The Watchtower at the Gropius-Bau Museum in Berlin.
I’m in Berlin discussing digital identity and data empowerment at the World Frontiers Forum. The 2-day event is being held quite purposely at a site adjacent to the former Berlin Wall on the 30th anniversary of its fall (on November 9, 1989).
It’s also the city where I was tasked by Nokia – in 2009 – to figure out a strategy on what to do with data on 1.2 billion Nokia users. A colleague and I decided that very night, not so far from the former Stasi headquarters, to build a platform for people to take control of their own data and use as they choose.
It was instantly clear to us how different the world might have been if the East German surveillance state had the means to know what 1.2 billion people were doing, where they were going, what they were reading, and who they were communicating with. The authoritarian risk has only grown in the last 10 years (see China and its active export of its surveillance tools).
With the artist who created The Watchtower – Nadia Kaabi-Linke (she says it’s actually based on a hunter stand, which, unlike a watchtower, is designed to be hidden).
I first came to Berlin on a fellowship as a young high school student in 1987. The experience of seeing both sides of ground zero of the Cold War was as close to a life changing experience as a suburban kid from Jacksonville, Florida could have. For the first time, I felt a complete loss of control to a force that was (mostly) faceless and nameless and watching my every move. That included a frightening encounter with a voice from a watchtower loudspeaker that ordered me to move away from a forbidden zone by the Wall and a small river.
That experience rushed back to me yesterday visiting an art installation at the Gropius-Bau Museum called The Watchtower. Walking in the room and seeing the menacing shadow on the wall and floor, I found myself backing away until I was pressed against the window frame on the opposing wall.
My next thought was that I couldn’t understand the origin of the shadows. I searched for the light and model but couldn’t find them (spoiler alert: it turns out they were painted). The artist, Nadia Kaabi-Linte (also attending the artist inspired WFF), was accompanying us. She confirmed another person’s view that it represented, in part, the unseen tracking and exploitation of our lives by companies and governments.
I turned to look out the window. The view was of remains of the Berlin Wall and the location of the former Gestapo headquarters (now a museum of that regime of terror). I couldn’t have tied together my lifetime of experiences any more powerfully. It’s time for people to be empowered with their data and identity. Enough. Genug.
View of the remnants of the Berlin Wall and entrance to the former Gestapo headquarters from the window of The Watchtower art installation.
This post originally appeared on Medium and was co-authored by Shane and Julian Ranger (@rangerj)
With today’s announcement of the merger of digi.me and Personal, the personal data ecosystem takes a giant leap forward. (You can read the press release here.)
Personal and digi.me have each helped to define this sector — one that emphasizes individual control over the growing amount of data and analytics about people that fuels the digital world. We have done so by introducing revolutionary tools and rules for giving people control over their own social, personal, financial, health and other data while enhancing privacy, and by attracting world-class investors and some of the brightest minds in the space.
Since 2009, digi.me in Europe and Personal in North America have shared a common mission — to put people, rather than companies and governments, in greater control of their own data.
We have each made great strides, but we still have a long way to go. This merger will get us there faster and with greater force.
The timing could not be better — or the opportunity bigger. A perfect storm is brewing among rising consumer awareness, new regulations and increasingly grave threats to personal privacy and autonomy.
Shane, left, and Julian
Consumers are increasingly aware of the value that holding their own data brings and rebelling against others taking it from them without consent. For example, the Mobile Ecosystem Forum’s 2017 Global Consumer Trust study shows that when sharing data, 31% of consumers value personal data privacy-protection and access to it above financial rewards (29%) or discounts (22%).
Meanwhile, new legislation such as the European GDPR will deliver new consumer rights over ownership and use starting in May 2018.
And any citizen living in Europe or the United States knows that they are susceptible to various forms of government or corporate surveillance and data mining every day of the week. The vast quantity of data being collected and the deeply private insights from big data analytics and machine learning is accelerating geometrically, with users purposefully left out of the equation.
