<nettime> Francesca Bria: Our data is valuable. Here's how we can take that value back

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>]

Our data is valuable. Here's how we can take that value back | Francesca
Bria | Opinion

Francesca Bria

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/05/data-valuable-citizens-silicon-valley-barcelona


Tech firms are emerging as new feudal lords. They control essential
digital infrastructures – in this case, data and artificial intelligence
– which are crucial for political and economic activity. But it doesn’t
have to be that way.

Have you ever asked yourself why the immense economic value that such
data represents accrues exclusively to technology firms – and not to
ordinary citizens or public institutions? We can return some of that
value back to citizens. Here’s how.

We badly need a new social pact on data that will make the most of our
data while guaranteeing citizens’ rights to privacy and information
self-determination. This will require reconquering critical digital
infrastructures – long surrendered to the likes of Facebook, Alphabet
and Microsoft – and protecting citizens’ digital sovereignty. This
should help in developing decentralized, privacy-enhancing and
rights-preserving alternative data infrastructures.

Given the gloomy state of politics on both sides of the Atlantic, this
might seem mission impossible. And yet, there’s one bright spot on the
horizon: cities.

Cities can’t, of course, solve all our digital problems: many of them
need urgent attention at the national and global level. But cities can
run smart, data-intensive, algorithmic public transportation, housing,
health and education – all based on a logic of solidarity, social
cooperation and collective rights.

Barcelona, for instance, is experimenting with socializing data in order
to promote new cooperative approaches to solving common urban problems:
tracking noise levels and improving air quality, to take just two
examples. This data is collected via sensors operated by citizens with
the city taking the lead in aggregating and acting upon such data.
Incubating such innovative approaches that encourage the creation of new
social rights to data is the objective of Decode, a project I lead with
13 partner organizations from across Europe, including the cities of
Barcelona and Amsterdam.

The Decode project develops decentralized technologies (such as the
blockchain and attribute-based cryptography) to give people better
control of their data generated both in their homes and in the city at
large, in part by setting rules on who can access it, for what purposes,
and on which terms.

By helping citizens regain control of their data, we aspire to generate
public value rather than private profit. Our goal is to create “data
commons” from data produced by people, sensors and devices. A data
commons is a shared resource that enables citizens to contribute, access
and use the data – for instance about air quality, mobility or health –
as a common good, without intellectual property rights restrictions.

We envision data as public infrastructure alongside roads, electricity,
water and clean air. However, we are not building a new Panopticon.
Citizens will set the anonymity level, so that they can’t be identified
without explicit consent. And they will keep control and ownership over
data once they share it for the common good. This common data
infrastructure will remain open to local companies, co-ops and social
organizations that can build data-driven services and create long-term
public value.

Involving citizens in Amsterdam and Barcelona, Decode addresses
real-world problems, for instance, it’s integrated with the
participation platform decidim.barcelona, already used by thousands of
citizens to shape the city’s policy agenda. Rather than using the
personal information of voters (furnished by the likes of Cambridge
Analytica) for manipulation, we plan to use data-intensive platforms to
boost political participation and make politicians more accountable.

We must challenge the current narrative dominated by Silicon Valley’s
leaky surveillance capitalism and dystopian models such as China’s
social credit system. A New Deal on data, based on a rights-based,
people-centric framework, which does not exploit personal data to pay
for critical infrastructure, is long overdue.

In May, Europe will pass data protection rules based on worthy
principles such as “privacy by design” and “data portability”. Coupled
with new regulatory instruments in the areas of taxation and antitrust,
such bold interventions can create alternatives where citizens have
greater power over their data and the artificial intelligence-powered
future built with it. Cities such as Barcelona are happy to show the way.


** Francesca Bria is the chief technology and digital innovation officer
for the city of Barcelona. She is the founder of the Decode Project
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