Personal data stores
Combatting extractivist principles?
Funded by Innovate UK, we are examining the ethical principles by which personal data storage apps work, and whether their design adequately reflects citizen concerns about control over their data. Our work, by Prof. Andrew McStay, Prof. Vian Bakir and Dr. Alex Laffer, is being fed into a Personal Information Management System (PIMS) being developed by Cufflink, a company based in Anglesey (North Wales, UK).
While interested in new models of how personal data is stored and potentially shared, there is clear scope for use of personal data stores to manage access to biometric data and information about emotional life. A key part of our research into personal data storage services is what these look like applied to “offline” contexts, such as shops, sports stadia, and public health bodies, among others.
Would you be willing to share data from a wearable with academic researchers or retailers? Or, and here’s the big one, would you be willing to sell it? And, if so, to whom, in what context, for how much, and with what assurances? Can they be part of the toolbox to combat “extractivist” approaches to digital life, or are they going to be part of the problem?
Ethically fraught, UK citizens have mixed feelings about storing, sharing and selling, dependent in part with whom they are engaging with.
