Self-surveillance privacy & the Personal Data Guardian

Abstract

We often see the government or the corporation as the greatest threat to information privacy. But due to a nascent data practice called “self-surveillance,” the greatest threat may actually come from ourselves. Using various existing and emerging technologies, such as GPS-enabled smartphones, we are beginning voluntarily to measure ourselves in granular detail - how long we sleep, where we go, what we breathe, what we eat, how we spend our time. And we are storing these data casually in the “cloud,” and giving third-parties broad access. This practice of self-surveillance will decrease information privacy in troubling ways. To counter this trend, we recommend the creation of the Personal Data Guardian, a new professional who manages Personal Data Vaults, which are repositories for self-surveillance data.