消费者有权拿回自己的数据

The boss of Telefónica put forward an interesting proposal at a recent breakfast at the Financial Times’ offices in London. Customers, José María álvarez-Pallete suggested, should have control of their own data. They should be able to see how their data are used, and they should be able to take it with them on leaving the service provider.

在英国《金融时报》伦敦办公室最近的一次早餐会上，西班牙电信(Telefónica)老板何塞?玛丽亚?阿尔瓦雷斯-帕莱特(José María álvarez-Pallete)提出了一个有趣的建议。他建议，客户应对自己的数据有控制权。他们应该能看到他们的数据是如何被利用的，他们还应可以在离开服务供应商时把这些数据带走。

Mr álvarez-Pallete’s suggestion was not casual. Telefónica is working on a platform, called Aura, a personal data space that would hold all the interactions that a customer had with the company. If the customer wanted, for example, to show their telephone payment schedule to a credit scoring company, they would be able to do so.

阿尔瓦雷斯-帕莱特的建议并不是随随便便提出的。西班牙电信正致力于一个名为“Aura”的个人数据空间平台，将控制客户与该公司之间的所有互动数据。例如，如果客户希望向信用评分公司出示他们的电话账单记录，他们就能这么做。

To the journalists present, the proposal seemed radical. Why would Telefónica want to give our precious data back to us? We have become accustomed to treat as totally normal the idea that data gatherers — whether a telecoms company, a social media platform such as Facebook or a utility like an electricity provider — have first dibs on our information: what we do, how much we spend, where we go, what we watch, the food we eat, what music we like or the state of our health. In the UK, this has been most recently, and glaringly, manifested by news that a National Health Service trust handed over data on 1.6m patients to DeepMind, the artificial intelligence arm of Google, a decision that the regulator says “failed to comply with data protection law”.

对于与会的记者而言，这个提议显得有些激进。西班牙电信为何希望把我们宝贵的数据还给我们？我们习惯了视如下看法为再平常不过：数据收集者（不管是电信公司、Facebook等社交媒体平台还是类似电力供应商的公用事业单位）对于我们的信息有优先权：我们是做什么的、我们花了多少钱、我们去了哪里、我们看什么、我们吃什么、我们喜欢哪种音乐、我们的健康状况。在英国，最近这一点得到了清楚的展示，有消息称，英国国民健康服务(National Health Service)的一个信托把160万患者的信息交给了谷歌(Google)旗下的人工智能公司DeepMind，监管机构表示，这一决定“未能遵守数据保护法”。

We have little idea what personal data companies own about us, what they do with it, or where they store it. This does not just raise issues about privacy, but also security. It is also profoundly disempowering. Most people believe they should have as much control as possible of their intellectual property or their physical selves. So why should someone else own our data?

我们不清楚公司拥有关于我们的什么个人数据、它们用这些数据干什么以及它们把数据存放在哪里。这不仅仅提出了有关隐私的问题，还有安全问题。这也严重削弱了我们的权利。多数人认为，他们对于自己的知识产权或身体状况应拥有尽可能多的控制权。那么其他人凭什么拥有我们的数据？

There are, of course, good reasons why companies would resist handing back control. Customers’ data provides valuable information, which can be used to make those customers more profitable. Whether it is targeted advertising, or a customised news feed, our data are manipulated to keep us loyal to service providers or to tempt us to spend money.

当然，公司反对交回控制权有着充分的理由。客户数据提供了有价值的信息，可以用来让这些客户带来更多利润。不管是定向广告还是定制消息推送，我们的数据被人操纵，好让我们忠诚于服务供应商或者引诱我们花钱。

Dictating our preferences in this way, though, is something we should consider resisting. It is comfortable, but dangerous, to be fed music we already like, or news that we want to read. It would be better, perhaps, if we could tell companies our preferences, broadening our interest and knowledge rather than forever narrowing it.

然而，用这种方法来支配我们的喜好是我们应考虑抵制的。被推送我们已经喜欢的音乐或者我们希望阅读的资讯，这很舒服，但很危险。或许，更好的方式是我们告诉公司我们的偏好，拓展我们的兴趣和知识，而不是永远在缩窄。

And for many companies, the personal nature of customer data is not necessarily its most useful quality. Once anonymised and aggregated, data cannot be attributed back to specific individuals, but can still be used by the companies who gather it to hone or develop products and services that respond to customers’ wants.

