Your Face Belongs To You by Wael Elazab

EXT. Cornfield, late EVENING. towns people gather, staring at large, ominous light in the sky.

Squinting, the bright light descending, the townspeople collectively gasp as it slows to a hover, 50 or so yards above the fields ahead. A hatch opens, a jetway extends, and a silhouette of a shadow is faintly visible. 

visitor

Greetings, earthlings,

I have come here to chew data and take down blockchain –

and I’m all out of data.

Keen resident

Welcome, greetings,

Allow me to introduce our accountant and head of finance –

let’s talk about that data.

Dazed by the light, and confused by the mention of blockchain, the townspeople aimlessly disperse. All wander off, as the visitor, resident, and accountant hurry toward the hatch, in single file briskly scale the gangway, and one by one dive in.

EXT. Cornfield. Fade to White.

In the land of the faux-free, we are, home to the boiling frog. Some are in the land of the clearly not free, resting ground of the boiled frog.

We’ve so much data. I mean, you and I.

The gratuitous backups, the hdds and ssds c/o usb; the cloud too, extra copies for safe keeping, and so egos are kept safe. There’s data farming, data breaches, data grabs, theft and reappropriation, and more than enough for data sales to to ET. 

It’s hoarded, shapes social norms, defines commercial goals and moulds political agendas.

“Harnessing the power of data,” can boost the UK in every imaginable way, says minister for media and data, John Whittingdale MP, in 2020’s The Future of Citizen Data Systems report by the Govt. Office for Science. Its focus, every citizen’s data. Mine, yours, everybody’s.

Four ways to collect, command and conquer our data, are described in 127 pages. And according to government chief scientific advisor, Patrick Vallance, each approach employs technologies to, “mitigate risks, preserve privacy and protect against misuse of data.” Phew, thank goodness the Tories are on our side.

Being a brown second-generation immigrant Brit, cauterized during my stay at Maggie’s farm (also energised by the enlightening nineties), I’m accustomed to being questioned, and not asked. Sometimes sensing that when asked, you’re really being questioned. Not only brownies, blackies and slitty-eyed; slags, spastics, poofs and chavs too — all fodder. English cismale (hetero or closet homosexual) of the middle class or better? You a’ight.

The oppression of the eighties was reflected in every creative outlet, through the film, television, literature and music of the era, you felt the pain, the disaffection and the animosity toward the ruling class. “They” were out to get you, and not here to help you. 

With those eyes, Prime minister Thatcher and the Tories gave our country a good shake, some would say a bloody nose; they embraced the silicon chip, and their political vision would influence the future of information technology. By the nineties computers were at work, in homes and they were in our hearts and minds, mostly thanks to considerable UK talent and industry.

Data, information, in the eighties was filing cabinets, bad hand-writing and floppy disks. By the end of the decade, if you had a computer, you might have 100mb to play with. You convinced yourself to do the household budget, maybe personal accounts, but in the main, your pre-teen, tween or teen gamed the heck out of it. You wouldn’t have a modem until 1992 at the earliest, so your letters, game progress and so on, stayed on your computer.

And I don’t recall ever once having to put in my name, phone number, address, payment details or anything, bar a three-character nick for the high-score tables. The eighties started us down the silicon slalom, and we blazed through the nineties and set fire the noughties. It was only then, by 2001/2, that the halo around data could be seen.

As I write, news spreads on the latest datagrab, and largest of its kind by some accounts. It concerns your medical history, and access to it, all of it, by the government with the NHS as proxy.

Before more on that, it illustrates why we give, allow, information to be kept by others. Your GP, the practice and possibly any medical professional, may need that history to treat you. We trust our personal information will be safe and secure, while also available if required, i.e. if you seek treatment.

Similarly, a search engine retains activity, to present related content. Shopping websites in the early 2000s displayed book, or DVD titles based on previously bought, or browsed items. Fast forward to 2021, and more consumer detail can be applied. Recently, at Women Tech Leaders, Eva Pascoe, introduced Katy Ray, the head of growth for UK-based marketing agency, Reload Digital, and Rosie Bowden, co-founder and director of the online sustainable fashion outlet, Ro&Zo, to look at the line between – or around – fashion and data. Internet clothing stores could serve you better, the more measurements and preferences they have from you.

However, for high-street fashion, selling standardised prêt à porter clothing via the internet doesn’t work. Too many returns, fickle brand loyalty and labels sizing clothes differently are some of several loose stitches to be tied off. With enough data, supplied by you, a bespoke 3d model can be shared with every online store. The more shoppers signing up for this, the closer you get to never having to return anything, and online fashion retailers will do much better too.

There’s the nutshell.

If you trust your private, personal, and most intimate details, to be held in multiple locations, have faith that all your medical records will be secure at each of these locations, and believe that every access by whomever to your data is for your benefit or the benefit of the greater good … 

… then you won’t mind not being asked. It’s not deemed necessary for you to have a choice, and all your medical records must be handed over by your GP.

Yes, that’s right, the very same political infrastructure, the same party too, that propelled us from mainframes fed with hole-punched cards, home computers with rubber keys, and dial-up modems you have to hear to believe, has delivered us at handheld devices that control an ATV on the moon, fly the spaceship that got it there and have supper ready for when you get back. 

Along that journey, let’s say summer 1999 to summer 2000, freedom of information requests revealed ~1,500 data breaches across multiple government offices.

If trust is about finding your comfort zone, I suggest we all look harder.