My Digital FootPrint

I have explored privacy and identity in a previous post , taken from the perspective of the individual.  This post is from the perspective of the state/ nation/ law. I commented on Michael Becker's LinkedIn post about his list of words and definitions for the identity/ privacy space . I commented that everyone remains fixated on making their particular solution work to a problem the user has not got which is " #privacy. " Whilst every language and country has an ideal notion of privacy, the wide variety of cultures means there is no unified “concept of privacy”, even if privacy is explicitly named or defined in their specific language law or culture. I asked #chatGPT, the “AI” bot from Google, the question, “ how would a capitalist and socialist view privacy? ”  “Capitalists would see privacy as an important aspect of individual liberty and autonomy and they view privacy as a property right that can be traded or sold, and they may support policies that allow companies ...

How many people do you need before identity has value - two! How come, as an industry where 3.2bn ( McKinsey ) people have a digital identity, are we so fragmented, uncoordinated and disagreeable?  It is evident that our ongoing discussions about identity, ethics, bias, privacy and consent revolve around a lot of noise (opinions) but little signal (alignment), but why?  Recognising that in 30 years of digital identity, we still lack coherent and coordinated action to make it work for everyone is a reality. Perhaps it is time to recognise that it is “us”, the industry, who are the problem.  We continue in our self confirming opinions, righteous products and determination to win at all costs.  I am not saying we have not made progress or done amazing things, but we have not done as well as we should have! As identity now takes several forms insomuch that it emerges from interactions with a system (say payment & reputation), is foundational (given by an authority,...

The heated debate about privacy and rights has raged for years. More recently we have added verbs in front of the word privacy to open up a more nuanced reasoning that there is not one privacy. I remain thoughtful about data privacy and personal privacy as they end up with the same outcome which is that you are tracked and tracked in a digital world, even though the process flow to get to the same outcome is fundamentally different.

#facebook published “ Charting a Way Forward on Privacy and Data Portability ” on 4/10/19 however it is *not* a white paper but a document seeking free guidance and input. In their own words “To address these challenges, we’re seeking feedback and guidance from a wide range of stakeholders about how to build portability in a way that empowers people and fosters competition while maintaining their trust in online services” I have, like many others, given a lot of input over the years to Facebook for free via invites to brainstorms, private sessions and roundtables. In all cases massive promises are made by #Facebook about what next but they never deliver. No papers, no summary, no write up, no thanks – nothing. I set out my thinking on the #facebook data portability paper at the end as interest to those who might also read the paper. I have been exploring the topic of data portability for some time. This piece explores the strategic opinions for market models and the regulators stanc...

Plotting your view of private self to a public self, against wanting to be more private as a citizen or more public as a person. Broadcast ( where you are public figure) Identity in the form of recognition Professional ( have to be known and have a status) Identity in the form of reputation Obscurity ( ability to hide in plain sight) Identity I am who I say I am (or others) Privacy Laws (where so much case law exists) Identity in the form of want to hide and have protection

I am just unaware of how consent has become either of these two options?   Which director at either of these businesses has (any) viability of what their companies have done.  I have explored here why optin/ optout needs to come back to the board and these both show great reasons why? How is liking something informed consent ? @sportaustralia How is no option - apart from agree - consent ? @ITV and when I follow the links what do I get - a right old mess.  Change the settings that then gets ignored when I come back to agree, I get the default everything and far far more than you get a better experience - surveillance and tracking goodies. If this not mis-leading I have no idea what qualifies for mis-leading. 

Privacy means something unique to everyone and it depends on who you ask, how you ask and in what contest. However, privacy by law gives you the right to be let alone. It should enable you to have a space and freedom away from interference and intrusion. Other more subtle privacy ideas include: Information privacy is the right to have some control over how your personal information is collected and used. Personal privacy taking the general right of everyone but making it better for you than others State privacy. Part of the thinking that legislation such as the "Official Secrets Act" is set up to protect the state above the individual Group Privacy: protecting individuals rights at scale, when considering analysis and re-identification. …….There are lots more Transparency – according to Wiki ….. as used in science , engineering , business , the humanities and in other social contexts, is operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are ...

Image source:  linking quantum and relativity We love the idea of a single unified theory of everything. One eloquent and beautiful equation which describes everything. It can unfold and from it, all that is, can and will be explained.  It would provide a rationale to the unexplained and a purpose for the unreasonable. Such an equation would have logic, it can be translated into an algorithm, which we can code and run. From this exiliar we can solve all questions of humanity and our future will be predictable. It raises lots of questions. If we found the equation surely we would dissolve the need for a soul, our belief would be worthless, hope would be irrelevant, faith pointless and luck would be a calculation. Chaos and humanity will give way to order and authority — the Matrix was real. Ignoring if possible or if that is what we want, physics helpfully starts to highlight one of many problems of any unified theory. Relativity ( big stuff) has one set of equations a...

The economic argument and case for data portability (mobility) is set out here. Running with the assumption that you agree that data portability/ mobility will create value for the data economy, we need to also think about the thorny issue of layered consent. Some posts that have explored areas of consent Layered Consent: like peeling the onion, only to find it is not an onion! Why “#Privacy-by-Design” is more than playing the game of #ethics of opt-in or the #morals of opt-out. What level of consent is reasonable ..... However in this post, the purpose is to explore what happens when a copy of the data has arrived at the new home, where is consent.  Define :     User                                   [an individual who has agreed to the T&Cs’ to access or use a Data_Holder’s service] ...

Key message : decisions regarding the right type of initial explicit and informed “consent” sort from customers is currently a delegated authority from the board. This article argues that there is an imperative to bring back “consent” decisions to the board; at least for a while. The board needs to debate “consent” in light of ideas such as “privacy by design”, ethical AI, brand values, privacy policy, cookie policy and culture; given that consistency across these critical business areas are increasingly core differentiators. - - As a context, much of the classic(al) thinking and definition(s) of consent are here on wikipedia . There is excellent technical work on consent from Kantara for both the user interface and back office processes based on new consent thinking. MEF is publishing really helpful thinking on UI/UX. In the idea of implementing “privacy by design”, I published this blog exploring the concept of Approval vs Forgiveness as the method of gaining consent when co...

source : https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facial-recognition-s-dirty-little-secret-millions-online-photos-scraped-n981921?cid=par-aff-nbc-knbc_20190312 “Facial recognition's 'dirty little secret': Millions of online photos scraped without consent.”  so is the headline on this # NBC story.   Classic headline for click bate.  IBM released 1 million pictures of faces, intended to help develop fairer face recognition algorithms. This is not a new issue and the bias features in a few very good TED talks so is very real.  However the story was that you  face was scraped directly from #Flickr.  Now the question is all about permission of the subjects rather than this is something we need data for to remove bias.  Data researchers scrape data from the internet (it is public) all the time to train algorithms. Photos are often a fantastic source of image data as the hashtags conveniently correspond to the content of the photos, maki...

Thesis : Disrupting the privacy policy to make it do what it says on the tin. we need to shift from the ‘privacy policies’ of companies, which springs from data protection laws, to enabling citizens to gain visibility of what they are signing up to, in regards to their data, and provide ‘privacy’ of individuals, as contemplated by human rights laws . Context Privacy pertains to the person; “privacy” is the state of being free from public attention and unwanted intrusion; Data is not privacy, but data from or about the person can be private or not private depending on how it’s used, who is using it, and who has control of it; In the digital world a person’s privacy policy is like the clothing that one puts on to signal what data they consider private, and what is not private; The view is that companies who respect their customers privacy will be able to build relationships and trust over time - which will create growth, sustainability and deference How: polic...