Who controls our data? The capture of so much information placed in the hands of so few is the most pressing technological issue of our age. The problem gives rise to weekly privacy scandals, has super-charged the growth of trillion dollar tech oligopolies and plays one of the most decisive roles in democratic outcomes.
And yet, the solutions for how to resolve this huge power imbalance are still so piecemeal. One such offering is the open data solution; make governments force everyone to share their datasets with everyone else so all can prosper. But even Tim Berners Lee, the founder of the Open Data Institute, the most stalwart organization backing the open data manifesto, seems to have turned his back on this solution.
The privacy movement has had much more success. New privacy tech – search engines such as DuckDuckGo, ad blockers, VPNs and even fresher software pioneered by the crypto community, such as zero knowledge solutions, have started to gain popular traction.
Further victories have been won on the legislative battlefield. Europe’s GDPR set a policy standard for countries and companies around the world to mimic or adhere to.
But if it’s control of data you are worried about, then the privacy movement suffers from a strategic flaw.
The reason we have a data economy is because data is valuable. Not just in an overtly comercial way but, as we’ve seen with COVID-19, it is socially valuable, too. The generation and distribution of information benefits us all.