Privacy is Freedom
A few months ago, I was able to watch the latest installment to the Bourne action franchise. While the film mostly kept true to the swashbuckling, car-chasing character of the series, one moment of dialogue in particular has stuck with me, perhaps because of its relevance to my work as Chair of the National Privacy Commission.
Being pressured to provide the CIA with access to its users’ data, startup wiz Aaron Kalloor (played by Riz Ahmed,) utters one of the simplest articulations of the value of data privacy. “Privacy is freedom,” he says.
What did the character mean by this? In a world where information is replacing capital as the primary currency for economic movement, your data—the websites you browse, the things you buy with your credit cards, the places your frequent (as logged by Waze or other location services,) your habits, your desires—has become of great value to others. Businesses go to great lengths to obtain collections of these data so they can target their markets more efficiently. Governments have begun to take data gathering more seriously in an attempt to curb criminality. And there exist entities that would use this data to damage reputations or finances for whatever reason, with little thought of the greater implications on the individual.
And so, ultimately, knowing your information is secure, and is accessed and used only by those you have given express permission to, means being able to move about freely, being able to navigate around the world wide web without fearing where your data might end up. It means being to do your shopping or your browsing unafraid of who else might be looking over your shoulder, ready to divulge whatever preferences you may have. Privacy is freedom: It means being able to fully exercise your individual choice, according to what you want or believe.
This is one of the philosophical bedrocks of our works in the National Privacy Commission. Over the coming months and years, we hope to enrich public discourse on data privacy and security. As we were brainstorming how to go about this communications effort, we were able to identify potential obstacles. Data privacy, after all, is barely out of baby steps in our country. Given our status as an emerging economy, and the reputation of data privacy as a “first world concern,” some might think that talk regarding this issue is superfluous. Malayo sa bituka, as we say in Filipino.
This is precisely the thinking that we wish to address. We want to both elevate our understanding of data privacy, and to popularize the many aspects of it that affect our daily lives: From ensuring that your pincodes and credit card information are known only to you, to getting corporations to handle your information securely, to the many other thoughts that will liven the discussion on data privacy as a human right and as a practical matter for the everyday Filipino. After all, privacy is freedom—and how can freedom not be a gut issue?
For feedback, email info@privacy.gov.ph