We can't own information

A cogent and interesting article from Forbes - Privacy is Not a Property Right in Personal Information - examines the well-intentioned “privacy reforms” implemented to some degree in Europe and pushed in the U.S., that would grant individuals “ownership of their own data,” plus the right of portability, to choose where it is to be stored and used.

As the author – Mark McCarthy - shows, this is a well-motivated… and utterly stupid approach to addressing a very real problem. The age-old problem of asymmetry of informational power, with elites like the rich or corporations almost-inevitably absorbing every bit and byte and fact about us, to use as they wish.

Look, I absolutely share that fear! It is why I wrote TheTransparent Society, because there are potential solutions, using the very same technique that has already worked increasingly well for 200 years. In contrast, the “data ownership” proponents cannot point to a single time in the history of our species when the citizens of a commonwealth commanded their elites “don’t look-at or know about me!” with even a scintilla of success. Again, that never happened. Because it cannot possibly work.

I’ve been dealing with this “don’t look!” fetish for 25 years, and they never learn. Ten years ago there were howls to banish and make illegal face recognition systems! And if that sounds quaint, well, talk of that vague “reform” is back, alas: “It’s time to regulate facial recognition and affect recognition,” says Kate Crawford, a researcher at Microsoft. And yes, every worry should be considered. Yet, talk of curbing such technologies never forces the tide to go back out. Nor will any restrictions hamper elites, in the slightest. 

There is an alternative approach, the one responsible for all our freedom and progress. And it is always considered last.

In The Transparent Society I point out that all our great, positive-sum “arenas” - like markets, democracy, science and justice - thrive amid openness and light, but wither when shadows prevail. Forbidding others to know things is inherently aggressive and threatening, especially when they might view you as one of the dangerous elites they worry about.

And sure, I avow that yes, letting the mighty simply vacuum up everything about us, while they get to do mysterious things with our information, benefiting or even conspiring… heck, that’s a sure-fire path to Big Brother. So what's to be done?

There are some approaches that might work! Say, if hundreds of thousands of citizens were to pool their data rights in ways that could exert group efficiencies and group market power. This is simply an extrapolation of the greatest social innovation of the 2^nd half of the 20^th Century, the NGO. So we already know something like it could work.

Even more cogent is the suggestion by Jaron Lanier that we should not so much own our information -- creating a mythical and preposterous notion that you can exclude others from ever touching it -- as retain strong interests in it. A right to get feedback data on how it is being used, by whom, and to get paid micro-royalties if some corporation or elite entity benefits from using it.

But the fundamental remains the same. We are not made safe by hiding from power! It never worked and it won’t work in the future.

What gave us this window of freedom was not preventing surveillance, but insisting on sousveillance… looking back at power. Stripping the mighty naked, so we can supervise. Because it matters much less what they can know about you than what they can do to you!

And – as we have learned on the streets with our cell-cameras -- the only and best way to control what others – even the police – do to you is to let them know that even the watchmen are being watched.

== The Crux ==

How do you "own" something that -- when it (inevitably!) leaks -- can be infinitely duplicated at zero cost?

Is the word "ownership" even remotely applicable?

Even "control"?

Well, Tim Berners-Lee has some credibility... and he claims that a new online realm called "Solid" will resonate with the global community of developers, hackers, and internet activists who bristle over corporate and government control of the web. “On Solid, all the information is under (the user's) control. Every bit of data he creates or adds on Solid exists within a Solid pod–which is an acronym for personal online data store. These pods are what give Solid users control over their applications and information on the web. Anyone using the platform will get a Solid identity and Solid pod. This is how people, Berners-Lee says, will take back the power of the web from corporations.”

Um, while I’d love to be proved wrong, I remain boggled that folks believe there aren’t ten thousand ways for our information to leak through every such promise, if not through spychips in your Alexa or Charlie… or keyboard... or copy-plus-interpolation of every datum entering or leaving Solid. Go ahead and make that world! I’m concerned about the Olympian realms that elites are making for themselves. And dig it, they are likely to make much better use of secrecy protection methods than you ever will.

== News from the Transparency Front ==

Microsoft intends to develop two blockchain products designed to give consumers greater control of their personal data. One is an encrypted personal data store, or "identity hub," a combination of a user's personal devices and cloud storage; their permission would be required for third parties to access it. Also a "wallet-like app" that people could use, among other purposes, to manage these permissions to their data, including the ability to revoke them when desired. Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) do not require a central authority because they are registered on a distributed ledger. IBM, Accenture and RSA are working on similar concepts.

Fine. Go ahead and try. There may come a first time - in the history of our species - when a general approach to equalizing power via concealment will work.

Microsoft also aims at a system to allow a high volume of low-value payments, perhaps like the micropayments systems I have been pushing for almost a decade, which would then have the potential to smooth our commerce, save journalism empower creatives and finally end the era of domination of the Internet by advertising. Here's a good goal.

