IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020 - 17

you have a permanent record then
you can be blackmailed because of
what's on it, and access to services
can be made easier (or cheaper)
or more difficult (or costly) based
upon " credit " scores based on data
from diverse sources. Card-only
businesses are a problem because
it means you can't opt out of your
transactions being recorded and
sold to data consumers. This is a
serious problem. What would happen if cash were no longer printed
[12]-[14]? Would privacy become a
luxury that is only available to the
very rich and criminals?

to address such risks in a variety of
elicit harmful consequences for the
ways. For example, in the financial
individual. How do we give people
industry there's massive regulation
the confidence and support to stand
to protect investors from exploitaup for their values? How does one
tion by investment advisors and securities dealers.
However, in the context of
personal data, regulation
Wealthy interests want for nothing
genera l ly concerns data
protection, which is about
but to manipulate behavior of
p r eve n t ing the unauthorised use of information once
populations cheaply and at scale,
it has been collected. This
and they will pay dearly for it.
is not the same as privacy,
which is about not requiring such information to be
replace raw power struggles among
revealed in the first instance. The difindividuals and businesses with the
ference is precisely about third party
rule of law? These have always been
trust. Trust cannot be imposed; it
the key questions, and we must
must be established on the terms
revisit them in light of new technoloof the one doing the trusting. Theregies that allow these interactions to
fore, systems must be designed
take place in new contexts.
with privacy by design, rather than
data protection, whenever possiInterviewer Information
ble. When it comes to online transKristina Milanoviec´ is a Ph.D. reactions, for example people signing
searcher in the Intelligent Systems and
up with Ashley Madison, there is no
Networks group at Imperial College
regulation to force businesses to
London, London, U.K. Email: km908
implement privacy by design in a
@ic.ac.uk.
manner that allows their customers to transact anonymously, just
References
as there is no regulation that can
[1] Deloitte, " What is digital economy?, "
prevent data breaches. It's harder
[Online]. Available: https://www2.deloitte.
to quantify the impact of these data
com/mt/en/pages/technology/articles/mt
-what-is-digital-economy.html. [Accessed 14
breaches, and in contrast to finanMay 2020].
cial transactions, there is no well[2] European Commission, " The Digital
positioned regulator to oversee
Economy and Society Index (DESI), " 14 May
2020. [Online]. Available: https://ec.europa
and structurally limit the scope for
.eu/digital-single-market/en/desi.
interactions involving data, thus
[3] S. Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capilimiting the extent to which governtalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the
New Frontier of Power, Profile Books, 2019.
ment can protect individuals.

What is the Role of the
Individual in this Case? Where
is the Personal Responsibility
for Their Financial History?
GG: People may not have an option
to opt out of certain technologies,
for example if they are compelled to
use social media because of work.
As a result, we need to motivate people to think about their transactions.
Currently, we've allowed people to
not think about it, and the system
has been designed to convince them
they don't need to think about what
they're doing online. The motivation
behind collecting data is, from the
point of view of businesses, that big
data, which is to say personal data,
can be extremely profitable. The
application of artificial intelligence
algorithms to big data sets can be
extremely profitable. The problem
isn't the development of artificial
intelligence algorithms per se, but
the data they are being fed and the
conclusions that are possible to
draw from the data.

Why Do You Think There
are There no Comparable
Protections for Individuals
who Take Similar Risks with
Their Personal Sata?

Would You have Any Overall
Advice to Individuals
Concerned About Protecting
their Privacy?

GG: The issue lies in the moral edge
cases, actions based on an individual's values that he or she could take
that might be antithetical to what
the people in power want and could

GG: Whenever you trust a third
party, there is always inherent risk,
and as a society, we have chosen
DECEMBER 2020

∕

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

[4] Financial Conduct Authority, " MiFID II, "
24 July 2019. [Online]. Available: https://
www.fca.org.uk/markets/mifid-ii. [Accessed
14 May 2020].
[5] Securities and Exchange Comission,
" Rule 611 of Regulation NMS, " 30 April
2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.sec
.gov/spotlight/emsac/memo-rule-611
-regulation-nms.pdf. [Accessed 22 June 2020].
[6] D. A. Lipton, " Best Execution: The National Market System's Missing Ingredient, "
Notre Dame Law, vol. 57, no. 449, 1982.

(continued on page 82)

https://www2.deloitte.com/mt/en/pages/technology/articles/mt-what-is-digital-economy.html https://www2.deloitte.com/mt/en/pages/technology/articles/mt-what-is-digital-economy.html https://www2.deloitte.com/mt/en/pages/technology/articles/mt-what-is-digital-economy.html https://www.ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/desi https://www.ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/desi https://www.fca.org.uk/markets/mifid-ii https://www.fca.org.uk/markets/mifid-ii https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/emsac/memo-rule-611-regulation-nms.pdf https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/emsac/memo-rule-611-regulation-nms.pdf https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/emsac/memo-rule-611-regulation-nms.pdf

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020

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