Data Protection is About Power, Not Just Privacy

Historically, privacy was about protecting aspects of your life from being shared with people in your life you didn’t want to know that information. The use of data to manipulate me into purchasing something I don’t need is a very different kind of harm than the old privacy concerns about unwanted disclosure. In the context of corporate data collection, a continued focus on unwanted disclosure is only a small piece of the puzzle. The real concerns from corporate data collection are manipulation and discrimination. Our data may be exploited to harm us without the data ever being shared outside the place that originally collected it. We need rules that prevent harmful types of collection and harmful types of uses of data about us, regardless of which company is doing it. We need rules that protect users regardless of whether the data was collected “directly” or shared. Only this will really protect users from manipulation and discrimination. It will also level the competitive field.

[Charlotte is Competition Policy Director at Public Knowledge]