Digital Identity and Taking Back Our Data - New Directions for Government #3

This article is the third piece in a series of articles based on my February report, "New Directions for Government in the Second Era of the Digital Age: Strategy, Policy, and Action for the Biden-Harris Administration." Over the next several weeks, I will be releasing four more articles highlighting some of the key themes discussed in the 120-page report, which provides a comprehensive framework for a new US digital strategy and policy. If you haven't read the full report, you can do so here.

We’re over two decades into an era of digital feudalism. Under the medieval feudal system, the nobility owned vast amounts of land and could confiscate the crops their serfs grew. Today’s new asset class is data, created by us but captured and monetized by digital overlords—social media companies, search engines, online retailers, governments, and banks. In exchange, we get maybe a few relevant discounts.

We need fundamental change in society’s approach to secure our data and our digital identities. In our view, these are the priorities for government:

1. Cybersecurity of US digital infrastructure is paramount. Russian hackers’ recent cyberattack on the United States was remarkable and unprecedented in its scope, sophistication, and impact. The intrusion must serve as a call for a global, coordinated effort to secure the technology-based supply chains and information systems upon which democratic societies depend.
2. Lawmakers must recognize people’s right to their own data. Citizens primarily leave a data trail as they go about their lives. The data are so granular and multidimensional that they constitute a digital twin of sorts. People should have full custody of their digital twins as they do their bodies and their thoughts—a basic digital human right. Yet no one governs or regulates these data. America should be the first country where citizens own their data, using it to plan their lives, monetizing it, protecting their privacy and data security, and making it available as appropriate for societal reasons, such as health data in a pandemic.
3. Every citizen needs a self-sovereign digital identity. To do this the federal government should take a page from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, and seek viable digital solutions such as Berners-Lee’s Solid technology so that consumers can collect, store, and use their own data on the Web. The government should encourage the numerous efforts underway that use blockchain in protecting identity and utilizing user data confidentially. For example, as individuals recover from COVID-19 and develop verifiable immunity, they could receive a health certification to attach to their digital identity, to prove that they are safe to work in public again. In effect, the digital identity would serve as an immunity passport that expired when immunity expired.

4. Efforts to close the Digital Divide must accelerate. We cannot solve systemic inequality in the economy if we replicate it in cyberspace. When COVID-19 hit, many Americans could access the Internet to do what they needed to do. Yet, too many people lacked and still lack the devices, Internet services, and know-how to keep up. To close this divide, the Biden-Harris administration must prioritize low-cost services and devices and high-speed broadband to connect marginalized communities in urban and rural dead zones. Every school should have digital literacy and cyber safety courses.

5. Lawmakers must regulate the collection, use, storage, and protection of personal data. Companies must stop hoarding user data and return these assets to their owners or migrate the data to distributed storage systems and transfer control to owners. If online sites want to use these data, then they must do so transparently—no decrypting, copying, storing, or associating the data with the user’s identity—in exchange for a clear and desired user benefit.

Imagine having a virtual you, which collects and holds even more detailed and highly personal information and myriad measures of where you are, what you are doing, how you are functioning, and even your mood—a virtual you that gives you rather than Facebook, Amazon, and Google insights into your interests, behavior, and close connections. Now imagine what you could do with those data, perhaps to understand yourself better and improve your life and the lives of your loved ones. This power is within reach, if we reach for it.

Thank you for reading this week's newsletter. I look forward to hearing your comments.

Best regards,

Don

Celebrating by Ted Eytan, 2020, used under CC BY-SA 2.0; Sign with No Drones in Santorini, Greece: Privacy Must Be Protected by Marco Verch, 2020, used under CC BY 2.0; Developer using Laptop and Smartphone by Sora Shimazaki, 2020, used under Pexels license.