Regulated Corporate Data Champions

We’re about to collide into the brick wall that is personal data privacy.

There are several things to work out, but what I find most interesting to think about is the potential solutions and how they form based on incentive structures.

I think it’s obvious that there’s going to be both a government and a corporate component, and here’s a potential way that could play out.

  1. The government says that anyone taking in data will have to secure their data using an approved Data Champion.

  2. A Data Champion is also a consumer product, and they market to consumers as being the best protectors of peoples’ privacy.

  3. Data Champions have to secure data at a given level, as determined by government regulation, but they can of course go beyond that.

  4. The key function that the Data Champion plays is that of ACTIVE ADVOCATE for every customer’s data. So they don’t just protect the data that they have, but they go around the entire internet cleaning, masking, removing, and otherwise improving the safety of that customer’s data everywhere.

The key component here is that they get paid to do this, by the customer, and by the government. So it aligns the business incentives towards privacy, rather than away from it.

And it’s not that it stops data exchange—which won’t work because the internet of things is powered by personal data—but rather that the data exchange will be highly cared for because there will be advocates involved on all sides.

So there will be corporate interests in ensuring that the exact right amount of data is sent, to the correct entity, with the correct protections.

And every consumer has the option of picking a Data Champion from an approved list provided by the government. Like eating at a restaurant that’s allowed to be open by the health department.

Government can’t do privacy by itself. It has to be a corporate solution.

And most corporations won’t protect data as part of their culture because 1), it’s hard, and 2) they worry they’ll make less money.

So this combined solution unifies those weaknesses into a strength, whereby all data is protected by a Corporate Data Champion, which is in turn regulated by the government.

Anyway, not fully fleshed out or anything. Just tossing around ideas for how to deal with this thing that’s coming.

Ideas welcome.

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