I have nothing to hide...

But don't we destroy very much....

as the information that in an intimate relationship two people give each other as a gift and feeds the meaning of their relationship

on the street?

Privacy Matters!

In 2018, Frank Slisser came up with the idea of organizing a master class on Privacy at the UvA Academy. The underlying motive may be clear: digital technology, with all its advantages, threatens privacy.

People continuously produce all kinds of data about where they are, how they feel, about their bodies, about what they do, who they are with, what they buy, what they find interesting, how their houses look, their cars drive, and so on. In the eyes of a mathematician, these may be data by which people can be quantified, objectified or made transparent, so to speak. It is data that is captured, mostly in the Cloud, never to be deleted again. They are data that, in a connected world, despite safeguards, are sometimes shared faster than you think. They can be used by private parties and governments, with possibly different purposes than the individual, with good or bad intentions, and can be analyzed with statistics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) and used to profile, predict and influence or manipulate people.

Digital technology makes things easier for people, but it also threatens their control over information, who they are, who they have relationships with and who gets access to their environment.

The May 2018 AVG attempts to give private individuals back their control over their personal data and thus over (some of) their privacy.

But the question is to what extent the AVG is effective in this. What are the assumptions on which the AVG is based? Is the assumption that people are motivated and knowledgeable enough to manage their personal data correct? And if not, how does that affect the effectiveness of the law? What can organizations do in formulating, organizing, implementing and monitoring their privacy policies to still respect the privacy of their private relationships in the desired way? Without, by the way, wanting to stop progress. Digital technology is the driving force behind innovation and undoubtedly leads to efficiency, more customization, more convenience and better solutions to problems.

The master class Privacy, the Next Step was developed around these key questions. It has become a multidisciplinary program, highlighting privacy from ethical, socio-psychological, legal, technical and business perspectives.

This executive program is the basis of this book. With this publication, we want to reach a wider audience and get more people thinking. As Timothy Prescott puts it: the online world is still a wild west, in which few rules have yet been formulated about privacy. We need to avoid chaos and (too many) escalations. The challenge is to discover how in this new world, which mixes with the physical, the right to control privacy can be secured in a well-founded way. In a way that fits within our liberal tradition. And that is based on an understanding of the value of privacy for the self-development of the individual and for the relationships it can develop.

As the author of the book, I by no means pretend to be a specialist in all the disciplines from which privacy can be explored. Originally, I am a business economist with a specialization in customer-oriented business (including CRM) and business model innovation. In this book, therefore, I want to highlight no more and no less the insights of a selection of specialists. They will not in all cases be the most famous researchers or experts, but they are philosophers, lawyers, ethical hackers, journalists, communication scientists and marketers, IT professionals, who in their dissertations, scientific or journalistic work know how to address the core themes and have earned their spurs. Here I mention - and thank - Bart van der Sloot and Marjolein Lanzing whose publications I edited. But also Paul Korremans who, as an experienced data protection officer, has shared his experiences with me extensively. And also Verena Wottrich, Joris Demmers, Alexander Singewald and Inge de Ruijter for their research, inspiration and enthusiasm. And finally Frank Slisser, whose idea it was to write this book.

Privacy is a subject that has proponents and opponents. Not to mention, a large group of passives, who are concerned about their privacy but do not show it in their behavior! As a result, the discussion about privacy is rarely objective, but usually colored. An attempt has been made in this book to illuminate the privacy issue from various angles, at least as arguably as possible. Since privacy is under pressure, I cannot avoid highlighting that side of the coin.

The hope I express is that the way we respect the privacy of individuals in a hybrid world will soon become part of our normal actions again. We may not even be aware of it: it fits into our routines, into our manners. We know that you're not supposed to stalk. That it's kind of strange to be lurking on someone's Facebook page. That you don't use data you know you're not supposed to know. That you have to forget and forgive some things. That you have to earn a certain amount of intimacy. We have the common practices embedded in our systems. It no longer requires explicit attention that can go into developing positive mutually valuable relationships with our private stakeholders. The AVG is not seen as a bureaucratic burden.

Ed Peelen

Rotterdam/Amsterdam, September 2020