Given the transition to a digital  economy where data is the currency, how do individuals maintain sovereign rights to their data?  Ethical considerations regarding data often focus on issues of privacy.  What are our rights to keeping certain information private and how do we control how it is shared?  As individuals, we lack clarity around how to access, organize, and share data.  Without clarity, how do we prevent unintended consequences to society. Technology is evolving faster than the standards and regulation required for transparency and societal protections can keep pace.

There is a fundamental need for people to have the right to provide informed consent define access with respect to the use of their personal data (as they do in the physical world).  Individuals require mechanisms to help curate their unique identity and personal data in conjunction with policies and practices which make them explicitly aware of consequences resulting from the bundling or resale of their personal information and life experiences.

To ensure individual’s sovereign right to their data, organizations and governments need to rethink the nature of standards and human rights in the physical world and apply it to the digital world. While some standards exist such as European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), USA’s Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA), and many other in development with various governing bodies worldwide, it’s still not largely understood how human agency, emotion, and the legal issues regarding identity will be affected on a large scale by society as the use of Autonomous and Intelligent systems becomes widespread.

Fundamental to this discussion is establishing an understanding of the various perspectives individuals, organizations and governments have on this matter.  These include Digital Personas, Regional Jurisdiction, Agency and Control, 4. Transparency and Access, and Symmetry and Consent.

For more info on this topic, please refer to IEEE’s discussion on “Personal Data and Individual Access Control“.