对于很多公司而言，客户数据的个人性质不一定是最有用的一点。一旦匿名和汇总，数据无法指向具体的个人，但对收集数据以改善或开发产品和服务以回应客户需求的公司仍然有用。

This could provide a possible pathway to future data control that pleases everyone. Several organisations, like CitizenMe or People.io, are working on private accounts that allow individuals or organisations to keep their own data in one place and choose when to share the information with others. The catchily named Hub of All Things, set up a few years ago by academics in the UK, means your personal data can be kept within a database over which you have full control. In future, you will be able to use a HAT to store your words, photos, locations, music and financial transactions — in short, your digital self — and exchange as much, or as little, of this self as you want. Your bank, for example, could be given permission to access your HAT, and to aggregate your data, once anonymised, with others for its own purposes.

这为未来实现让所有人满意的数据控制提供了可能的途径。CitizenMe和People.io等数家机构正在开发私人账户，让个人或组织可以将自己的数据保存在某处，并选择什么时候与他人分享。这种数年前被英国学者创建、名字很吸引人的“万物中心”（Hub of All Things，简称HAT），意味着你的个人数据可以保存在一个你能够完全控制的数据库里。在未来，你将能够使用HAT存储你的文字、相片、位置、音乐和金融交易——简言之数字化的自己——并按照自己心意分享或详或简的数据。例如，你的银行可能获准进入你的HAT，并出于其自身目的将你的匿名后的数据与他人数据汇总。

New regulation coming down the road should give a boost to projects like the HAT. In Europe, the (less catchily named) General Data Protection Regulation, as well as proposed new ePrivacy legislation, will mean companies have to be much more transparent about what personal data they hold on their customers or users, and what they do with it. This provides a new opportunity for us to take back control.

即将出台的新法规应该会推动HAT等项目。在欧洲，（名字不怎么吸引人的）《一般数据保护条例》(General Data Protection Regulation)，以及拟议的新的电子隐私法，将意味着公司不得不更加公开其持有的客户或用户的个人数据，以及它们用这些数据干什么。这为我们拿回控制权提供了新的机会。

This very opportunity, though, highlights the reasons why it may not be grasped. It is telling that a Google search for “why we should own our data” auto-corrects the search to “why we should own your data”. While customers get outraged when data breaches — at say, TalkTalk or Verizon — seem to hand access to their information to hackers, they are supine when it comes to its original surrender. All of us click on the “Accept terms and conditions” button without the bore of reading them through. There is little push, anywhere in the world, by individuals to demand companies hand them back their personal information. No wonder, then, that Telefónica is relatively unusual in proposing such a step.

然而，这个机会本身又突显出为何人们可能抓不住它。非常说明问题的是，谷歌一份关于“为何我们应该拥有我们自己的数据”的研究，自动更正为“为何我们应该拥有你们的数据”。尽管消费者愤怒于TalkTalk或Verizon等机构的数据泄露似乎让黑客获得了他们信息，但他们在最初交出自己的数据时却毫不反抗。我们所有人在没有通篇阅读的情况下就点击了“接受条款”按钮。无论在世界上任何地方，个人都没有做什么努力来要求公司将个人信息交还。难怪西班牙电信提议此类措施显得相对罕见。

We are the first generation of people to give our information freely and in bulk to almost anyone who asks for it. We have allowed ourselves to be infantilised by the technology. Future users will hopefully be the adults.

我们是向几乎所有管我们要信息的人随意提供大量信息的第一代人。我们任由技术把我们婴儿化。未来的用户有望成熟起来。

The co-founder of the Hub of All Things, Professor Irene Ng, believes we are the “lost generation” — in the sense that our data, handed over casually in return for new services that we desire, are lost to us forever. But for future generations it is not too late to take responsibility and take it back.

HAT的联合创始人Irene Ng教授认为，我们是“失去的一代人”——我们随意交出数据来换取自己想要的新服务，但这些数据对我们来说是永远失去了。但对未来的几代人来说，承担起责任并拿回数据还不算太晚。