Evgeny Morozov sees a “disturbing” trend in which “our personal information – rather than money – becomes the chief way in which we pay for services”:
No laws and tools will protect citizens who, inspired by the empowerment fairy tales of Silicon Valley, are rushing to become data entrepreneurs, always on the lookout for new, quicker, more profitable ways to monetize their own data – be it information about their shopping or copies of their genome. These citizens want tools for disclosing their data, not guarding it. Now that every piece of data, no matter how trivial, is also an asset in disguise, they just need to find the right buyer. Or the buyer might find them, offering to create a convenient service paid for by their data – which seems to be Google’s model with Gmail, its e-mail service.
What eludes Mr. Snowden – along with most of his detractors and supporters – is that we might be living through a transformation in how capitalism works, with personal data emerging as an alternative payment regime. The benefits to consumers are already obvious; the potential costs to citizens are not. As markets in personal information proliferate, so do the externalities – with democracy the main victim.
Jane Chong has a more sanguine view of the trend, but says the law is far behind the digital economy:
As Morozov observes, personal data has become part of an alternative payment regime in practice. [But] it is critical to recognize that our legal institutions have not yet evolved to acknowledge this shift. As far as the courts are concerned, consumers are using Facebook and (basic) LinkedIn for free. If we want to be serious about privacy and the broader repercussions of digital capitalism moving forward, we will need to change this cramped legal understanding of what consumers are giving up in exchange for “freebies” – and of what consumers are owed when that exchange turns out to be unconscionable at a macro level.
The Dish 