A New Year - The True Value of Privacy

Privacy Plus+

Privacy, Technology and Perspective

A New Year - The True Value of Privacy.  This week, we begin a new year by considering “data dignity” against the true value of privacy.

We have previously written about data dignity—the concept that individuals have moral rights to their personal information and therefore should be paid for its use.  A link to our post follows:

https://www.hoschmorris.com/privacy-plus-news/data-dignity-and-inverse-privacy

Commoditizing personal information in favor of the consumer is certainly an interesting concept, and indeed, may be part of a broader solution.  But the resounding call of a free-market democracy is its promise that it will lead to increasing wealth and freedom.  As contrasted, in a data-dignity movement, wealth would be generated only because privacy would be sacrificed.  Thus, we are skeptical that market principles alone can drive a data-dignity movement.  Instead, we believe that true data dignity requires the protection of personal privacy. 

Privacy itself is an important subject because it concerns human beings and their relation to one another.  It has practical and civic value.  It is practical because living in any community is a complex business simplified when individuals exhibit restraint towards and respect for one another, acting responsibly by honoring each others’ spaces and freedoms and holding all accountable for their actions.  Its civic value, in turn, lies in the fact that privacy requires consideration of others.  Ultimately, restraint toward and respect for others preserves the integrity of the community and enhances the trust and loyalty of those within it.

Without privacy, the concept of “a community” is a paradox. “Information is power,” so goes the truism.  In absence of information privacy, power shifts to those who are information-rich, causing inequities. Those who have information (whether they are companies, data brokers, Big Tech billionaires, or governments) essentially rule those who are not-so-ironically called “data subjects.”  So subjugated (and controlled, whether it be through predictive technologies, targeted advertising, surveillance, disinformation, monopolistic enterprises, or the strengthening of autocratic regimes and the stifling of dissenters), individual “data subjects” risk losing not only their trust and loyalty to their community, but also their own agency.

Information asymmetry between “data subjects” and data “controllers” and “processors” ultimately takes a toll on humanity.  Recent obvious examples include the use of surveillance as a tool of oppression in China, and the unauthorized data mining and brokerage conducted by Cambridge Analytica for the purpose of reaping profits off of the misuse of that data and misdirection of the “data subjects.”  A less obvious example is one that you can discover for yourself:

“Google” the term “list of subprocessors.”  If you click on the responsive links, you will notice how many companies rely on the same cloud infrastructure (i.e. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, etc.) and other services (i.e. software providers, network providers, consultancies, etc.).  Ask yourself: Do the People have the power when effectively, all data ultimately flows down the data supply chain to the same companies?

The true value of privacy may ultimately be the virtue of democracy—our democratic ideal that we each have a say, we are equal under the law, and there is Justice for all.  It is a dangerous society that measures the cost of data privacy with coins alone.  If our privacy is not also respected and protected, then we lose our human dignity. 

---

Hosch & Morris, PLLC is a Dallas-based boutique law firm dedicated to data protection, privacy, the Internet and technology. Open the Future℠.