Several approaches to protecting personal data have emerged around the world / David Gray / Reuters

The fourth industrial revolution, the development of new technologies and their impact on our lives have been occupying the minds of the organizers and participants of the World Economic Forum ( WEF ) in Davos for several years now. The issue of data protection and privacy has become a priority, especially after several scandals involving large technology companies (one of which was the acquisition of data from millions of Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica without their knowledge; this data was used to help Donald Trump in his presidential campaign).

In addition, for example, Russia and China require international companies to store the data of their citizens on their territory, as well as provide access to them to law enforcement agencies (for refusing to do this, Roskomnadzor tried to block the operation of the Telegram messenger in 2018).

The issue of protecting private data, its use for economic purposes and regulating access to it was discussed at several WEF sessions. Apple CEO Tim Cook, who had never been there before, was even spotted in Davos. Cook is not on the list of participants, but he was photographed at a dinner next to Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft , and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. He is faced with growing geopolitical challenges facing his company and its neighbors in Silicon Valley, the Financial Times wrote.

They used to say that technology would change everything, but now all you hear is about data protection and threats to national security, said Mark Weinberger, CEO of EY , at a session on geopolitics. Much of it was devoted to working with data. In the final months of last year, shares of leading American technology companies collapsed; Apple, whose market capitalization reached $1.1 trillion, is now worth $728 billion. Now these companies' shares include a discount for stricter regulation, Weinberger explained.

A session on data governance asked whether governments could be trusted to set standards in this area. “People who lived under dictatorships say: I don’t need a ministry of truth,” MEP Marjeta Schacke described the problem. “But is it acceptable for Mark Zuckerberg to be the minister of truth? Facebook and private companies are too much in the business of defining what is and isn’t acceptable [in terms of what can be done with citizens’ data].”

Three approaches

International standards in this area are still perceived as an unattainable goal. The European Union has adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In the US, California has adopted a similar law, and participants in the session on the data economy said that it is impossible to allow uncoordinated laws to be adopted in 50 states – that would be a nightmare.

However, several approaches have emerged in the world. In the US, the topic is mainly discussed by companies insisting on light regulation. In China, centralized control over big data is already in place to a large extent, allowing the government to monitor citizens, and technology giants to rapidly advance in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data analysis, and fifth-generation communications. Both models are not liked by Europeans, whose priority is to protect personal information and the rights of citizens, not consumers.

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It is an illusion to think that privacy can be preserved, said Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund: “Anyone at this session can take our photos and post them [on social networks].” In his opinion, China’s approach gives it an advantage in AI development, while Europe will lag behind in technology development due to its approach. “We [Russia] are closer to the Chinese model. We are realistic that some privacy is important. But in 30-40 years, everything will be in the cloud,” Dmitriev said.

“The technology is only as good as we make it,” countered Jonas Preising, CEO of Manpower, an American human resources services company. “In some regimes you can do whatever you want,” but Western capitalism, he said, had thrived for so long because it valued individuality and the rights of the individual. “What if insurance companies had access to people’s health and disease data? Would the less healthy have to pay higher premiums?” Preising wondered. Was that a fair use of personal data?

The question is what to consider them, Dmitriev retorted. In China, there are companies that determine how good a borrower a person is based on the way they type on their smartphone, what apps they have installed, and other similar factors, and the effectiveness of such forecasts is very high, he gave an example and asked: "Is this the use of private data or not?"

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Who owns the data?

The question of how to determine ownership of information was also discussed by participants in a session on the economics of data, one of whom was an insurer. “The data belongs to the people themselves,” said Brian Duperreault, president and CEO of AIG. “But how is it used? If we, the risk takers, develop an algorithm based on data that we took (whether it was publicly available or we purchased it, it doesn’t matter), that algorithm should be ours. That’s the distinction I make.”

The power of data is in its ability to predict people's behaviour, and it can be used to control them, said Joanna Bryson, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bath in the UK: "And in Europe, which has passed the GDPR, they have decided that a person's data is part of them."

Complicating matters is that tech companies can operate in different countries with different requirements, and the data can be stored on servers all over the world. Andrew Jesse, CEO of Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud services division, explained: “Over the years that we’ve built AWS, different countries have passed different laws about access to information and how to manage it. We always comply with the laws in the countries where we operate, but we are very clear that this data is not the government’s data, it’s the data of our customers and the companies that use our services to store it. That data should be managed by the contract with the customer, not by governments that want access to it for whatever reason.”

“We have laws about other types of property, now it’s time to develop rules for the treatment of this property – data,” Duperreault said. For example, what is the responsibility of the person who stores it, a kind of custodian, he asked Jesse. And how burdensome should such responsibility be, “since there are many bad people who, for various reasons, want to abuse the information they receive, from governments to extortionists”?

In the US, for example, Apple and Amazon are beginning to gain access to people's medical information. In their opinion, its collection and aggregation (in an anonymized form, the companies insist) will allow researchers to conduct such analysis and make discoveries in the field of fighting diseases that were previously impossible. In addition, there is already an application that allows the user to see all the information about their health on the screen of a smartphone and show it to any doctor anywhere in the world. Is it ethical to use such personal data, is it an invasion of privacy, and how protected is such information, experts ask.

Privacy is no longer about anonymity, but notions of it need to be framed within a legal framework, Bryson says. “You have a house, for example, and you expect no one to come into it, and when that happens you turn to the law. And Europe has said that there needs to be a regulatory body, both nationally and transnationally, that you can go to if you suspect that someone has broken into your house – accessed your data – say, if someone is predicting your behaviour and you think that’s unlawful.” She notes that a number of countries are setting up such bodies that would be proactive, making sure things are being done right, but also reactive when people come forward.

Every company is trying to figure out if they can find a way to collect data without offending the public or violating privacy, David Kirkpatrick, founder of Techonomy Media and author of “The Facebook Effect,” said at a dinner on the development of 5G. Blockchain is often mentioned in this regard, he noted. But the infrastructure to support this approach won’t be in place for at least a few years, Kirkpatrick said.

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