Tag: data empowerment

The Berlin Wall, a watchtower and data empowerment

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.

Why I’m teaming up with Future State

I am excited to announce that I am joining forces with Future State (futurestate.org) as a senior advisor. Future State is a relatively new organization based in Washington, DC that is focused on data empowerment, especially in emerging markets where digital policies are at key inflection points that can more rapidly support this model. It is led by Priya Jaisinghani Vora, Kay McGowan and Jonathan Dolan, who helped develop and lead key digital, data and financial inclusion efforts at USAID.

Here is how they describe their mission: 

“Future State puts the rights and aspirations of people at the center of the digital revolution. Through our research, advocacy and direct efforts to spur action by policymakers, civil society and developers around the world, we advance approaches that maximize people’s participation, individual agency, choice and trust in the digital era.” 

FutureState.org

I couldn’t be more passionate about what they are doing, especially their shining a light on the need for far greater governmental, corporate and philanthropic investment in data empowerment (more on that below).

2019 marks my 10th year working on data empowerment following my departure from Nokia (after they asked me to develop a strategy for exploiting data they were surreptitiously collecting on 1.2 billion customers). What started as a movement to put data directly into the hands of people to use how they choose has turned into the frontline battleground of digital power dynamics. 

Data empowerment is broadly associated with efforts around transparency, privacy, data security and equitable exchange of value, including the direct participation in the economics of data. It is different, however, in that it has a fundamental view that none of these can be properly addressed without the individual playing a primary role in aggregating and setting permissions to their data.

Almost all of my efforts over this decade have centered around developing the building blocks required for data empowerment, including: 

  • building a privacy by design platform for an individual to import, secure and share data;
  • designing data normalization and standardization methods for organizing massively heterogeneous data;
  • developing private sharing protocols with apps that leverage edge processing on the device; and
  • creating compelling use cases for individuals, developers, companies and regulators to embrace this new model.

[You can read more about those efforts – Personal, digi.me, UBDI, TFP, Fill It, TeamData, etc – and why I am so excited about the progress we have made in other posts.]

Along the way, I have had to beg (literally), borrow (literally) and steal (figuratively) to cobble together resources to build these solutions. To date, my ventures, including the combined digi.me/Personal, have raised close to $50 million – which is among the highest funded data empowerment efforts so far. But that’s an average of about $5 million annually to change the fundamental architecture and business model of the digital world. It’s a paltry sum compared to the fortune that gets invested hourly (literally) in the surveillance-based model that prevails online. 

It’s time for that to change. Future State’s work will highlight success stories around the world, and provide thoughtful, practical and empirically-driven recommendations to policymakers, enlightened CEOs, developers, philanthropists and civil society leaders.

I think what happens without data empowerment is getting clearer by the day. I’m looking forward to working with these visionaries to show what the future state can look like when we all have primary agency over our data.