An EU Parliament call for a charter for users’ control over their data – An awakening towards an icentered digital world
The EU calls for a new charter for users’ control over their data, according to which Internet users should be able to demand that their information is removed from company systems even if it was collected with their consent.
The EU adopted a new strategy called EU2015 that emphasizes the need to implement a charter of citizens’ and consumers’ rights of respecting their privacy, giving them control over their data. This charter:
Emphasises that all EU citizens should be made aware of their basic digital rights and obligations through a European Charter of citizens’ and consumers’ rights in the digital environment; believes that this Charter should consolidate the Community acquis including, in particular, users’ rights relating to the protection of privacy, vulnerable users and digital content as well as guaranteeing adequate interoperability performance; reaffirms that rights in the digital environment should be considered within the overall framework of fundamental rights;
Believes firmly that the protection of privacy constitutes a core value and that all users should have control of their personal data, including the ‘right to be forgotten’; urges the Commission to take account not only of data protection and privacy questions as such, but especially of the specific needs of minors and young adults with respect to these questions; calls on the Commission to submit a proposal for the adaptation of the Data Protection Directive to the current digital environment;
Citizens should be made aware of the privacy impact of their behaviour in an online context, and should be afforded the right to require the removal of personal data even when the data was initially collected with the consent of the data subject. The fight against cybercrime is another significant challenge. The effective enforcement of EU legislation in this field is often obstructed by cross-border legal issues, such as competent jurisdiction or applicable law.
Is this a milestone in the realization that the giants’ wars over our data control, where Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft…. are doing all they can to control our data, as the basis for their business models is abusing us, users, robbing us of our most basic rights?
Is this a wake up call to exert authority to empower the basic rights of our web, in the spirit of Barlow’s declaration of independence and the realization that still today, it is far from being so?
In 2007 there was a wave of voices reclaiming our rights. I want control over my data, web privacy manifesto, Time to write our own rules, but none of them took it to the place of exploring the real meaning of users’ control.
With the advent of the social web, it only seems worse. The debate over the death of privacy and the era of publicy grows as the users’ data are increasingly being manipulated – and the call for an open alternative to social networks like Facebook, as a result of the growing to aversion Facebook’s latest manipulations, is a good example.
The Icentered paradigm takes the Eu’s 2015 initiative to its rightful place – starting out by placing the individual at the center, and claiming natural control. It calls for a new mindset, a fundamental paradigm shift for an active control at the users’ hands.
Icentricity is very much a product of the evolving web’s zeitgeist of the era of the user. I in the center means that I am no longer the “user” as defined by web site owners and digital merchants – I in the center means a truly user centered web.
The time is ripe for new definitions that will better reflect the increasingly central place of users’ controlled web culture.
The Icentered vantage point defies providers’ site centered interests where we find ourselves depending on one-sided privacy and trust management policies of providers. We can choose to agree to these policies, and enter the site – or decline and go away.
These providers use our data as the basis for their business models, as advertising platforms, to target us, invade our social spheres and unwillingly turn us into points of reference and of sales. They use our profiles as glue to ensure user stickiness.
Icentered calls for a new paradigm that puts the user at the center and places me, the individual, as the anchor point, so that whereas to corporate, process and service the world is flat, opportunities are global and digital users are everywhere, to be manipulated for their commercial ends, to me – the digital me, this flat world has a center point – a gravity anchor – it’s a personal I in the middle – for each and every one of us individually.
- It is My web of life
- I am the center of my web, its gravity anchor
- I am a unique individual, a micro universe of one.
- Each of us is an Itom – an individual painted in unique colors, and yet a member in the web’s people grid.
- I have a personal context – My web is personal
- My personal context is the only prism through which I converse with the world
- There is one harmonious me interacting and roaming all across
- I am dynamic - what I deem relevant is transient
- The only one who knows all about me is me
- It is my data – nobody owns me
- I and only I proactively manage my privacy and trust
- I am in the driver’s seat with the reins in my hands
- My web of life is my fortress and the keys are in my hands alone
- On my terms – The web according to me
- It reflects me and is there to serve my needs
- I am at the head of food chains that are all about me
The Icentered paradigm calls for a cleaner, more transparent, trust based digital ecology. Once individuals are recognized as the centers of food chains created around them – corporates will also realize that they are there to serve them, and not they dictate the terms.
