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.

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...

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...