The secret to gaining access to your most intimate and personal qualities, the ones that make you unique and vulnerable is privacy, when you are experiencing closer proximity with someone you love you offer them the key to your privacy, it involves revealing your vulnerabilities with them. Loved ones may plan a surprise birthday celebration using your birthdate; they may keep track of your preferences to find you the ideal gift, and they may consider your worst fears to protect you from the things that terrify you. However, not everyone will use the information of your private life for your benefit. Your birthday may be used by scammers to pose as you while they commit a crime, or your preferences could be used by businesses to trick you into signing a terrible agreement. Your data could be used by those who don’t have your best interests in mind to pursue their own agendas. Privacy matters because it gives others power over you.
In today’s world, privacy and data protection are crucial considerations, as important as having enough salt to cook, it is to bear in mind the consequences of our interactions and the impact of our actions in the digital space. The advancement of new information technology has boosted people’s capacity for communication and information sharing, promoting democratic involvement and freedom of speech. However, these technological advancements have also made it feasible to conduct large-scale and very simple electronic surveillance and communications interception. Arbitrary communications monitoring puts human rights advocates, whistleblowers, and investigative journalists in danger. These are all crucial components of a free and democratic society.
The right to privacy
While data privacy establishes who has permitted access, data protection concentrates on preventing assets from being used without authorization. Data privacy is mostly a procedural or legal issue, whereas data protection is primarily a technical control. We need both to work together as a proper control mechanism because one does not guarantee the other. The concept of having the right to privacy was initially mentioned by Warren and Brandeis (1890) in their essay in the Harvard Law and Review where they defined this new right as ‘the right to be let alone’.
According to the report on the Right to Privacy in the Digital Age (2014), the right to privacy is more than just the capacity to “be left alone”; rather, it is fundamentally about a person’s ability to grow independently in society and to interact with others in ways that support that growth. The right to privacy and the right to freedom of speech are interconnected since they both make it possible for people to engage in free and democratic society and are mutually dependent on one another. The freedom to choose what to share and with whom is protected by the right to privacy, however, it is necessary for there to be adequate national legislative frameworks in place to guarantee that people are protected from unauthorized or arbitrarily interfering with their lives because of monitoring techniques. However, national legislation is frequently absent, unclear, or out-of-date, making it insufficient to fend off abuses considering the monitoring tactics that technology improvements have made possible.
If it is difficult to maintain the right to privacy in the global north but when speaking about privacy in the global south is even worst, during my podcast on ‘Privacy concerns in humanitarian contexts’ I have showcased with the help of Jorge Galindo, a communications officer with more than ten years of experience in the humanitarian sector, how complicated is to guarantee the right to privacy for vulnerable communities, when he was working on a mission in Nigeria, he explained that dealing with human trafficking victims was a very complex process because they wanted to share their stories to the media to help others not to do their same mistakes. He was representing IOM at that time and wanted to be sure that the right to privacy when speaking to the journalists was going to be respected, what he discovered is that journalists will try to make the victim appears in videos and photos even if the agreement was not to appear. They will use all sorts of techniques to have the best-crafted story to show to the media they represent, even lying about the use of the image and then presenting the image publicly. The fact that the right to privacy can be violated without the subject’s knowledge presents perhaps the biggest obstacle. With other rights, you are aware of the interference being detained, censored, or restrained.
Data breaches and privacy concerns have become more and more common in recent years, making headlines on social media. Institutions, companies and organizations that handle large volumes of sensitive information are suffering from data leaks and privacy issues. Concerns regarding big data’s effects on privacy are growing rapidly. The sheer amount, veracity, and speed of data, as well as the ways in which it may be manipulated with the aim of producing profit, have raised concerns that fundamental safeguards that were formerly taken for granted may be in jeopardy today.
Big Data
Big Data is one of the disruptive technologies of this century due to the very large volume of data emanating from various sectors in the world, the concept was first used in 2005 by Roger Magoulas from O’Reilly Media to describe a variety of huge data sets that are so complex and large that they are nearly impossible to handle and process with conventional data management techniques. It also refers to many kinds of enormous data collections that must be examined on unique computational platforms. It also appeared with a number of challenges, including issues with data collection, storage, processing, and correct display of information. The world has entered the era of big data as more and more industries use it to solve issues ranging from the global economy to societal administration, from scientific research to national security.
According to Efozia et al. (2018), it is a cutting-edge disruptive technology that differs from its competitors in the market in that it is more widely available (in terms of distribution or usability), more affordable (from the customer’s perspective), and employs a business model with structural cost advantages (with respect to existing solutions). The big question is how these enormous amounts of data can be transformed into useful information that will enable decision-makers at all levels of management to make a wise and effective decision.
