How New Technology is Changing Data Ownership

Should individuals “own” their personal data? On paper, the answer seems obvious: companies are already profiting so much from our data, so why shouldn’t consumers?

And establishing traditional ownership rights over something intangible, like data, is easier said than done, especially when most consumers already clicked a button that basically handed over the data. And, allowing ownership of data would be to treat it as a commodity. Thus, legal structures would have to be put in place to protect its owners. Perhaps more importantly, do consumers even have the time or knowledge to commit to the level of management necessary to own their data?

Even if they don’t, Crown Sterling Limited CEO Robert Grant thinks that consumers should own their data, or at least have a choice in the matter. He recently talked about the future of data ownership on ADCG’s The U.S. National Privacy Legislation Podcast.

To give consumers that choice, Grant’s company used cryptography and blockchain to develop a way individuals can use encryption to control and manage their data. To fully grasp how this works in practice, you need at least a baseline understanding of quantum computing. The principle, however, is simple. In order for us to be able to claim control over our own data, we have to have a mechanism to enact that control.

The benefit of this mechanism is clear: if consumers own their personal data, then the money currently going to companies who sell their data can end up in their pockets. That may seem like an oversimplification, but Grant stresses its potential: “Today, data is the most valuable asset in the world,” he says. But how can something infinite, like data, be so valuable?

Well, data itself isn’t what’s valuable. What gets companies reaching for their wallets is control over that data. This is why companies have been able to make an industry out of buying and selling consumer data–and why governments have acted to regulate that industry in recent years.

“Companies have been able to take data from you through contracts of adhesion,” says Grant. “That means you don’t even know that that data is being taken, even though…unknowingly or unwittingly, you consented to them having access to your data.”

It’s a process we are all familiar with. We accept privacy policies without even looking at them because getting caught up in the details takes too much time and energy (and a law degree). Plus, even if we found something we objected to, our only solution, in most cases, would be not to use the website. As seen with WhatsApp in India, sometimes it isn’t that easy to cut out a social media platform because you don’t like how they are using your data. The current choice is one between blindly consenting or becoming a Luddite, and it’s clear which path consumers typically choose. “We traded our control of our own data for the convenience of the systems that we decide to use,” says Grant.

For Grant, this type of quid pro quo is a violation of our human rights. Just because we want to use services that are becoming integral to our way of life doesn’t mean we should have to cede control of something that rightfully belongs to us. “We believe that this type of data is an extension of who we are as human beings today, the definition of what it means to be a human being also accompanies what it means to own property,” says Grant. “Therefore, we believe that data is the ownership in the property of the original producer of that data.”

The problem is not only that we don’t own our data, but we have no control over how well it is protected. We don’t get to choose if our data is encrypted or what security measures might be in place to protect it. If a company that is handling our data makes a mistake, we can become victims of identity theft at no fault of our own. The only crime we committed was using a service or buying a product.

“Anytime you have something of value, it’s been the way of humanity to figure out how to put a fence or a cage around that thing of value,” says Grant. “Up until now, consumers haven’t had the ability to be able to fence or cage up any of their information about themselves.”

Grant says that the existence of data as a valuable asset is already particularly groundbreaking because we no longer have to harvest crops or buy land to generate money:

“For the first time in human history, we actually create value just by being. You don’t necessarily have to toil in work in order to create value. We’re on the precipice of a sea change for humanity. And what we have done is we’ve innovated a technology starting with cryptography, and then tied that to the ability to create an exchange, whereby we allow people to track and free their own data.”

With all the effort that consumers would have to put into owning their data, there’s got to be something in it for them beyond added privacy, right? According to Grant, the benefit is cold hard cash. He estimates that Facebook makes around $600 in revenue a year by selling one person’s data. What if individuals could sell that data directly?

This would create a market where different consumers would be able to reap different benefits from their data, but the most important thing is they would all have control. Consumers could decide what data they want to keep to themselves and what data they want to sell. While high-net-worth individuals with a lot of spending power may attract more buyers, Grant claims this system would be of particular interest to influencers, whose data would be far more coveted considering how many consumers follow their lead.

Grants stresses that he is not declaring the end of companies like Facebook profiting from consumer data–he’s just saying we can no longer ignore the “original producers” of the data. “People don’t really realize…that they’re part of a machine mechanism to mine value from [their] work effort. And there needs to be a fair and justifiable and equitable process to assign value to both those efforts.”

He continues. “We believe that [data] starts off as the property of the original producer to the extent that the original producer opts into [Crown Sterling’s] platform to monetize that value. We understand that that’s gonna be a negotiation that people will decide to enter into or not. The key is that you need to be able to have your own control over that decision process.”