 Great, and we're live and I'm with Elizabeth Renaris right now for the breakout session exploring legal frameworks that should apply to our identity, like as humans, as people, and our most intimate personal data. So we've got one viewer so far and three, okay so I know there's people who are just logging in now, why don't we give them two or three minutes to log in and a little something I'm going to do is screen share, hold on, before I do that let me make sure I know what I'm doing, competing legal frameworks, boom, make sure we're broadcasting, I think that we are, yes we are, okay awesome, okay so I'm going to do a quick screen share so everybody knows what's going on and then why don't we get started Elizabeth as soon as I'm done with that, so hopefully my screen is sharing, I think that it is, so won't you please join us on the agenda page for this IAP class just by clicking agenda at the top of our GitHub repo, that's right this is what we're talking about, and then scroll down to the breakout group on competing legal frameworks for humanity, i.e. our digital identity in the data-driven age, if you click on that you'll see we'll get the live stream at the top of the page and then go ahead and provide your questions and comments and ideas in this embedded pigeonhole which is just underneath the live stream and I'll keep track of that for Elizabeth as she leads us through this session and kind of be the voice of the people as best as I can be, so with that I just want to say how thrilled we are to have you back virtually but in a very real way at the MIT Media Lab and then hacking the law along with us again Elizabeth, so welcome home to a place you're always welcome and thanks for bringing up this great way to look at the legal frameworks that should apply to our digital identity and our personal data, you know is everything property, is everything for sale, are we for sale, or is there a better way, what are the alternatives, so thank you and take it away, could you actually let people know a little bit about who you are, a little bit of introduction would be helpful and then and then please talk us through the session and I'll help and I'll just be verbally letting you know from time to time is there's questions and comments or if you want to pause from time to time and ask about questions and comments that would be great and just allow for like a 30 second to a minute lag for me to collect them, sound good? Sounds great. Okay thanks Elizabeth, your show. Thanks Dazza and thank you so much for having me, it's a real pleasure to be back, obviously a lot happens since the last legal forum and so we'll get into some of that, but as a reminder I am a data privacy lawyer, I've been practicing on three different continents for nearly a decade now on data protection and privacy issues, focused very much on the intersection of those issues with emerging technologies and for the last three and a half to four years very much focused on blockchain distributed ledger technologies, artificial intelligence and machine learning and now of course all of these issues around data protection and privacy are converging with those emerging technologies and their use in governance so I've developed sort of this niche interest in the intersection of all of those things and I think the legal forum at the Media Lab is the perfect place to explore this because of course it's bringing together the law and the technology in that really meaningful way so it's a real pleasure to be here, at the moment I am serving as Global Policy Council of an identity startup known as called Evernim which is known for this vision of something called self-sovereign identity which we can dive into a bit but the first thing I wanted to talk about before we dive into the subject which is competing legal frameworks for humanity in the data-driven age is this notion as you mentioned of our identity and what is the connection between our identity and data because what's happening now is that often in a conversation around data so whether it's you know a panel and a conference or an article about identity or a new blockchain project for identity management the conversation quickly turns into a conversation about data without anyone ever really stepping back to articulate you know why why do we go from talking about identity to talking about data and we actually sort of lose sight of the identity conversation so I think something important to understand is that you know data is increasingly becoming a proxy for expressions of our identity for expressions of who we are what we do you know what we think and feel our preferences the way we relate to ourselves and to the world around us our commercial power and activity so this digitization of everything turning everything into data into you know binary information zeros and ones is is relevant in identity conversation because we are doing more digitally we are doing more connectedly not just online but offline of course so our offline or sort of you know so called real world experiences are increasingly being turned into data as well because everything now has this sort of smart capability with sensors attached and everything that we do both online and offline is is aggregating and collecting all of this data about us and creating all of these data points about how we live our lives and how we go about you know every every second of our day so I think we're all aware of this increasing you know digitization the digitization of everything and there's certainly been a lot of really high-profile works and research that have come about to explore this phenomenon some of some of these I recommended in the course page so you know two really notable books that have influenced my thinking on this topic recently are Victor Meyer Schoenberg's reinventing capitalism in the age of big data and the fundamental premise of that book is that we're replacing this idea of financial capitalism of money-based capitalism that makes the world go around with a notion of data capitalism where data becomes this new capitalist mechanism becomes the new driver for the global economy and underpins all of our commercial interactions now we want to impact that of course in this in the context of these competing frameworks and the validity of that premise but the fact of the phenomenon occurring is a little bit hard to to deny so that's the first work that frames my thinking on this the second is has just come out in the last week is a book by Shoshana Zuboff called the age of surveillance capitalism and the age of surveillance capitalism is incredibly interesting in fact the subtitle is even more interesting the subtitle is the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power and so what Shoshana Zuboff explores in this book is this idea that our human experience itself is becoming the raw material that's driving the commercialization and exploit commercial exploitation of our experience by corporates by