Page 106 - ITU Journal - ICT Discoveries - Volume 1, No. 2, December 2018 - Second special issue on Data for Good

ITU JOURNAL: ICT Discoveries, Vol. 1(2), December 2018

claims to power about their data. Governance shall dignity in at least two ways: first, the linkages make
strive to make individuals data sovereigns. data processing more invasive than ever and result
in an unprecedented degree of transparency of the
One important clarification is immediately in order. individual. Second, these tools are not limited to
Taking sovereignty as a normative reference point capturing, describing, and analyzing us and our
is not the same as approving and demanding activities. Our lives become shaped by them. There
respect of just any claim to power. Compatible with is a spectrum ranging from harmless nudging to
and arguably inherent to the concept of sovereignty potentially more egregious interferences with
is a relational aspect: whether a claim to sovereign decision making and even preference formation.
power is legitimate depends on its content and the The worry is that self-determination and autonomy
relationship between the putative sovereign and come under fire, and that the ideal of data
her claim’s addressees. If arbitrariness or sovereignty becomes unattainable.
unreasonable self-interest drive the claim,
sovereignty turns into despotism. Negotiating 3. BEYOND PRIVACY?
sovereignty and its scope is a discursive process to
be carried out in dialogue with others and society. A variety of definitions of privacy exist. It is one of
the most prominent values invoked against threats
With this in mind, we can distinguish two levels on of overly invasive and manipulative interventions.
which data sovereignty can be impaired. Firstly, the For example, Luciano Floridi describes privacy as a
sovereignty of nation states appears compromised function of informational friction, i.e. “the forces that
by challenges and perplexities of aligning [6] the oppose the flow of information” [11]. The more this
online world (or parts thereof) with national flow is constrained, the less accessible information
legislation. For example, commentators worry that becomes to others.
governments which use cloud computing could
store data outside their jurisdiction and run the risk Privacy could be understood as merely a protective
of compromising national sovereignty by conceding and constraining concept. While acknowledging the
control over information [7]. This is why some importance of privacy in this sense, the normative
authors identify data sovereignty with the ability to reference point of data sovereignty goes beyond it.
geolocate data, to place it within the borders of a On the one hand, data restrictiveness can express
particular nation state [8], and to resolve self-determination, focused on individual rights
uncertainty about which laws apply [9]. exercised in ways that exclude others from one’s
informational sphere. On the other hand, data
Secondly, individuals cease to be data sovereigns if sharing can be the expression of solidarity,
they are unable to articulate or enforce claims to orientation towards claims of others, and
power and/or if they are unaware of the flow of commitment to the common good. Data sovereignty
their personal information, the nature of the data reflects that individual decision making mediates
that is being generated about their lives, who can between restrictiveness and sharing without
access it, the ways in which it is processed, and the categorically privileging either. The notion thus
mechanisms in which such processing feeds back demands that privacy protections are
into their decision making. In the worst case, complemented by controllable methods for
potentially autonomous and reflective subjects are weaving informational ties to others [12].
degraded to mere objects of data flows.
This being said, there is overlap between privacy
In this context, caution is needed against a looming and data sovereignty, e.g., if privacy involves the
granularization of human dignity [10]. Big data "claim of individuals, groups, or institutions, to
tools, algorithms, and neural networks determine for themselves when, how, and to what
continuously recognize patterns and reduce our extent information about them is communicated to
lives to conglomerates of data points, which others" [13], or more generally if it means “control
themselves can be rearranged and set into relation over personal information“ [14]. These notions take
to other fine-grained data sets: linkages unite social the individual as the basic unit of analysis.
media data, shopping behavior, traffic data, health Something similar goes for the Fair Information
records, forensic records, political attitudes, Practice Principles [15] which specify individual
financial transactions, and more. These rights related to accessing, amending, and
developments threaten to compromise human controlling data, and have shaped legislation in the

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