Data Democracy
Data Citizenship
Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, the hack on shipping giant Mærsk in 2017, and the leaking of Danish NemID passwords, attention to data security and what this means for our security as citizens has grown exponentially. “Surveillance capitalism” (2019), a term coined by Harvard business school professor Shoshanna Zuboff, has made impasses into our everyday language, giving us a vocabulary to begin to formulate our concerns about what it means to be tracked through our digital devices and for analyses of that data to be repackaged into marketing products; to turn everything about our digital lives into commodities. In this sense, we are not just citizens but also “data citizens” (Taylor 2017). The data we generate leaves a kind of “trail” and because decisions can be made about our lives based on this data, we could say that we have a “data double” (Blok et al 2017).
How are we protected?
Policy and law offer some frameworks for what counts as best practice and for what is legal. Cryptography offers a different kind of defense that can limit the abuses that happen despite policy and law, but it can also provide cover for illegal activities.
In a datafied society, much work is needed to maintain democratic principles, more awareness about the work of data and cryptographic techniques among citizens is crucial, as is awareness about how relations of trust shift with the introduction of digital devices and data-driven systems (Bruun et al. 2020).
“Computer Science educations have been quite slow to adopt any formal ethics component. Even the students are demanding this.”
-university cryptographer
We need many perspectives
Cryptic Commons grows out of the understanding that in order to face the challenge of re-imagining our democracy as a data democracy, we need many perspectives. No individual academic discipline can solve a societal problem, nor can any single politi–cal party, nor a singular segment of citizens nor a single individual. We need to do this together.
To learn more about data democracy, we recommend that you read “The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work” (2015), by Phillip Rogaway
“We’re very aware that in most cases you don’t need Secure Multiparty Computation (MPC). You can use existing real world trust relationships to solve your problem.”
-applied cryptographer
On Surveillance Capitalism:
“This new market form declares that serving the genuine needs of people is less lucrative, and therefore less important, than selling predictions of their behavior.”
Shoshana Zuboff (2019)
Help us build the Cryptic Commons
With all the data that’s generated about our lives and circulated, we’re going to need more advanced cryptography techniques. Who will decide which technologies will be developed and used?
Can we expect our politicians to educate themselves on the matter – or should we? You and me?
Data Democracy
Data Citizenship
Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, the hack on shipping giant Mærsk in 2017, and the leaking of Danish NemID passwords, attention to data security and what this means for our security as citizens has grown exponentially. “Surveillance capitalism” (2019), a term coined by Harvard business school professor Shoshanna Zuboff, has made impasses into our everyday language, giving us a vocabulary to begin to formulate our concerns about what it means to be tracked through our digital devices and for analyses of that data to be repackaged into marketing products; to turn everything about our digital lives into commodities. In this sense, we are not just citizens but also “data citizens” (Taylor 2017). The data we generate leaves a kind of “trail” and because decisions can be made about our lives based on this data, we could say that we have a “data double” (Blok et al 2017).
How are we protected?
Policy and law offer some frameworks for what counts as best practice and for what is legal. Cryptography offers a different kind of defense that can limit the abuses that happen despite policy and law, but it can also provide cover for illegal activities.
In a datafied society, much work is needed to maintain democratic principles, more awareness about the work of data and cryptographic techniques among citizens is crucial, as is awareness about how relations of trust shift with the introduction of digital devices and data-driven systems (Bruun et al. 2020).
“Computer Science educations have been quite slow to adopt any formal ethics component. Even the students are demanding this.”
-university cryptographer
We need many perspectives
Cryptic Commons grows out of the understanding that in order to face the challenge of re-imagining our democracy as a data democracy, we need many perspectives. No individual academic discipline can solve a societal problem, nor can any single politi–cal party, nor a singular segment of citizens nor a single individual. We need to do this together.
To learn more about data democracy, we recommend that you read “The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work” (2015), by Phillip Rogaway
“We’re very aware that in most cases you don’t need Secure Multiparty Computation (MPC). You can use existing real world trust relationships to solve your problem.”
-applied cryptographer
On Surveillance Capitalism:
“This new market form declares that serving the genuine needs of people is less lucrative, and therefore less important, than selling predictions of their behavior.”
Shoshana Zuboff (2019)
Help us build the Cryptic Commons
With all the data that’s generated about our lives and circulated, we’re going to need more advanced cryptography techniques. Who will decide which technologies will be developed and used?
Can we expect our politicians to educate themselves on the matter – or should we? You and me?