firms that have actually distorted the free market mechanics that we rely upon to sort of protect our rights so two very important books you know on this topic as I said they're framing my thinking but both are really approaching things from either an economic you know commercial perspective and we haven't seen a deep dive exploration of how do we respond to this phenomenon how do we respond to these new economic commercial realities from a legal point of view and should we respond from a legal point of view and what should the relevant legal frameworks be so that's really the heart of this session you know is to think about as we move into this digital future as we ourselves you know whether it's embedding actual sensors in our bodies or turning ourselves into sort of extended you know enhanced individuals with AI capabilities and you know robotic features and perhaps smart limbs as we're in ourselves becoming data up until the point that we are you know we are no longer human right to the extent that there is a degree of humanity left in us what should the correct framework be legal framework be around the data that the experience of being human is creating so you know that's the extremely high level overarching problem that we want to address and really what I would like in this session and I you know unfortunately does I can't see how many participants we have at the moment but as we go through this I want to start thinking about the principles that are going to guide us in trying to develop a framework or a you know a number of frameworks um for addressing this issue from a legal perspective so I'm sorry about that I just want to leave the we've got like three concurrent sessions going on at the same time this teeny tiny little room in the media lab so come with me come with me around the corner to the here we go to the bitcoin vending machine a cool hack from one of his one of our cool students anyhow I'm viewing here and we've got a little bit of stock channel chatter and telegram which I'll look at in a moment but it's unlike a different device so let's see what we have in the pigeonhole okay um here's here's one question um what if both property and human rights uh what's it say um what if both property and human rights law applied to the same data at the same time but they would but the but they but create different requirements or legal results how is it how is this dealt with or managed um I think that makes sense does that question make sense to you I think so and I think that um you know we don't necessarily we're not necessarily driving in the direction of you know there is one exclusive framework that will apply in all circumstances under all circumstances in all situations I think one of the the fundamentally different things about digital versions uh of real-world experiences or digital analogs digital twins if you will is that data is highly contextual it's highly dynamic and really can't be evaluated or assessed in a vacuum so you know there are things and and this is true in the real world as well right so we've again Daza we've had the conversation example around you know personal effects or uh belongings that you know might have certain property rights that attach but also have certain rights um fourth amendment protections or privacy rights that attach um at the same time but they apply in different ways and they don't preclude one uh or the other from being true so I think what we the the reason part of the reason for this session is to raise awareness around what we lose right if we only go for example with a property-based approach and the risk is that we lose exactly to this question um fundamental rights whether they're human rights civil rights constitutional rights uh dignitary moral rights we we lose we risk losing sight of all those other important rights that attach to things that may very well be property like or even property um and what we see in the rhetoric you know particularly from large corporates and commercial entities you know when when Mark Zuckerberg starts talking about you know you own your data you know we know there's a problem with that framework and that there's a catch right so what we're trying to avoid is this kind of um overly simplistic thinking about data because of its nature which is so uh amorphous and dynamic and contextual so it's a really brilliant question and I think one of the things we can work towards in this session is um perhaps there's a guiding principle in there around you know um avoiding reductionism or you know embracing complexity or there must be some guiding principle to extract from you know these things not being exclusive yes that's great and so it's just to highlight some of that that um those reflections on the question um at the end um having maybe some set of principles or guidelines that apply to um the this imperative is what I would call it of uh of um of um ensuring we that we know that we can and that we must sometimes apply human rights legal frameworks to identity and personal data would include um well I like the word um to avoid reductionism or you know binary thinking that it's one or the other or a bright line test of under these three circumstances apply framework a under those two circumstances apply but rather iterate this a little bit but you know something that's like proportional that's response to the circumstances we can talk about factors to consider maybe give two or three clear examples at the extremes or one applies quite well or where the other applies quite well but um that idea of um of um not of avoiding reduction is a highlight from your answer um seems quite good uh for a principle um that reminded me one thing so we've got a bunch of comments but I want to just take the chairs prerogative for a moment or the um co the moderators prerogative to say um Mila and uh Brian and TMA and I when we were thinking about your session excuse me last night we're thinking it would be what would be really helpful would be if there was sort of like a table or something like that where we could start to maybe like one column is property law and another column is human rights frameworks or or maybe even another column is civil liberties kinds of things like you know bill of rights in the United States or something like that um where um and then one row and then you know row by row by row we start looking at um different types of um features and you know universal uh inalienable and oh god what was the third one um and stuff like that our prop our own properties of human rights um and then there's other properties uh and factors and elements that sort of thing that might fall in different columns and rows so come starting to um hack out a table we thought would be um a nice um project or a nice kind of exercise that maybe we could start to explore um what how does that sound to you does that actually risk the reductionism that we seek to avoid uh could it shed some light or what do you think about