We certainly live in a complicated, highly connected, and unstable world where we frequently encounter dangers and weaknesses, even more in the digital age. Agility has become the mantra for our lives and big Data analyses can ensure agile and sustainable development approaches in this setting. The Global Pulse Group (Big Data for Development, 2012), serves as a centre for using data science advances to advance global development and address humanitarian issues, it suggested a specific Big Data dimension, namely: Big Data for Development (BD4D). The BD4D technology has the potential to change how we address the challenges of global inequality in healthcare, education, and agriculture. The BD4D is being implemented, but there are also significant technical and ethnic hurdles. Without proper use, these tools may have a negative effect on the practice and research of global inequality, magnifying or even creating discourse that does not reflect the reality of the communities, more the reality of the people with mobile and internet access.
It is critical to understand how data is being collected because a brand-new frontier of inequality will emerge, dividing people into those who know and those who don’t, those who are visible through data and those who are not visible due to lack of access to the digital space. Many people are excluded from the new world of data and information due to factors including prejudice, discrimination, language barriers, poverty, a lack of technological infrastructure, and remoteness (UN Data Revolution Group, 2014). Data has the power to reinforce inequalities in society and most of the digital gap disparities at all levels are indeed a result of social inequality; they tend to follow existing patterns of exclusion along with gender, education, age, access to urban areas and income. The so-called digital revolution has made disparities in data access more obvious and worrisome. The language of universality in the era of big data hides the reality of a world in which data remain scattered, poorly gathered, or not produced at all, these new imaginaries of data contrast with the traditional concept of information poverty (Cinnamon, 2020). The term “information poverty” refers to the condition where people and communities lack the necessary knowledge, capabilities, or resources to effectively access, interpret, and integrate information in a specific setting. Additionally, it is characterized by the absence of crucial data and poor information infrastructure (Cinnamon, 2020).
On the other side, data revolution has also the capacity to be an effective medium for resisting repressive norms, one clear example is gender inequality, an issue affecting girls and women all over the world who experience the majority of the negative effects of rigid gender norms and roles, they are more likely to have their freedom and mobility restricted, they are subject to epidemic levels of violence and harassment, and they have fewer opportunities to decide how to live their lives. When the issues described meet the digital space, the power balance starts to shift and give voice to ones who never had it. Cyberfeminism appears as a “range of theories, debates, and practices about the relationship between gender and digital culture” (Flanagan and Booth 2002, p. 12).
Cyberfeminism
In my previous blog about cyberfeminism, I explained that this movement offers a special alternate place, “a chamber of one’s own,” to declare one’s individuality free from oppressive patriarchal tyranny. The digital space and more precisely social media offer a kind of anonymity linked to the power of community that allows women’s views to be heard, no matter their nationality, skin colour, age or background. Even while the historically feminist movement has been structured in a reticular fashion with nodes and linkages at many levels, the capacity to connect the numerous venues, activities, and resources with unparalleled visibility defines this new sort of rebellion. Now more than ever, it is feasible to adapt offline performances into large-scale campaigns thanks to information and communication technologies. The dissemination of feminist concepts, new perspectives on sexism, and creative modes of protest that have come to characterize the feminist movement of the twenty-first century has a great deal of promise on digital platforms.
The diversity of topics, communication, and information that now surface both online and offline has started to reflect the voice that women get by using the internet. Women and women’s organizations, who have not traditionally enjoyed widespread support, are successfully using the digital space as a platform to be heard, to listen, to be included, and to form coalitions. While embracing technology to increase visibility and reach, women are nevertheless susceptible to an online reaction that may be more destructive than what they encounter in public places. As a society, we are using the new space to our advantage, but there are drawbacks as well, including worries about privacy and security, online bullying and harassment, and toxic anti-feminism. It is crucial to recognize that the current media was founded with the same social, economical and cultural values as our current society, meaning, is it still deeply sexist and racist (Wilding, 1998).
Blogging
Thanks to the blogging exercise I have learned valuable lessons, including time management and working on a synchronized team. Due to some issues with the work that each of us has, time restrictions and planned activities needed to be adapted in the making process, a more extensive discussion of the subjects we wanted to address should have been included in the planning process. A different approach may be to select a group of topics to cover and distribute them around the team before posting. This may have been accomplished while planning our introductions during the first week.
Another important point is how cohesive is the order of the topics shown, it would have been better to give the reader a unified impression from a well-organized flow of posts that are connected to one another, which could have raised the amount of engagement with each post. Regarding engagement, I think that using more media types would have made our postings more interesting. For instance, some entries may have included videos or more pictures. Other posts may have included links to intriguing events on the post’s topic or Tweets from pertinent organizations.
Sources:
Cinnamon, J. (2020). Data inequalities and why they matter for development, Information Technology for Development, 26:2, 214-233, DOI:10.1080/02681102.2019.1650244
Danubiano, M. (2020), Big Data, Catalyst of Sustainable Development, PESD, VOL. 14, no. 1, https://doi.org/10.15551/pesd2020141024
Efozia, N. et al. (2019). Big Data: A Disruptive Technology for Sustainable Development
Flanagan et al. (2002). Reload: Rethinking Women -f- Cyberculture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
Warren, S., & Brandeis, L. (1890). The Right to Privacy. Harvard Law Review, 4, 193-220. https://doi.org/10.2307/1321160
Wilding, F. (1998). Where is the Feminism in Cyberfeminism?. N-Paradoxa, vol. 2.