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ARTICLE · 24 JULY 2018

Privatizing Personal Identity – Part Five – The Time To Start Is Now

Shepherd and Wedderburn
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In the last in a series of articles, economist Eben Wilson (St Andrews) proposes that the time to seek legislation that privatises personal identity is now.

United KingdomFinance and Banking
Eben Wilson
Eben Wilson
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In the last in a series of articles, economist Eben Wilson (St Andrews) proposes that the time to seek legislation that privatises personal identity is now. This is an opportunity for Scotland to take a lead on the basis that it is a small country with room to explore innovations in law more easily than larger nations.   

The Time to Start is Now

In my previous articles I have explained the economic basis for proposing that private identity data should be defined as a private property. It could then be protected by a new statute in the form of a Privatisation of Personal Identity Act through which all parties using data would be required to contract with Private Identity Banks acting on behalf of individual data owners as agents of its use.  This would create a market in the value of data through which individuals would obtain economic power to control mischief by data aggregators operating intrusive digital platforms.

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