In a related development San Diego startup LunaDNA, which aims to create a community-owned database of donated genetic/health information for medical research, has filed with securities regulators to issue shares to people who provide their data, building  a credit union like co-op around an anonymous genomic and health database. People who donate their DNA/health data would get shares based on the value of the data, which LunaDNA calculates based on current market value. For example, a full human genome nets 300 shares.Three weeks of fitness/nutrition data gets two shares. "If LunaDNA ever makes money from fees charged to researchers who tap into the database or drug discovery royalties, shareholders would get dividends."

Another such venture is “Hu-Manity.co” whose app would let peoplespecify how their medical data can and cannot be used. Pharmaceutical companies could potentially pay each user $10 a month for access to their data, Etwaru says. The drug companies would also pay Hu-manity.co for access.

Combine these developments and we move toward a world predicted slightly in Neal Stephenson's SNOWCRASH but more significantly in Web philosopher Jaron Lanier's notion about personal data. To date, there have been three notions about our information future. 

== Three Notions ==

Here are the three most common mythologies:

(1) We are spinning into a dystopian age when the mighty elites will know everything about us and the little gal and guy will be helpless pawns. Naturally, this is the future we see depicted in a lot of sci fi films and novels because dystopia makes drama trivially easy. Besides, this is clearly where a world mafia-oligarchy wants us to go, so some paranoia is justified!

 All decent folks who want to preserve freedom and individual opportunity rightly oppose this death mode for the Enlightenment. But in opposition, we've seen some pretty simplistic notions.

2) A wild west future of all information floating free and thus empowering the masses. Yes, at a very simplistic - and hence dumb - level, this conveys the notion of generalized accountability that I tout in The Transparent Society. Sure, I'd rather err on the side of everyone seeing! Because all our great enlightenment systems -- markets, democracy, science, justice courts and sports - all of them wither and die in fog or darkness. But the arguments in favor of transparency are more subtle than this. And yes, humans want some privacy and control. And any decent civilization will include those things.

3) Paternalistic walls. Alas, the vast majority of smart, sincere paladins fighting for freedom and rights and against the dystopian age almost all reflexively turn to demanding laws that restrict information flows. Supposedly empowering citizens to declare "you cannot know this about me!" Enshrining "ownership of my own information." 

It all sounds so positive and freedom-y, that no one -- certainly in Europe -- ever dares to respond: "Not only can that not possibly work, at any level, but it is exactly what elites and oligarchs want most -- walls, guarded by law and the state, within which they can connive and reach out to control." 

Alas, every last error that I just described can be found in well-meaning initiatives like this proposed "Internet Bill of Rights," which would have none of the intended benefits and a whirling myriad of horrific, unintended consequences. 

I mentioned Jaron Lanier's notion that merits repetition. It was not that we should own all information about ourselves, but that we should have strong interest in our data, and get to benefit from anyone who uses it... much in the way that patent laws weren't originally meant to prevent use of inventions, but to ensure the inventors got paid a fair share, so that sharing would make sense to them.

Which brings us back around to the stunningly foolish assertion that any kind of political agitation - or even law - can possibly thwart the arrival of easy-cheap face recognition. Again, the fear of sliding into an Orwellian surveillance/control state is genuine and terrifying! Alas, it is trivialized and lobotomized by those who think they can stymie the "surveillance" part, by howling at the mighty "don't look at us!" 

It is the "control" part that can still be prevented, via the method we used with increasing effectiveness for 200 years -- answering surveillance with sousveillance. 

== An Addendum... and Alert... on "war with Iran" ==

John Bolton and Mike Pompeo have long sought war with Iran. Now, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has repeated an earlier threat to block ships from leaving the Persian Gulf if the U.S. government continues to seek to block Iranian oil exports. Rouhani’s comments came a day after the U.S. sent an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf on Monday, ending the longest period the U.S. had gone without an carrier in the Gulf over the past two decades.

Examine the pieces. The US Navy has been trying to ramp down tensions in the gulf, and especially to keep its most valuable assets out of a friction zone and potential death trap. ALso especially since the Persian Gulf is a lot less important to us, now that the U.S. has achieved effective energy independence. We shouldn't tuirn our backs on the region. On the other hand, it is an opportunity to stop being in reflex-reactive mode, no longer letting that crazy realm control what we do.

Ah, but our professionals have (alas) insane bosses. By clamping on the Iranian economy and ordering the USS Stennis into the gulf, Pompeo, Bolton and the Bannonites are setting a stage for what the Saudis and Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu all desperately need, an international distraction from their own mounting troubles. 

A “Tonkin/Reichstag/Gleiwitz/Sarajevo/Remember-the-Maine” “Incident” (look them all up!) is something that our professionals in the military/intel/diplomatic corps have skillfully forestalled, till now. But for how much longer? 

Especially when even the Iranian mullahs would benefit from a brief, colorful, pippety-poppety “tomahawk war” that does no major harm, but gives them an excuse to clamp down on their own millions of young liberals? 

Of course, the top winner of such a dog-wag is blatantly obvious. Only one man can possibly rake in all the marbles… when V. Putin steps up to spread the Russian umbrella and “protect our neighbor.” At which point Russia gets the Persian satrapy it has sought for 300 years. Thanks to Vlad’s agents in the White House.