The ongoing battle over our personal data

For a few years now, data has be­come the oil of the fourth in­dus­trial rev­o­lu­tion, the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion. This ex­plains the enor­mous in­ter­est of both pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions and pub­lic au­thor­i­ties in ac­cess­ing the data of cus­tomers and cit­i­zens, to store them and to treat them in a way that makes cer­tain busi­nesses more com­pet­i­tive and cer­tain pow­ers much more in­flu­en­tial and pow­er­ful. Data are a very valu­able asset and the econ­omy de­pends on them. The United States and the Eu­ro­pean Union have ac­tively brought in leg­is­la­tion that re­stricts the pos­si­bil­i­ties of abuse in ac­cess­ing and using the pub­lic’s data; a lot of data have to do with peo­ple’s pri­vacy and in­ti­macy, this opens the door to ma­nip­u­lat­ing peo­ple, which is in­com­pat­i­ble with democ­racy and the rule of law. Vi­o­lat­ing the rules on per­sonal data is se­verely pun­ished by Eu­ro­pean law, but still there are vi­o­la­tions and breaches every day, which leave the cit­i­zen help­less and ex­posed.

On the other hand, pro­cess­ing and analysing data is an im­por­tant el­e­ment for the progress of hu­man­ity: lives can be saved, in­equal­ity can be dealt with much bet­ter, cli­mate change can be fought more ef­fec­tively, con­flicts can be an­tic­i­pated and pre­vented , and so on. Med­ical data, for ex­am­ple, are cru­cial for the re­search and treat­ment of dis­eases that are cur­rently in­cur­able. And this data are very ap­peal­ing for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try. The com­bi­na­tion of eco­nomic in­ter­ests and the tech­nol­ogy that al­lows the ex­ploita­tion of data, with its ap­pli­ca­tion to ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, rep­re­sent a global chal­lenge to which democ­racy has not yet found an an­swer that gives cit­i­zens the full guar­an­tee that their rights will be pro­tected. On the con­trary, there is a grow­ing fear among the pub­lic that there is real hag­gling going on over their data, that there is very lit­tle con­trol and trans­parency, and that more and more in­va­sive and pow­er­ful tools are being used (as we have re­cently seen in the Cata­lan­gate case and the il­le­gal use of Pe­ga­sus) to ac­cess pri­vate and in­ti­mate in­for­ma­tion that can give com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ments a per­verse and un­de­mo­c­ra­tic power of con­trol over all of us. (For more on this topic, check out the fea­ture on pages 10-17 of this issue).