The promise and problem of Privacy and Cyber Security

As part of the World Law Forum’s Conference on Privacy, Technology and Cyber Security, I focussed on three main issues that strike me as being particularly critical to solve, and to do so sooner, rather retrofit a solution later. My takeaway can be just one point - the future in this space is incredibly exciting but will be here sooner than you think, and as with all technologies of the past we are presented with dual uses. It's up to an informed consumer and electorate to determine how we best interact with them personally, commercially and (inter-)nationally.

Cyber challenges

Firstly, the scale of the cybersecurity challenge - several billion data sets are breached annually with hackers producing 120 million new variants of malware. This is an industry. The challenge will only become greater as 20 billion devices are deployed and connected around the world by 2020 as part of the Internet Of Things. All a potential vector for attack. However, these connections underpin the new era of Industry 4.0 with stunning possibilities for manufacturing and customer benefit as information is passed all along the supply chain. Without embedding cyber security throughout that chain though we may find that the information exchange becomes limited and hence lose the very benefits that can come from this new manufacturing paradigm. 

The (cyber) space race

Secondly and just as excitingly, but also potentially challengingly, is the rise of new commercial space efforts (known as Space 4.0) which provide the communication that underpins Industry 4.0 as well as the stunning level of imagery of our world. The resolution that provides global benefits such as enabling our farmers greater understanding of their farms, to maximise food production while minimising overuse of pesticides or fertiliser, can also be used to learn about your financial status - as shown when Facebook powered the analysis of population distributions in 18 poor counties, crunching through 14.5 billion images in a matter of weeks, determining wealth based on the conditions of their housing. Are there privacy rights to be considered for those individual households? What of drones able to provide close up views of you? When do remote data analytics become an invasion of personal privacy? It's a fascinating area as the potential to do so much good for the world could itself be jeopardised by losing the public licence to undertake such actions as over-regulation creeps in.

Laws are only part of the story

Finally, even if an organisation follows their legal obligations but uses your data in ways you don't approve of, that trust is broken as surely as if they had their cybersecurity compromised. This gets to heart of the issue with Big Data. It removes the potential for anonymity as all the digital breadcrumbs you leave behind tell your story as effectively as you would with an autobiography. Legal protection of your privacy can't specify all the ways in which your information can be combined to learn more about you, so we must look to principle-based legislation that is upheld by accepted standards of commercial behaviour. This conversation must begin now, to ensure the erosion of the norms don't continue further and to make sure that we don't accept standards in cyber space that we wouldn't tolerate in real space.