Power Shift

Personal and the World Economic Forum’s New Report


When I learned of the World Economic Forum’s first report on personal data in early 2011, I was surprised to see an organization comprised of Fortune 1000 companies highlight the many cutting-edge problems we were addressing at Personal. Their report went so far as to call personal data a “new economic asset class,” and made a bold assertion that individuals needed to be empowered with their data to create balance, fairness and stability in the new digital economy.

We were delighted to then be asked to participate in the Forum’s Rethinking Personal Data Working Group, which today released a new report, produced in collaboration with The Boston Consulting Group, entitled: “Rethinking Personal Data: Strengthening Trust.” You can see the Forum’s press release here, and our own here.

The report broadly defines personal data, including data that is directly or indirectly known about you and your family, friends, work, values and beliefs, location/GPS, car, home, finances, spending, browsing history, app usage, health, education – you name it. It further examines the growing instability that comes from a lack of trust and transparency in how personal data is captured and used by companies and governments, while highlighting benefits for all stakeholders, including people, if a better framework emerges that balances the competing needs and interests of all parties.

While startups are famous for “making sausage” – the idea that the reality is messy behind the scenes even when the outcome is good – I think it is fair to say we made some (very good) sausage over the last year. There were a wide range of passionate and thoughtful views on most every subject that touches personal data – ownership rights, consent, the primacy of the individual, the right to be forgotten, transparency, privacy, data security, national security, sovereignty, public safety, regulation, public health, political freedom, and, last but far from least, innovation and economic growth.

Many of the report’s recommendations focus on much needed improvements to the current model, where companies and governments are central. Others point to ways to explore new models that could give individuals a better seat at the table and that can create, through enhanced trust, even better outcomes for companies and governments willing to abide by new rules.

We were delighted to both participate in this important endeavor and to see Personal, along with companies like Dropbox, Reputation.com, Mydex and Qiy, be highlighted as an innovator working to empower people with their data. We are confident that the benefits will be magical for all involved as people are able to effectively manage and use this “new economic asset” across their lives.

Shane

By Shane Green in Power Shift

May 16, 2012

Highlights from Data Transparency Weekend


Now that the Personal team has caught up (somewhat) on sleep after an exciting few days at the first-ever Wall Street Journal Data Transparency Weekend, we wanted to share a handful of highlights and takeaways from our point of view as both a participant and a sponsor.

First of all, our hats go off to all of the organizers, track leaders and speakers who made this weekend one to remember: Julia Angwin, Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Allen Gunn, Alessandro Acquisti, Sid Stamm, Daniel Weitzner, Andrew McLaughlin, Dan Kaminsky, Ashkan Soltani, Brian Kennish and Jacob Appelbaum. We were impressed with how well-organized, full of camaraderie and downright awesome the event proved to be from the very beginning.

What truly made the event special, of course, were the participants we met and the many projects that came out of it. While all of them were great, here are a few highlights in no particular order:

MobileScope

Voted the “Ready for Primetime” Winner, MobileScope was developed by David Campbell, Aldo Cortesi, Ashkan Soltani and Pascal Van Hecke to provide all desktop and mobile users with “privacy enhancing features via an intercepting proxy in the cloud.” Such features include Collusion, Do Not Track, Certificate Pinning, AdBlock and visualization of your personal data usage. This is the first implementation that specifically caters to non-jailbroken mobile devices.

Make Myself Clear

Our friends at Ghostery joined forces with a few others to build a web app that scans social networks for sensitive information – e.g. references to drugs and alcohol, health issues, etc. – about users. As employers become increasingly insistent on investigating our digital lives, even going so far as to demand job applicants’ Facebook passwords, Make Myself Clear gives us the tools to self-audit and preview the information that a company with access to our social profiles might see.

CensorSweeper

Dan Kaminsky, Joe Geffen and Michael Tiffany teamed up to build a Web app based on the premise that there should be a simple way for everyone (read: a way that doesn’t require people to install code) to visit a website and figure out what has been censored. The first version of the app is live and ready for you to try.

What did the Personal team build?

As far as our own project, Zogger, goes: it’s a Firefox extension that, once enabled, stores data about the sites you visit and gives you a quantified-self analytics view to help you better understand where you go and what data you give up in the process. While it’s still a work-in-progress, you can download the extension and give Zogger a try today.

If you’re a developer, we invite you to fork our extension and build on it.

We are proud to have sponsored this forward-thinking and collaborative event and are already looking forward to continuing the fight for privacy, transparency and, yes, freedom at next year’s Data Transparency Weekend.

Tarik

By Tarik Kurspahic in Power Shift

April 17, 2012

It’s Raining Data and Privacy: A Look Back at SXSW


A deluge of rain welcomed the Personal team to Austin two weeks ago today. Armed with company swag and a passion for spreading the word about small data and our product, we went to battle with the weather.

