The data dilemma

Courtesy Edward Snowden, we learned that every email we sent, every chat message, phone call, and document shared in the 'cloud' is accessible to intelligence agencies of the United States and allied countries. With the world recently celebrating Data Privacy Day, it has become all the more important to understand how data is helping power innovation, shape user experiences & fuel economies, not to mention raising critical questions about control, consent and security

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The landscape of data, privacy and how personal information is collected and used by organisations is constantly shifting as technology, computational power and societal expectations evolve rapidly.

Every click, transaction, and interaction contributes to the vast reservoir of information that fuels our interconnected world.

Today, we stand on the cusp of a new wave-where the exponential increase in data utilised by Artificial Intelligence (AI) models is set to transform our digital experiences and lead to entirely new digital products and services.

As governments worldwide strive to keep pace with rapid advances in technology and the innovative ways data is both generated and utilised in order to protect citizens' rights, so too are businesses compelled to swiftly adapt their strategies and operational frameworks to adhere to the evolving rules of the game.

Privacy, in the context of digital interactions, is broadly defined as the ability of an individual to understand and control what personal information is being shared, with whom, and for what purposes.

However terse and strict this definition is, in our present digital age, almost certainly it doesn't do justice to the interplay that exists nor to the everchanging conditions that give nuance to the meanings.

Almost 12 years ago, we learned that every email we sent, every chat message, phone call, and document shared in the cloud was accessible to intelligence agencies of the United States and allied countries. This became known after Edward Snowden leaked thousands of documents from the US National Security Agency (NSA) published in some of the world's most important media outlets.

Snowden, an intelligence analyst who worked for the CIA and the NSA, at the beginning of his career considered his work a patriotic duty to defend his country. Eventually, he realised he was part of a secret global surveillance system used to spy even within the country.