This collision of factors highlights the need for solutions like ours, but looking past the storm reveals a truly brilliant horizon. Indeed, the possibilities of what individuals and consumers can do when they control their own data are endless and powerful.
Users, businesses and governments all benefit when private sharing and consent access to personal data occurs.
With digi.me, users in Iceland, for example, can access their electronic health records and share relevant data with any medical professional who needs it through the Living Lab project — an example we intend to spread to other countries.
In finance, digi.me will be able to help consumers share their personal financial data with privacy and control with a banking or insurance company to help them get the best policy offer and reward their loyalty, but not by taking their data without permission and benefit for the consumer.
In education, Personal created a download app with the U.S. Department of Education to help make more than 100 fields of student financial aid data portable and reusable.
And a myriad of personal digital assistants and wearables will be able to arm consumers with the power of their own data just as they do for publicly searchable information like directions or comparison shopping for shoes or travel. Just imagine: You choose to integrate your personal data store with Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, say “Hey, Siri”, and all of a sudden you can access an image of your passport or get your bank account or health information served up to you instantly and ready to share.
There is a tailwind behind what both digi.me and Personal have been working on since 2009, and it gets stronger every day. The merger will allow us to expand quickly to meet this growing demand.
Personal has brought to market the world’s best product for individuals and small teams to create and collaborate on data needed for thousands of information-related tasks. It will be fully integrated into the digi.me app later this year. (Personal’s enterprise version of TeamData is being spun off as an information security and productivity company for businesses.) Personal’s development team is first class, and both digi.me and Personal have been pioneers in designing privacy and cybersecurity in their respective platforms every step of the way.
Our combined teams will hit the ground running. We are investing in expanding digi.me’s U.S. operation, which will now be led by Shane, and we are already beginning to work with major U.S. brands to partner with our apps and services.
On the development side, our teams in London, Sarajevo and the United States will work to expand the ecosystem of personal data API connectors to new third-party apps and services and will integrate with major brand partners in multiple countries around the world.
Welcome to the new digi.me — a powerhouse that will help consumers connect their data with companies and their governments to help them make better decisions and improve their lives!
Julian is the founder and chairman of digi.me. Shane, co-founder and CEO of Personal, is now CEO of digi.me’s U.S. business.
I wanted to share these two new videos we created to help you get up and running with TeamData.
The first is a quick guide for team members who have been invited to join a team, and provides a good overview of everything from registering to product functionality.
The second video is specifically for team admins, and is focused on what it takes to set up a team account, invite team members, and to create or import the initial data for the team.
Even though most of you will start off by being invited to join a team that’s already been set up, it’s worth the extra few minutes to watch the team admin video to get a sense of the benefits of creating a new team, perhaps in your department, for a project with outside consultants, or even at home.
And, as always, please let us know what you think!
This was original published on the TeamData blog here
Is it a wolf in sheep’s clothing or a sign of enlightenment at the world’s largest collector of personal data?
I must admit I was more than a little wary when I was invited by Facebook’s Global Deputy Chief Privacy Officer, Stephen Deadman, to participate in an off-the-record roundtable on the future of personal data and privacy. The involvement of the UK consulting firm helped convince me, given their long-time focus on building transparency and trust in this area. I’m glad I did.
I must admit I was more than a little wary when I was invited by Facebook’s Global Deputy Chief Privacy Officer, Stephen Deadman, to participate in an off-the-record roundtable on the future of personal data and privacy. The involvement of the UK consulting firm Ctrl-Shift helped convince me, given their long-time focus on building transparency and trust in this area. I’m glad I did.
Overshadowed by today’s announcement of 500 million Instagram users,Facebook released a report this morning called “A New Paradigm for Personal Data: Five Shifts to Drive Trust and Growth.” You can download it here: http://bit.ly/28L4HII or check out Deadman’s Op-Ed here:http://bit.ly/28LMDB9.