this idea it's an interesting idea so I've actually undertaken the exercise myself and you know for preparation of this session and what I found was that um again that you know it's useful to a limited extent so I think it's useful in framing the thinking and um you know forcing oneself to go through the exercise of comparing and contrasting um but as soon as you get into any sort of thought experiments to test you know whatever you faked into such a table or framework um things get really messy that said I think it's still valuable and I'm happy to you know take what I've started and circulate with this group after the session and maybe we could crowdsource you know some additional features and flesh out the the table a bit more um so some of the dimensions for example that I would look at are you know the source of rights so you know is the source natural law is it norms of society you know what where where are the rights deriving from you might look at the nature of the rights are they focused on you know the economic or commercial features are they focused on you know the dignitary and human nature of our resistance you know we might look at examples within those categories of where are those rights codified you know where do they live if they're codified you know do they require codification um we might look at you know what recourse mechanisms there are if those rights are violated or what the individual recourse uh you know is in a situation like that mechanisms for changing um or amending rights or their their nature um so they're they're definitely um you know useful ways to frame and uh select certain features to compare and contrast these frameworks but again I think the real heart of it comes in thinking through uh you know actual thought experiments or applications of them in in living environments um here here um so I'd like to make a request of um of all the people who are with us in the session um and especially those of you that have provided feedback um could you please go back into the whole widget scan through the feedback and upvote the ones that you most want Elizabeth to address um you know there's some that I think are more interesting but what really matters is about the um point of view that Elizabeth already lectured on you know I've never seen the lecture um in the flipped classroom so now let's have a conversation and here's the good news is you can all talk at once um so you get don't usually get to have that in physical space so um with that in mind um let me go take another look and see what's being upvoted okay we've got some votes got some votes um so here's one um you referred to quote the experience of being human um I would be interested in your thoughts um about what that is and how is it different from the experience if we can put it that way of being a machine the experience of being human like can you extrapolate on that a little bit and I think it you know deserves its own its own session seminar you know dissertation really uh because it's such a complex question um but that is one of the things that we are desperately trying to figure out right now um so you see a lot of efforts towards you know a Magna Carta on AI or um these sort of global charters on um defining what it means to be human you know in this big data data driven uh digital ecosystem um and I think what what we're the starting point has been let's uh let's start with the process of elimination right and let's um remove all of the things that we know machines can do let's um catalog all the functions that we know that AI is is sophisticated enough to undertake at this stage and work from sort of you know a what's left mindset um what's left that we know more than more than parties more than parties so um you know if we if we think about you know logic and and mathematics and logical reasoning and pattern recognition and um observational sort of statistical methodologies all those things you know we know um we've demonstrated that AI can do you know can do all of those things um but if we think about you know for example the I think it's called the UDA loop you know in in sort of military speak where I think it's observe uh orient decide and act right um we've probably gotten to a stage where you know machines are really good at sort of the orienting and observing and the pattern recognition but not so good necessarily at deciding um because of things like the quality of the data you know the quality of the the algorithm um the the you know contextual environment the feedback mechanisms the responsiveness um so there you know there's that perspective but then of course there's you know the more um philosophical questions around human autonomy and agency and free will um and um you know of course all the things around emotional intelligence and we've seen how you know even the really sophisticated Sophia's and other AI are perhaps lacking empathy right or lacking um some of the the uh emotionally intelligent features that that humans have come to to develop and acquire so I think when I talk about our human experience you know that's um and that's something that I take from Shoshana Zuboff is this idea of commercializing you know our human experience um it's an imperfect that's really an imperfect description because what that's talking about is um the experience that can be captured by data and you know your question points out makes a really great point that you know there are going to be things that can't be captured by data and the problem is is that if we go with a data first framework right then we're losing again we're crowding out some of those things that can't be captured by data and that's the risk because there might be really important rights that attach to the things that can't be digitized or return it to data. Awesome um that was a great question and I see I love the fact that some of these questions are not ones that would have occurred to me but not once I see them like yeah that's a good idea and then to hear you you reflect upon them it's very enriching so quick feedback um so far I kind of like this breakout format and gathering questions so let's go to one more um we actually have a sort of a kind of a winner of with the most votes um from Johnny Peck um um what hope do we have of um mounting a data governance paradigm founded in human rights given the pressure from the capitalist side is there an integrated versus a piecemeal solution then so it's just a very real practical kind of question yeah it's a good question um so from my point of view the uh the property you know ownership commodification paradigm has a lot of momentum and it has a lot of momentum because the firms the sort of hierarchical firms you know be them corporations or any type of other organized um means and access to capital have really embraced this this ownership model because I think they appreciate the the benefits that they can extract from it um so I think momentum is in favor of you