As it turned out, SXSW Interactive was raining more than precipitation. Sessions and panels on data and privacy seemed to drop from the sky and made a splash, despite all the buzz around ‘ambient social’ apps. (Observation: these apps were probably the culprits behind draining smartphone power and subsequent hours wasted on searching for power outlets to recharge them.)

But I digress.

Here’s a quick look at a handful of the privacy- and data-related sessions that piqued our interest, including two led by our very own Shane Green and Tarik Kurspahic.

We the People: Creating a Consumer’s Bill of Rights

Placecast’s Anne Bezancon and Personal’s Shane Green teamed up to moderate a lively discussion surrounding the need for a Digital Bill of Rights “by the people, for the people”. The proposed rights, which apply to the “sanctity of the digital self,” are now available for public comment on ourdigitalrights.org. We welcome and look forward to your feedback.

Data is the New Oil: Wealth and Wars on the Web

Data experts from Reputation.com and MIT Media Lab explored personal data as a new resource with multi-billion dollar implications for our data-dependent world. To avoid the breakout of a war on data, they said, we need to create and raise awareness of a new user-centric ecosystem around the asset of personal data.

Sex, Lies and Cookies: Web Privacy EXPOSED!

Privacy experts from the FTC, the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, Carnegie Mellon and TechFreedom discussed the central question: “How do we define ‘tracking’ and to what extent is it permissible?” Opinions ranged from staunch opposition to all forms of tracking to the belief that any sort of Internet regulation is impermissible.

The main takeaway? Because it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, to reach a consensus on the definition and acceptability of “tracking”, creating tools that empower individuals to better control and monitor their privacy is all the more essential.

Big Data: Privacy Threat or Business Model?

How can we protect ourselves, without overreacting, in the age of data abundance? Can we trust the market to deliver the appropriate controls and user education, or do we need regulatory intervention? These were the tough questions that representatives of the ACLU, EPIC and CNET debated, with the majority agreeing that more transparency is needed of companies that aggregate and analyze big data.

How to Build Privacy by Design into Web and Mobile

Personal’s Tarik Kurspahic provided insight on building privacy and security into every aspect of a company – and why companies should be motivated to do so, despite the challenges posed for small teams with limited resources. One message that resonated with the audience was that every employee in a Privacy by Design organization needs to think and act like a Chief Privacy and Chief Security Officer.

We encourage you to check out Tarik’s presentation on SlideShare.

Based on the volume of conversations around privacy and data–at SXSW and beyond–we predict that 2012 will increasingly favor companies that 1) adhere to transparent data practices and 2) shift toward a user-centric model that puts individuals in control of their privacy and data.

Theresa

By Theresa Dold in Power Shift

March 22, 2012

The Era of Small Data Begins


This is the first post in a series on the rise of “small data” and the new platforms, tools and rules to empower people with their data. It was written for “The Rise of Big Data” panel at the Stanford Graduate School of Business E-Conference on March 6, 2012.

Big data is big business

More data is created every year or so than has been created in all of human history. In this always-on, always-connected world, where even things are being plugged into the Web, the amount of data is growing exponentially.

The collection, storage, analysis, use and monetization of all that data is called “big data.” Corporations and governments are hyper-focused on becoming big data experts to avoid being permanently left behind. The first movers to master the art and science of big data are already changing the way we live, while disrupting industries and amassing fortunes at speeds never before seen.

Given the stakes, massive investments are being made every year to build the technology and expertise required to succeed in big data, optimized, of course, around the needs of companies and governments, not individuals. Industry experts have likened this big data boom to the early days of “big oil,” and refer to data as the “new oil.” Just as oil was essential to building the modern industrial economy, data has become the lifeblood of the new digital economy.

Companies must learn to compete in big data regardless of their industry, or else face obsolescence. This is a tough challenge and touches all aspects of the operations, strategy and culture of companies. At the same time, opportunities abound as entirely new industries are emerging around data as they did around oil — sourcing, extracting, refining, mining, analyzing, distributing, and selling large sets of data.

Big data creates big problems

With its insatiable appetite for digital bits and bytes on each of us, big data is driving a virtual arms race to capture and exploit information about our every move. Big data will log the life of a child born in 2012 in such a way that the person’s activities will be able to be reconstructed not just by the day, but by the hour or minute. In the hands of bad actors, the potential for wrongdoing with these permanent and growing archives of our lives is real and rightfully concerning.

Yet, until recently, people had virtually no idea of big data’s existence as its tools and marketplaces remained largely hidden. The next generation of tracking and data mining technologies are being created based on the assumption that individuals do not care enough to change their online and mobile behavior, which confuses lack of interest with the current lack of alternatives.

