Nothing Personal: The Importance Of Creating Data Ownership Frameworks

Nothing Personal: The Importance Of Creating Data Ownership Frameworks 1

A framework is a fundamental design, a guideline about how something goes. It is the skeletal structure on which something is built.

Our world functions on various sets of rules and regulations and each set is based on a framework. Just like that cloud works on frameworks as well.

Cloud services have a lot of terms and conditions for data privacy, humongous steps are taken every other day to provide the cloud users with better privacy and to shield them as much as possible from data breaches and the looming threat of hackers. Cloud services and every other platform that deals with data in any way keep on working on terms for better privacy. Even the Government is getting more and more into protecting people from violation of their privacy by creating new frameworks for privacy policies.

But what about data ownership?

What is the end goal of so much privacy and why do we want privacy fro our data? Simple, it is OUR data. Our data is who we are, what we search and what we like, what we upload and what we download, our inputs. But our data is private.

Difference between privacy and ownership.

There is a huge difference between having privacy and having property aka ownership. To explain this let’s say you give your phone with all access to somebody and they promise to not share your phone with someone else. This is privacy. They have your phone, they have access but you trust them. This is an ideal situation.

In reality, they have your phone and access to all the data inside and they keep asking you to let them share more and more so that they can optimise your phone. You naively agree to it, thinking it’s a great deal but what you don’t realise is while you get an “optimised” phone, that somebody becomes a billionaire by selling what you allow them to share. Now, do you think this is okay?

Even if we do not consider the monetary aspect of this situation, consider safety. We all know what information we have on our phone and how some parts of the information… are sensitive. How are you sure that this third person can be trusted? You do not know him. You love the benefits but doesn’t a little part of you feel paranoid? That phone knows everything about you and all that information is up for grabs for “trusted networks.”

Thus, as much as privacy seems great, it’s not enough.

This privacy is just a promise, a display of trust on the provider. We need Ownership.

What exactly is data ownership?

Data ownership is the philosophical and legal concept of an entity owning the rights to control access to a particular set or group of data. Having data ownership means having control over who has access to what. The owner decides who can do anything to the data. Just like physical property.

The need for ownership.

We all are well-aware of what happens when this data is exposed to the predators on the WWW, i.e., hackers. We risk our privacy. Thus, so many privacy policies and security settings are put into place, to avoid exploitation.

But do we realise the biggest mistake we are making? To avail the services of various providers we give them the permission to read, analyse, store and even reproduce our data, one step at a time. So even though it is our data, we do not own it anymore since someone else but us has the right to read and reproduce and even edit our data. Most of the times we transfer the legal ownership of our data to the provider. For example, when you input personal information, the server can read and store it. When you create something using their services, you do not own it. It is legally theirs since you created it using their service.

Scary, isn’t it? But you know what is really scary? There are no solid foundations for ownership of data as of yet. There no data ownership framework in place. Everything and every law is working towards inducing more privacy but not provide ownership. Is that truly okay? It’s not about trusting our providers any more, it’s about our own safety.

We NEED ownership, now more than ever.

For if we were to own our data a 100% then it would be we who are in charge. We would decide who can see our data and store it and if the need be we can revoke the access anytime we want, erasing everything. We can also do this while earning a profit out of it but more importantly, we take charge and stop being helpless and at the mercy of our providers for the safety of our data.