How Blockchain could help us take back control of our privacy

Posted 2021-04-29 英文阅读与翻译

The Cambridge Analytica breaches show the dangers of leaking personal, sensitive data online – but there’s a way to avoid this.

Facebook’s data centre in Prineville, Oregon. The company has suffered a major breach. Photograph: Facebook/EPA 英国《卫报》

按语：Facebook被指控向第三方泄露个人隐私信息，共计5000万人的隐私信息被特朗普雇佣的数据分析公司利用，为其竞选活动做支持。但是现在的区块链技术，将完全有可能解决个人隐私泄露的问题。“去中心化”，每个人的信息单独加密和存储，每次使用时，区块链之间相互通信，不需要密码。

The Cambridge Analytica scandal poses some serious questions about the integrity of democracies in the information age. From Trump to Brexit, the dirty tricks apparently offered by CA’s top executives should cause concern everywhere that elections happen. But the episode is also worrying because of its specific focus: data. We create reams of data every day – every time we open a browser window and every time we make a contactless payment. We do this without thinking. The Cambridge Analytica news demonstrates the power that this data can have when we lose control of it.

Facebook isn’t the only huge data company to have suffered a major breach in recent years. In September it was revealed that 143 million Americans and 44 million Britons had sensitive information stolen from Equifax, the credit rating firm, including home addresses and social security numbers. The kicker in this case was that many of those affected had no idea the company was holding that information in the first place – such is the staggering growth of data creation and collection, and the lack of controls enjoyed by consumers over who gets to keep it.

Clearly, it’s time for a radical rethink about the data we are producing and the processes governing its collection and maintenance. The EU has already gone some way to addressing these questions through the introduction of General Data Protection Regulation, a set of new rules dictating how businesses can handle personal information. But, despite their significant impact on collection practices in even the smallest businesses around Europe, these regulations still fall light years short of the comprehensive change in mindset needed to safeguard our privacy – and, potentially, the integrity of future elections.

Blockchain techniques are already being adopted at local and national levels. Estonia, which has emerged as one of the most forward-thinking, digital-first economies, has gradually moved all of its citizen data onto a distributed ledger system. Illinois is testing a number of blockchain-based systems, including a birth registry. And Singapore is considering moving towards a blockchain system to allow citizens to interact seamlessly with government services. There is significant work being done to shift the focus of blockchain technology away from pure currency speculation towards real world applications – especially around privacy and storage.

Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and Equifax have demonstrated without doubt that our management of data is broken. Blockchain could help us fix it.

• Josh Hall is a writer and editor based between London and Berlin.