whether to turn surveillance on its head or just to get to know themselves better; that at school, kids are taught not only the dangers of the Internet, but how to use it in order to construct an autonomous and socially vibrant identity, one that is recognized and appreciated by their peers; that we, and our employers, learn to recognize and share the value of the myriad of informal skills that cannot be listed on our CVs; that it will become possible to give life to several heteronymous beings, i.e. alternative, perennial, credible personas that reflect the different facets of our personalities.

What could I accomplish if I had at my disposal all the data – in some truly useful form – pertaining to the journeys and communications I have made and had in recent years? As well as my past bank card transactions, search engine queries, or detailed lists of all my local supermarket purchases? Not just to control what others do with this information, but to actually use it myself, to my own ends?

Now if you’re a serious enough person you’ve already wondered: What could people possibly do with all this information? Remember those computer manufacturers in the 1970s, who couldn’t conceive what anyone could possibly do with a personal computer. Or the puzzled faces of corporate IT executives in the 1980s, when faced with their marketing departments’ demands for huge databases that could be “mined” for interesting cross-data.

Then new software, decision-making models and visualization tools gave meaning to those masses of data. Could we not invent the tools, models and representations that will make the same amount of sense for individual people? Or even, while we’re at it, invent an “Internet of Subjects“, as Serge Ravet invites us to?

Protecting oneself is a reasonable, sad and boring thing to do, if no other purpose is served. If, however, we have something to project ourselves toward, then controlling what others do with our information becomes a necessary precondition.

A Changing Era

Associating self-projection and protection, in practice, technology, legislation, and education – here lies the (hopefully fecund) direction we now intend to explore. It will not be a straightforward journey. New solutions come with new risks. Exploring both solutions and risks will require the combined mobilization of citizens (for new rights need to be ascertained), researchers (for there are many questions to answer), and innovators (because there are tools to invent). Who will orchestrate this mobilization? What event will trigger it? The discussion is open!

Photo by opensourceway

Discuss

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