Will the many “General Data Protection Regulation” profiteers help or stand in the way of a better future for our grandchildren?

Sir, Richard Waters writes that “Europe’s new online privacy regime is a gravy train for lawyers and consultants, and it has kept IT departments and compliance officers working late for months [and] it is likely to take an onslaught…from privacy activists” “Brussels forces online reckoning by setting high bar on privacy” May 25.

That raises a question: Will that mean a better future for my grandchildren, or will it just extract value from what has been developed, making what’s to be developed more distant and expensive?

Waters also writes: “One Silicon Valley figure argues: if users were able to capitalise the future value of personal data like this that they will throw off over a lifetime, it would turn out to be one of their most valuable assets”. I have argued a similat the thing with letters sent to FT… but I have also indicated the possibility that all the web and social media added monetary value, could be used to fund a Universal Basic Income, a sort of Human Heritage Dividend.

Personally, scared of some “Big Brother Is Watching You” joint ventures between data gatherers and goverments coming into fruition, I prefer allowing development to run its full course to see where it takes us. 

Sir, I just do not feel sure enough about taking development limiting decisions on behalf of my grandchildren. Do you? 

https://teawithft.blogspot.se/2015/09/ad-blockers-do-not-allow-any.html

PS. If social media is to be fined, then have all the fines help to fund Universal Basic Income schemes. What we absolutely do not need, is to have social media (ambulance) chasers, redistribution profiteers, like a European Commission, or similar, capturing these.

@PerKurowski

If government monopoly profiteers de-cash society, in order to impose negative interests, is that not also a crime?

Sir, Kenneth Rogoff writes:“[In] advanced economies, the idea of recalibrating the use of cash is an entirely reasonable one. While paper currency has many virtues that will continue into the distant future (including privacy…) the vast bulk is held in large denomination notes such as the US $100 and the €500 that have little significance in most retail transactions. A broad array of evidence suggests that high-denomination notes… mainly serve to facilitate tax evasion and crime.” “India’s cash bonfire is too much, too soon” December 10.

I have two questions: 

First: Is not the US $100 and the €500 the most effective tools for privacy?

Second: Is not cash, one of the last resources you could use to defend yourself against negative interests?

In future presidential electoral debates anywhere, a citizens obligatory question could be: "Sir, do you want to screw us getting rid of cash, so as to make it easier for you to pay off government debts with negative interests?"

@PerKurowski

If erasing, Google must be sure it is duly authorized to do so, and should keep a public record on the erasers

Sir in principle I agree with John Gapper in that “People do not have the right to erase the web’s memory” May 15. That said, thinking on my own youth, and though I do not remember all my doings very well, I guess there might have been occasions when I was lucky these were not memorized by a web, and so I guess my grandchildren should have the same right.

What I am more concerned about is the possibility that someone else instructs Google or someone in Google takes it upon himself, to erase without authorization one of my memories causing me to suffer from web Alzheimer. And in this respect, were the erasing to start, then Google needs to make sure the erasing is authorized and keep a public record of all erasing going on preferably with an identification of what was erased, a photo or something else. At least in this case John Gapper could have seen that his developer was hiding something. 

And what if there is a photo of two and one wants it erased and the other dearly wants to hang on to the memory?

A not so transparent someone else’s life

Sir in “A transparent life” July 7 you mention that “privacy is so last century” and comment about how the new internet technologies risk us losing our privacy. That may well be so but simultaneously you just need to go to any of the millions of web based discussion forums to notice that very few speak in their own name but hide out behind strange pseudonyms and avatars. I myself have opted for always using my own name, as the best way to assure I will never forget who I am and start talking in someone else’s name. And so, while we definitely must help to assure the right to privacy for the right private person we also need to simultaneously deal with the multi-personality disorders created on the web.

In search of answers on search engines

Sir, the discussion around Google issues as in Denise Kingsmill’s “Google’s market power warrants an inquiry” June 13 and Maija Palmer’s FT front page report that same date with respect to the “European fight over storage of personal data” naturally befuddles many of us.

Clearly a search engine should mostly be valued in terms of the services it offers to the searchers but in this case it is actually the searchers that become the searched and this leads to some very strange signalling effects. In fact I would not mind if Google was allotted, by the system, to perform a maximum of free searches, let us say 20 per cent of all the searches on the web during the last 24 hours, and thereafter, in order for a Google search to be allowed, a searcher would have to demonstrate Google’s search worth, by being willing to pay a substantial amount to Google for their service.

Also, with respect to privacy issues, we suddenly read about a possible compromise that would have Google cookies expire after only 18 months instead of 30 years, as if privacy had anything to do with time. On the contrary, if privacy was indeed the case, then one would perhaps be able argue that it is only after 30 years that Google could be allowed to use any personal data.

PS. We might need a Global Web Constitution