I hope Mark Zuckerberg reads it and internalizes its many good recommendations, especially given the powerful catalyzing role Facebook could play to empower people with data. It’s not just the right thing to do, it would be great for the company’s long-term business (oh, and for that pesky regulatory problem).
While much of the report’s thinking has been articulated previously, including by Ctrl-Shift, the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium (where Personal, Inc. was a founding member), the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Data and The Aspen Institute’s Communications & Society Program (both of which I participated in), it matters that Facebook spent its time and energy to convene so many trusted experts — 175 in all across 21 global roundtables — and to publish such a thoughtful and balanced report.
Unlike regulators, privacy and security advocates or most any industry player, no matter how large, Facebook is in a unique position to put the tools directly into the hands of their users and provide powerful direct and indirect incentives for them to start becoming hubs for their data.
In this model, users could re-use their data in a permission-based way, and in infinite combinations, across the entire connected universe at home, work and everywhere in between. It would be the ultimate democratization of data in a fair and transparent ecosystem where individuals actively decide when, where and how to participate in a robust value exchange tied to their data.
So why would Facebook take such a risk when its current business model is built on its ownership and control of user data?
Deadman answers that question in the introduction to the new report:
My observation from the years I’ve spent working on privacy and data related issues is that the personal data debate has been largely grounded in a limiting premise – that the desire to innovate with data is generally incompatible with preserving individuals’ rights to privacy and self-determination.
This premise is entrenched by regulators, policymakers and industry, as we tend to talk in terms of trade-offs, as though these two equally desirable goals will always be in tension with each other, and our only choice is to balance them off against each other.
I firmly believe that such trade-off thinking is undesirable – it leads to suboptimal outcomes – and I also believe it’s unnecessary: we now have the skills, technology and motivation to transcend this supposed trade-off.
He goes further:
The debate also entrenches an assumption that only organisations can control data, ignoring the ability and potential of individuals to take a more active role, exercising agency, choice and control over their own data.
I don’t think the evidence supports this assumption. What is more, when people have more control over their own data, more growth, innovation and value can be created than when they don’t.
It’s this very last point that will win the day. There is simply more opportunity to innovate and create value when individuals are empowered in this way. No single company, or government for that matter, can ever match the competitive advantage of individuals (or teams of individuals) to aggregate and permission access to the constantly growing and changing data from across their lives — including their connected devices.
And those who try to keep the individual out of the equation risk being punished as this new model emerges. Data collection, use and monetization simply can’t be kept behind the curtains much longer. Deadman is right to draw Facebook’s attention to both the opportunity — and the risk — of not embracing the rightful role of users.
There is also a surprising set of security benefits of a model with less standalone copies of data in the world, especially when the data that is shared on a session basis and comes networked with real-time validation and authentication. The future would not only be more secure with this approach, it also happens to be in the interest of the world’s largest identity provider.
In our own business, we are seeing this user-centric model starting to take root inside the workplace by and between employees. The enterprise is one of the few places where the need for individuals to practice active data management and data security is both understood and able to be mandated. It’s probably no accident that the Facebook at Work solution is one of the company’s biggest new initiatives.
The report finishes with grand brush strokes, painting a vision of a race to the top among companies who compete for access to user data based on trust, transparency and the value they can deliver. These market-based solutions have all the elements of the “digital enlightenment” many of us have been talking about for a long time.
For those of you worried that Facebook is simply trying to co-opt this new model before it is even established, or use it as a shield to avoid regulation, I understand the concern. But I really don’t think there will be any going back once it happens. As people wake up and experience the magic of having their data go to work for them, they will never be passive about their data or oblivious to its value again.
While Facebook has a lot to gain by being a leader, it has even more to lose by being seen by its community of users as holding them back. I applaud Deadman and his colleagues for taking such a bold position.
This post was originally published here on Medium.
Shane Green 