In our last post, The Dark Side of the Internet of Everything, we looked at the dark side of the coming age – when the Internet of Everything (IoE) connects us all in a global web – in a more comprehensive way than ever before.

We saw how:

Details of our personal life and business activities are becoming commodities.

Our data is already being bought and sold by data brokers, in the background, without our awareness.

Do you want Rights to your Own Data?

Why is this happening? This intrusion into our personal information is happening because it helps marketers and businesses make money, and because the privacy of data is new area that is not well defined legally. But what if you don’t want all your personal information to be accessible to businesses looking to sell you something or deciding whether to hire you or not? If you feel like you should have the rights to your own data, read on!

Preserving Data Privacy

Perhaps the most advanced initiative to preserve data privacy is ProjectVRM. VRM stands for Vendor Relationship Management, and by “management”, they mean the realization of these goals:

• Preserving Internet freedom and opportunity.
• Change the economic power structure by disabling the privacy-violating business models and practices.
• Putting personal data control in the hands of the individual.

In a humorous description, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, which developed the project, says that,
“ProjectVRM has the immodest ambition of turning business on its head — for its own good, and for everyone else’s as well.”

So now you know that there are some good guys out there who want to preserve your data privacy rights. But even better news is that they are laying the groundwork to make it a reality – via something called the Respect Network.

The Respect Network Can Make it Happen

The Respect Network makes the goals of ProjectVRM feasible by combining two powerful tools:

• Personal Clouds
• A Trust Network

Whoever dreamed we could have our own personal cloud?

It turns out that we really don’t have to depend on huge servers in the sky – run by big businesses – to keep track of and manage our data. We can do it ourselves with a personal “computer in the sky”. Personal clouds are already available through Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) such as Swisscom and The Trusted Cloud Company. These companies are in their infancy – so do your homework before signing up.

Now here is the coolest aspect of a personal cloud; it can also be a platform for apps that share data. But, unlike when you share data via a PC or Smartphone, the data is owned and controlled by you. How exactly does your personal cloud communicate with other personal clouds or business clouds? Via a “trust network” made up of smart, private channels.

In contrast to the existing options that we now use for email and social networks, personal channels can do secure and private data sharing – controlled by us. What a change! While still in its infancy, the trust network called Respect Network is already showing potential to bring about individual data privacy.

The Respect Network will ensure personal data ownership in this manner:

All members agree to the Respect Trust Framework, the groundbreaking legal contract for mutual privacy assurance that won the Privacy Award at the 2011 European Identity Conference. These agreements may be enforced by law, but in most instances, will actually be enforced by a Respect Reputation System, similar to the systems now used at Reddit, Yelp, and eBay.

So, if you want to keep Facebook and Google out of your personal business, check out the Respect Network.

The Vision Behind All the Details

These are the some of the practical details of the data privacy movement. But for an inspiring glimpse of what its really about, and the thought behind them, here’s a quote from Doc Searls. Doc is the author of “The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge” and popular blogger at Harvard’s Center of Information and Technology:

It’s about privacy.
It’s about control.
It’s about taking back what we lost when Industry won the Industrial Revolution.
It’s about fixing a marketplace that has been ruled by giant companies for a hundred and fifty years — even on the Internet, which was designed — literally — to support our independence, our autonomy, our freedom, our liberty, our agency in the world.

Are you concerned about your privacy on the internet? Will you kick Facebook out of your personal life? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!