But with privacy and security concerns now front-page news, and the financial triumphs of companies built entirely from personal data such as Facebook, Google and LinkedIn, people are waking up and starting to ask tough questions. While companies and government regulators negotiate over how to curb the most egregious risks and abuses, a new and more powerful model is emerging that is designed around the needs and interests of people, providing them a far better, more sustainable alternative to the status quo.

Enter small data

Small data puts the power and tools of big data into the hands of people. It is based on the assumption that people have a significant long-term competitive advantage over companies and governments at aggregating and curating the best and most complete set of structured, machine-readable data about themselves and their lives – the “golden copy”. With proper tools, protections and incentives, small data allows each person to become the ultimate gatekeeper and beneficiary of their own data.

Built on privacy by design and security by design principles, small data can help people become smarter, healthier, and make better, faster decisions. It can help people discover new experiences more easily, reclaim time in their busy lives, and enjoy deeper, more positive relationships with others.

Small data can also greatly improve the capacity and performance of governments and non-governmental institutions, from eliminating time-consuming forms and other inefficient data practices, to improving public health and education by leveraging the power of more accurate and complete data provided with an individual’s permission. Such institutions can also help share important data with individuals, allowing them to have a copy for their own use.

Applied to commerce, small data holds the promise of connecting people with the best and most relevant products and services in a safe and anonymous environment. It can transform advertising into a more respectful, less disruptive industry that rewards people for their time and engagement with their messages and for their purchases. Small data offers customers the opportunity to better balance and assert their interests with companies (some have called this model Vendor Relationship Management (VRM)). Companies who play by these new rules and earn the trust of individuals will be rewarded with access to rich and robust data otherwise unavailable, giving them instant competitive advantages over companies who choose to go it alone.

The first small data platform – a data vault, private network and apps

Personal has spent over two years designing, building and launching the first scalable small data platform. At its core is a secure data vault to aggregate and store structured and unstructured data from just about any source. A private, personal network sits on top to set permissions for data to enter or exit the vault. People are able to connect with other people through the network, and soon with companies, apps, and private or public institutions, and decide which, if any, of their data they are willing to grant them permission to access.

We have put equal weight on privacy and security, and on helping people leverage their own data in exciting, new ways. These concepts are inextricably linked in small data, which requires a high degree of trust to function properly. Similarly, we have rewritten the legal rules of data ownership to protect and empower users, who we call owners. And, because we know relationships can sometimes end, we have built what we believe is the most complete data portability and deletion capabilities in a data platform. Trust doesn’t work unless you are truly free to leave.

In addition to launching our own apps in the coming months, we are inviting developers to apply for early access to build apps on our platform to show off the power and benefits of small data. Individuals have never imagined the magic of running apps on reusable, structured data about the most important things in their lives, while developers have never assumed having access to such high quality data on which to innovate. The possibilities are limitless.

We are excited to help usher in this new era where permission, transparency and privacy become the norm, and where companies and governments have to align around new rules and provide clear and compelling benefits in order to earn access.

At Personal, we see the future through the lens of small data — and we think it will change everything.

Shane

By Shane Green in Power Shift

March 6, 2012

A Digital Bill of Rights By the People, For the People


The Obama Administration unveiled today its long-awaited framework for online privacy, Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World. The result is a bold and thoughtful step in the right direction, and it will make an impact, regardless of whether Congress acts. It’s another sign that power on the Internet is shifting toward individuals and away from companies.

There’s still much more to do:

1.  In talking about reform and creating a new model, we must put individuals firmly at the center of the framework. This means giving them the tools to drive demand for their valuable data resources to transform the current model into a “user-centric” one. With individuals truly in control – and looking out on the world from their perspective – every other principle and right about privacy falls into place.

2.  While the framework will require companies to re-evaluate their data practices and conform to new standards, what about our government’s obligations in handling our data? The Obama Administration has been impressively forward-looking in this arena – particularly with veterans, education and health record data – but it seems that individuals care as much about what the government knows about them as they do about companies.  We need rules for government, too.

3.  Actual citizens need a seat at the table alongside the privacy advocates, law enforcement representatives, companies and academics that will help establish codes of conduct.  If the framework is being constructed for the benefit of individuals, don’t we deserve a say in the matter, too? Perhaps the final say?

To make the last point a reality, we’re taking matters into our own hands.  In a few weeks at SXSW in Austin, Texas, I will join my friend, Anne Bezancon, founder and CEO of Placecast to create – with other SXSW attendees – a Bill of Rights “by the people, for the people” that we would expect both companies and the government to respect. If you will be attending the conference, please join us for our interactive Sunday afternoon session, We the People: Creating a Consumer’s Bill of Rights. Please also check out the session by our CTO, Tarik Kurspahic, on building a “privacy by design” company.

Shane

By Shane Green in Power Shift

February 23, 2012