Creating my Community¶
Who?¶
So far, in my exploration of data privacy, I’ve engaged with only a few individuals. While I recognize the importance of building a community to foster reflection, I felt it necessary to first converse with professionals or individuals who have been researching this topic for some time to validate my suspicions or ideology. Essentially, I have my own opinion about how I feel under this surveillance, but I wanted to hear from other experts to understand their perspective on the knowledge being observed about us.
Andrea Barbiero¶
2nd of May
Andrea has been deeply immersed in the concept of digital health for quite some time. Her focus has been on establishing ethical data collection practices with consent. In today’s capitalist and multi-crisis world, issues of surveillance and data collection are closely tied to our health, both mental and physical.
My conversation with Andrea primarily aimed to align our ideologies, especially concerning mental health. We discussed how data collected, particularly in the realm of mental health apps, is often exploited unethically. These tools track our happiness or sadness and then capitalize on this information, perpetuating a cycle where algorithms exploit mental health issues for profit.
Together, we addressed the implications of surveillance and data privacy on our health and sought to establish ethical boundaries to prevent exploitation by these systems. Andrea is committed to halting these harmful algorithms and improving both physical and mental health in the digital realm. She advocates for protecting society from privacy abuses and promotes ethical, consensual data sharing.
Ultimately, Andrea emphasized that few people are fully aware of the extent of data collection and its implications. Her top priority is to raise awareness and educate people about these issues, striving to ensure that data collection serves the collective good without being used against individuals.
Learn more about Andrea and her practice.
The Glass Room¶
26nd of April
The second community I reached out to was The Glassroom, a company that has been creating exhibitions for almost 10 years with the aim of raising awareness about data protection. They are a very open community, with much of their projects and activities documented online. I contacted them to inquire about sharing their posters, information, and contacts related to data privacy for exhibition at MTFest. Currently, I am still in contact with them, and they are enthusiastic about the prospect of collaborating to build a community advocating for people’s data privacy and bringing visibility to this important issue.
Learn more about The Glassroom.
Saúl Baeza¶
April/May
Finally, I’ve also been in touch with Saúl Baeza, who has been a key figure in most of my interventions and whom I consider a reference in terms of action against surveillance. Over the past two months, I’ve discussed with him various tools and concepts, as he has been researching this topic for five years. He has helped me solidify my knowledge base and guided me on how to approach my critique and address it. While Saúl is more focused on taking action against surveillance, my current priority is to foster reflection on the topic and then attempt to generate and utilize these surveillance tools for the common good.
Next Steps¶
Right now, I could reach out to more people who are still researching this topic, but my priority is to finalize my exploration and try to educate people about the concept of data privacy. From now on, I would like to start interventions in small communities, most likely people close to me who are more open to discussing the data they share and the kind of knowledge they would like to create. This way, I can play with their private information with confidence and consent. Basically, what I want is in this next month, if possible and if I have the time, to build a small community that can give me feedback on all my reflections so far and help me answer questions on how to generate positive knowledge from these databases and what surveillance tools we could use to create something useful for society.