Data Sharing is Not Always Caring
Data Sharing is Not Always Caring
Medium
As we turn our critical gaze away from Big Brother to Big Tech, our anxieties and our behaviour are at such odds we verge on schizophrenic. We are paranoid about private companies’ disregard for our privacy; yet we continue to give them our data hand over fist. We are often hugely cagey about giving the government our data; yet we claim to trust it more than almost any other institution.
The proposed Data Sharing and Release (DS&R) legislative reform is poised to make the most of this confused stance. It is based on the argument that if we allow Facebook to share data about us, and we trust the government more than Facebook, doesn’t the government have a mandate to share data about us too? This legislation proposes to open the way to sharing the treasure trove of data held by the Australian government, without needing our consent. While it promises to enable the smooth service delivery citizen-consumers have come to expect, it misses key aspects of consent, privacy and trust.
Traditional objections centre on the acquisition of data, on private companies like Facebook, individual rights and individual consent, and whether we trust an institution. The proposed Data Sharing and Release legislative reform forces us to focus on the risks of sharing of government-held data that threatens us as a collective, where securing the secrecy of our data is not enough, where securing our consent on a case-by-case basis is infeasible and where increased transparency is not enough to guarantee the trustworthiness of the institutions.
Dystopian visions of the future articulate our fear that we will be defined and moulded by rigid systems of power. These fears have never been more appropriate than in this data-driven age, where prediction and control is what it is all about: working out and influencing what we are like, what we like and what we are likely to do. While we rail against the likes of Facebook and Google, we must remember that governments are no less tempted by the power and promise of information. But just as private companies and governments seek prediction and control, so should we: we should demand to know what they can do with the data they have on us and the power to do something about it.