Data Privacy as a Human Right

when we talk about data privacy let’s

try to step back a little and ask a

question

exactly what kind of information when

added up together

would represent you as an individual for

instance your legal name

your place of birth your political view

even the way how you look like

these are just the tip of an iceberg

there’s a myriad of data that could

represent you as an individual

however today we are not talking about

the possibility of understanding between

one person

to another but we are just talking about

the possibility of a person not being

wanted to be understood sometimes this

will be understood as

like the two sides of a con we’ll come

back to this later

when you are young you probably have

written and received love letters from

your little lover right and imagine that

these love letters were read by your

worrying mom or by your bossy friend

you’d probably be very

annoyed and outraged and went hey you

are intruding my privacy and then you

probably will be waving your love

letters and say these are privacy

but what exactly is privacy

privacy is the right to be let alone

actually back in 1890

samuel warren and lewis brandeis wrote

an article and have a law review

titled the right to have privacy to

discuss about the concept of privacy and

they talk about

the possibility of a celebrity not

wanting

to have reports about them being

published and this article was precisely

written

against this background the authors

actually want to analyze what constitute

us the right to privacy

and they would like to also to see to

what extent that a celebrity may prevent

reports about them from being published

intrusion to privacy is an act to

intrusion

it could intrude your property it could

include your right to maintain your

privacy

you could even intrude your right as a

human being if you want to prevent a

person from being called you as an

intruder of privacy

that person will probably have to first

obtain your consent

this is manifested under article of

universal declaration of human rights

which goes no one shall be subject to

arbitrary

interference with his privacy family

home or correspondence

nor to attacks upon his honor and

reputation

everyone has the right to the protection

of law against such interference or

attacks

in different jurisdictions uh different

countries have their own versions of

privacy for instance in germany they

they would use the term

that’s called personally kites or

informational

self-esteem as legal concept to

describe the related behavior of

individuals

but then i would guess like we will all

agree that actually

countries in most in the most part of

the world will actually respect

the right to privacy we’ll come back to

the

contemporary society when we talk about

data privacy

it’s not just about protecting your own

personal

stories or your creative content but

it’s more

broad so to speak so when we talk about

data privacy

it’s basically about all of this record

which evidences your survival as a whole

basically

and that’s how we call data privacy this

is actually a very brand new concept

if you come to think a little deeper

about it actually all of your actions

actually performed

have been meticulously recorded in an

unprecedented manner

how would that be you may probably ask

so probably they could come from your

mobile phone they could come from your

computer

or they could come from for example like

cctv footage on every venue that you

have visited

obviously this data would be very

important to the enterprises

but it may not be as important to

individuals like you and me

and why is that i would imagine the

reasons are

slightly like twofold firstly is that

individuals do not usually think that we

are

like celebrities we don’t think our

datas are important enough to be

recorded and secondly is basically

because when we visit a website and the

website asks for

consent we would basically just click

yes i agree instead of going through all

of the terms and conditions right

and actually when we come to think

deeper about it we would think that data

is actually

feels slightly distant because of its

abstractness right

but then try to imagine that um somebody

or even say like a company

knows the venues that you usually

visited and they know when you wake up

and they even read the conversation

between you and your friends

now you will probably feel pretty

frightened right

but in fact a lot of us just simply

surrender our data just like that

isn’t this surprising and they are not

even anonymized data

so as a whole so to speak that you as a

person

actually equals to the total sum of this

data

and each data chunk will be equal to

basically just

one part of you as an identity so to

speak

and what is even more interesting in

fact is that behind this data there’s a

logic behind it

so like these data record your behavior

and why is that

because they would like to be able to

predict your future behavior

and once they are able to predict your

future behavior they will be able to

perhaps induce you to change your

behavior

this will be of monetary or lucrative

value to private companies but then what

about when they fall under the hands of

the government

take china as an example many chinese

cities have implemented social credit

score system

every action you perform will be

recorded and the score will be generated

how would that affect you as an

individual for instance if you want to

borrow a loan from a bank

this score will affect the interest rate

that you receive

and this goal will actually serve as an

indicator if you want to

have a career promotion in your

workplace

and it will also affect your civil

rights for instance

say like whether you will be entitled to

a government certain government

subsidies

or whether you will be able to purchase

a train or even flight ticket

the upsides will be the law and order in

the society will generally improve

the government will be more readily able

to control its citizens

and so like the policy that the

government would like to implement will

be more thoroughly implemented

countrywide

the downside of course which we can all

imagine basically is that

the freedom of a person being let alone

will be forsaken

while the situation in china may seem

slightly dim

when we turn to the global development

in terms of data protection law

we will realize that actually it’s

actually not so bad because

there has been a lot of legislation in

terms of data protection law

have been implemented worldwide from

european union’s general data protection

regulation to united states

california consumer privacy act to

even china’s cyber security law you will

notice that there has been

a lot of drastic changes happening

across different continents

and you would ask probably why would

there be a lot of data protection law

coming into place

and the reason precisely which you can

all imagine

basically is that the companies who owns

the big data

and who owns this it technology they

would be able

to be more readily exploit the data and

to be able to predict the behavior

of the millions of people worldwide you

may probably

ask what will an average person be

entitled to get under data protection

law

here i will digress a little let’s talk

about food safety

when we talk about food safety i’m a lay

person i would expect the food that i

eat would make me healthy

however sometimes i will also get

confused

why would the food that seemed harmless

a few years ago would suddenly be

classified or substandard

i would try to justify this way human

civilization is a process of

accumulation

studies will relentlessly generate noble

results

therefore the standards towards food

safety will be changed constantly

and therefore it will naturally be very

annoying to the food manufacturers

however to lay persons like you and me

we will probably happily accept this as

positive development data protection

also functions this way privacy by

itself is already a complex concept

but we add a little element like data

privacy or even its protection

when added up together it could get

pretty tangled up

but the main point is you know you are

entitled to this right

this is a very important step after

knowing this then you will be able to be