Our Take on Privacy.
Recently the european internet goes wild about the new “General Data Protection Regulation”, which comes in effect on the 25th of May in 2018. This regulation affects all kind of businesses and organizations from small ones like your local soccer club to the large ones like your preferred social media company.
This Regulation lays down rules relating to the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and rules relating to the free movement of personal data. This Regulation protects fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons and in particular their right to the protection of personal data. The free movement of personal data within the Union shall be neither restricted nor prohibited for reasons connected with the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data.
Why we should take data protection seriously.
Personally, I highly appreciate and support every effort to protect personal data and give people a maximum of security, transparency, ownership and flexibility regarding every single bit of their — and of course my own — data. Our company has some of the smartest minds working on technical concepts and digital solutions, to make our users actual own all their data forever and with no exception and can decide when, with whom and for how long they want to share access on their data.
By 2020 every digital connected person on this planet is estimated to generate around 1.7 megabytes of personal data on every single day and stores that data with different services and providers. That makes up for 3 Petabyte (this is 3 Million Gigabytes) of highly private and personal data worldwide per year that has to be protected, encrypted and kept in a save harbor. And that does not includes the data of our phonecalls, videos, music and images. And even if most of us do not realize it by it’s full extend: this data reveals extremely detailed information about who we are, where we spend our time, how healthy we live and what products we like and use. Our ‘digital footprint’ is actually a surprisingly accurate self-portrait: With just 10 likes that you have on facebook, the network is able to judge a personality more accurately than the subject’s coworkers; with 70 likes, it judges better than close friends and roommates; with 150 likes, the computer knows you better than family members; and with 300 likes, it knows your habits better than your spouses. And those information is worth billions of dollars and this money powers some of the most powerful and influential companies and institutions in the world.
Solving technical questions with buerocracy
But as far as I understand that regulatory construct, it tries to solve the growing technical challenges by creating buerocratic procedures and rules. To use a metaphor, it’s like having a leaking boat and instead of using pumps to get rid of the water, the governments create rules to define, how water has to flow hereafter and a protocol for every single drop of water in the boat. Every entity has to document and log how, when and which data is collected and when that data has to be deleted, which is a Sisyphean task, since the amount and nature of our digital footprint changes every day.
So, how could we do it better
Let’s assume a fictional world, in which we have smart devices with broadband internet connections in our pockets, that are capable of storing personal data encrypted and in a private storage space. A data storage space for which only the legal owner of that device can grant access rights and permit services to read or write data. If the owner does not longer want that a service has access to his data, he can revoke permissions for a certain information or even for a complete set of services. To backup the data, the device can clone it’s content into a encrypted cloud-space and as a prove, that all data is consistent and true/correct, a hash of the data could be tied to a publicly available blockchain for all services. This would prevent, that the data could be compromised from a third party and that blockchain could be used as a basis for blockchain related services and smart contracts. Even officials, banking and healthcare could greatly benefit from such a system that effectively inhibits falsification. If we do it right this could make bank-accounts, payment of taxes, notarial contracts, official registrys or medical records and even the keys to your car digitally accessible anywhere and from everyone, as long as the owner give explicit permission to do so.
The goal is to build data ownership as a core feature
The fictional world has already arrived around ten years ago with the iPhone. And since the invention of blockchain (around the same time) and more recently hashgraph, there are now effective ways to prevent data from being altered. So technically, we today have all means necessary to develop such a system. What’s still missing is the willingness to adopt that technology in a large scale. And because currently there is no real business model that creates profit from such a system, no company so far tried to invent it. Until now. A company called IOTA invented a digital currency, that enables smart devices to collect and trade with all kinds of information they connect from the internet of things. There is a Ethereum, a crypto currency that invented smart contracts, in which payments of digital coins are only executed if the conditions of a contract are fullfilled. Both technologies are based on blockchain and are proven to be forgery-proof.
The missing link to the utopian solution from above is the need of a new economic model. So we are about to create one with the Profit-Sharing economy. We think, if information itself is worth billions of dollars, then the creators of the information should get their piece of the cake. We believe, that interaction itself is creating value and all participants in the digital world should be rewarded fair and transparent for their contribution. We dream of a near future, in which the monopolys of data are smashed and people have the freedom to chose their services and exchange information as they like. Currently we are piloting parts of our approach in real life situations like gaming and logistics. This approach paves the way for the upcoming next iteration of our information based and internet connected society. Instead of only a few big companies, that make up for large part of all profits and collect all the data this will enable a society in which every person and every device worldwide can contribute with numerous single pixels to the big picture of a global Profit-Sharing economy, where information is always protected and never leaves the owners hand without his permission.
Originally published at www.profit-sharing-network.com on July 17, 2018.
