Individual Privacy, Big Data, and Collective Control

Abstract

While some us claim to care great deal about privacy, and others relatively little, all of us seem to be giving a great deal of it away, either because we see this as the only way to access certain goods, or simply because we feel too overwhelmed to respond differently to the constant demands that we hand over more and more of our data to carry out even the simplest activities online, at home, or at work. Using big data can indeed bring incredible advantages to many of us, from medical research to simply making the day-to-day tasks at work more efficient. Despite this, many of the benefits of data use accrue not to the data subjects themselves, but to shareholders of large and, arguably too powerful, technology companies. Meanwhile, data subjects find themselves increasingly vulnerable to numerous harms, and have their privacy rights routinely violated. Even those who try to keep their information to themselves struggle to do so because of the revelations of others. Personal information is interconnected in complex and sometimes surprising ways, and to secure individual control over privacy and the values it is connected to this must be accounted for. In an ever more technologically mediated world, this is more pressing than ever. As such, I propose a novel framing of the issue, as one of background justice, and then go on to consider how we might seek to reconfigure our economic environment through mechanisms of collective ownership and control, so that we can limit the risks and share in the benefits of a world rich in data. In chapter 1 I argue that the condition of privacy should be understood in terms of access to information rather than control over access. Regardless of which account we adopt, however, the questions of what it means for information to be accessed, and what makes information more or less privacy relevant, will need to be answered. The second chapter claims that while being in the condition of privacy may or may not be valuable depending on specific details of context or circumstance, but that having control over one's privacy is of fundamental value to individuals. Control over privacy is deeply connected to the value of relationships, and to autonomy and non-domination, and as such we ought to understand the right to privacy as control over privacy. In chapter 3, I suggest that a requirement for consent to share information, straightforwardly applied against contemporary privacy cases in all their complexity, is inadequate. In much the same way as principles of just transactions undermine the very conditions which they must operate against in order to be valid, it would undercut the very values it seeks to secure. As such we also need a background privacy principle (BPP), which states that the highest level of control over privacy that is consistent with an equal level of control over privacy for all should be secured for individuals, except where this distribution will create opportunities for domination. In chapter 4 I consider how this account of privacy might conflict with other demands of justice, specifically security and innovation, and find them to be in many cases overstated and largely resolvable without sacrificing a great deal in terms of what BPP demands of us. In the final chapter, I consider three central types of proposal for reforming data practices, and the digital economy more broadly, namely enhanced data protection regulations (EDPR), data-owning democracy (DOD), and digital socialism (DS). I assess each in light of the desiderata outlined above. Each proposal is closer to approximating BPP than the last, but would also be more challenging to implement and require further reaching changes to the political and economic systems currently in place.

Date of Award	6 Jan 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Richard Child (Supervisor) & Miriam Ronzoni (Supervisor)