The Problem With Too Much Data Privacy

I have a short piece, related to my new book The Equality Machine, and current research - a law review article called the The Law of AI for Good, this week in Time called The Problem With Too Much Data Privacy.

Here is a taste:

Privacy has long dominated our social and legal debates about technology. The Federal Trade Commission and other central regulators aim to strengthen protections against the collection of personal data. Data minimization is the default set in Europe by the GDPR and a new bill before U.S. Congress, The American Data Privacy and Protection Act, similarly seeks to further privacy’s primacy.

Privacy is important when it protects people against harmful surveillance and public disclosure of personal information. But privacy is just one of our democratic society’s many values, and prohibiting safe and equitable data collection can conflict with other equally valuable social goals. While we have always faced difficult choices between competing values—safety, health, access, freedom of expression and equality—advances in technology make it increasingly possible for data to be anonymized and secured to balance individual interests with the public good. Privileging privacy, instead of openly acknowledging the need to balance privacy with fuller and representative data collection, obscures the many ways in which data is a public good. Too much privacy—just like too little privacy—can undermine the ways we can use information for progressive change.