Proposing a charter of personal data rights.

• Author: Kosciejew, Marc
• Position: POINT OF VIEW

Our personal data is being created, collected, mined, analyzed, monitored, shared, sold, stored, and used for diverse reasons beyond most of our knowledge or control, let alone our willing consent or endorsement. A charter of personal data rights is needed to temper this datafication of people's lives, which compromises personal privacy, confidentiality, trust, and security.

In this data-saturated world, many important political, economic, and social activities increasingly provide opportunities for access to and use of personal data --that is, information relating to an individual as an identified or an identifiable person. It is being harnessed and exploited by powerful institutions and interests for diverse purposes.

Every day, personal data is given to these institutions and interests or, increasingly, simply taken by them to permit participation in the information ecosystem upon which many aspects of public and private life now depend. Those who want to participate, it is argued, must be willing to hand over their personal data.

It is no wonder why the World Economic Forum declared personal data as a new economic asset class or why analysts and officials were led to describe it as the 21st century's version of oil and the new currency of the digital world.

Types of Data Collected

The kinds, quantities, and values of personal data being given, or taken, are enormous and varied: employment histories, educational backgrounds, familial ties, social connections, professional networks, financial records, medical profiles, personal propensities, daily routines, and other everyday engagements, some of which people may be unaware, are being collected and analyzed.

Personal data regarding who people are, who they know, who they are connected to, where they are, where they have been, and even where they may be going is being aggregated. It is consequently under threat by those who are able to harness and exploit it for their own benefit, usually to the detriment of those whose personal data it is.

For example, personal data is being created or collected by powerful commercial enterprises for their own financial profit of which people tend not to receive any share. It also is being monitored by government agencies for their own Big Brother-esque surveillance and security activities, regardless of whether those being watched have ever been suspected of criminal activity.

The Threat of Datafication

These threats to personal data are, in fact, threats to people's physical selves. It is not simply a collection of meaningless bytes about random information abstracted from their lives. It is integral to their very personhoods, an informational extension or a kind of personal appendage that extends their lives into the informational (which increasingly means "digital") realm. This means that it is people--not just data--being exploited.

Personal data fundamentally belongs to the person it identifies, stands in for, and represents; it should not be treated as the property of powerful institutions or interests, governmental, corporate, or otherwise. As such, people have certain rights to their personal data. Indeed, personal data rights are basic human rights that must be recognized, respected, and protected.

There is particular urgency for the recognition of and respect for personal data as human rights because, as many aspects of people's lives continue to migrate online, they are, in turn, being datafied. Every transaction, interaction, connection, and contribution are being transformed into distinct data points to be aggregated with so-called big data sets in order to more effectively surveil individuals for diverse purposes.

Even those individuals who are not connected online are caught up in this digital panopticon as many mundane activities, from walking down a street to riding a bus or making a commercial purchase, are captured and datafied by various...