The Privacy Tax

In the 1980, privacy was a lot easier to acquire. Banks can harvest information on us, but the limited computer power was a big limiting factor to their analyzing dreams. 

For years Banks have computed the best credit options (for them) to sell to customers. Now the problem is on privacy. Google Plex can crunch a lot of data in a snap, Facebook sells our advertising target profile, and a lot of other companies can predict our ability to pay a loan or our future health for insurance reasons.

Tim Bernars-Lee Solid project try to change this. The idea is to host our data on our “pods” and provide explicit access. But I think this is not the winning direction because by now is very difficult to invert the estabilshed business (but I can be wrong, and I hope so sometimes).

I think there is only one way to get better guarantees on our privacy: we must enforce privacy by law,but without destroying the current Internet business.

So my idea is simple: if someone want my data, it must pay me a fee of $1 every year. So if  Facebook, Google, and my Bank want to store information on me for the next year, I will get a $3 credit. If my insurance want to store my patient history, another dollar will come. If the public system wants to store my data, it must pays, and even for data like my fine or my crimes.

So the dollar flow will show us if we are actively monitored by the big corporation or if it is not.

I think we will be surprised by the result. The money required is only a symbolic way to track down who is collecting data.

Also, if Facebook starts to pay for our data, Facebook will value them a lot more, and will start to protect them a lot better then as before.

It should be possible to create an entire new business of “data protectors” companies. These companies will pay users to collect their data and increase their value, acting like a privacy broker. These companies will be happy to sell our data at the higher price (and not for free, like now) for a small fee in return.

Thrid part data harvesting will be useless because you must pay for collected data. Also anonymizer will be a border-line practice.

For some critical informations (like crime records) the nations will provide a public “backup” to avoid someone destroy its data purposely.

Privacy will be a new money of this world, and monitoring its history will tell us what is going on.