know a sort of property-based approach um that said I think there is an elevated consciousness around this at the moment uh on the part of individuals and you know conversations like the one we're having now where there are there's a small but growing and vocal minority of us who are raising awareness around the risks with that approach and I think there is a fear of you know do we lose our humanity and I think that you know whether it's been well articulated or not there is kind of an assumption that there is some value in retaining some degree of our humanity so um you know my hope is that is that people having a conversation like ourselves you know grow louder to to counteract some of the uh the surveillance capitalist right um because if you put together again the sort of the two theories that I mentioned the two books that I mentioned um if you look at if if you look at Victor Meyer Schoenberger's book on reinventing capitalism um what he says is that a sort of free-for-all around data capitalism does not enhance you know anyone's rights really because it distorts market forces so you end up you know through the feedback effect and the power law and the law of networks you end up with a situation of you know the concentration of power in in a handful of firms and you know Scott Galloway always makes this point around GAFA um so you actually don't end up with a free marketplace um for you know for an expression of individual rights and meaningful uh benefits occurring to individuals you you end up with a really distorted situation so um even for the sort of data capitalists that think that there is positive value in um the commercialization of our data there are some fundamental assumptions around preserving sort of the dynamics of a truly free marketplace where individuals can meaningfully participate so so even those so I think there is room um to engage on you know on the terms of all of these frameworks um if we focus on if we focus on our collective interest in retaining that shred of humanity and that may be a very unsatisfying answer um but you know I think there is a real risk right now of right um so I do think that for any of us who think there's any merit to competing frameworks I would encourage folks to really challenge the you know surveillance capitalists um vocally and and aggressively okay your hair um and that actually kind of brings us to um I think the next the next question um um um Nicholas observes that there's differences um in legislation enforcement at the international level what is the international relations now it probably probably say, international law dimension of the relevant problem of the problem that you're presenting about the application of a human rights and civil liberties legal framework to identity. Is this something you're particularly well situated to speak to, I think? Yeah, I mean, there's the sort of legislative history, if you will, of international law. There is the century-old body of international law around human rights, even before World War II, but really the first meaningful stake in the ground in Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights around freedom from arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, and correspondence. And that was obviously motivated by some of the atrocities of World War II and the unified sense amongst the international community that there were real fundamental rights that attach to all of us universally that are, again, even though they adhere to our person because they're an extension of our humanity, the international community felt that it was kind of worth putting a stake in the ground and codifying this in the form of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And then you see sort of reiteration decade after decade. So another meaningful evolutionary step in 1976 with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which I know, Dazza, you have great interest in right now because we're kind of at a point where we're taking comment on the extent to which member states have actually complied with their obligations under the ICCPR. So we can get into that a bit. But again, this idea of freedom from arbitrary interference with our privacy and the same things that are codified, for example, in the US Constitution, but on an international scale. So there's sort of a broad agreement around what privacy might look like. We certainly don't have, it's really interesting to look at it from a comparative law perspective or international perspective. I'm not aware of international legal covenants or agreements around identity because I don't think there's any single understanding or consensus around what that even means. And so, actually this idea that we use proxies for identity isn't so new, right? It might be new in the way it's expressed as our digital identity or through data. But if you look at the evolution and genesis of international law around privacy from a human rights point of view, the reason that these things are called out in these frameworks around home and family and effects and correspondences is because there are deemed to be expressions of who we are. There are deemed to be extensions of our identity or humanity. So those are kind of the foundational pieces in international law. Daz, I see you shaking the agreement. I just, every time your mouse is speaking, I find myself just saying yes, yes, yes. Like it's, I wish I had a better understanding of international law and kind of what's happening in the rest of the world outside of the United States with respect to law generally, but especially legal frameworks that apply to this essential aspect of online life and online, you know, I guess, online activities, which is identity and the reasonable expectations and frameworks of rules that apply to the use of identity and the rights and the obligations for identity. Part of the reason I was shaking my head to aggressively there and after I thought that I was off mute, video mute was because I was just thinking in the physical world, we've got a lot of context that tells us a lot of information about what rules to apply, you know, like for just a simple example is you go to someone's house and you mention papers and effects and that gets me into a fourth amendment kind of mindset where there's one aspect and kind of frame, set of frameworks for managing our persons and our identity and our personal data, you know, in the form of stuff we have on our body. So you go to someone's house, you're on the sidewalk and you're kind of on the public street and looking at their house. There's very little, you know, sense of access or authorization to know much about that person that isn't very much public facing. Now you come and you're talking to them, they open the door and you're sort of like, maybe just inside their foyer, just inside their door having a conversation. There's a little bit more. Now you've been invited inside a threshold. You know, from a property perspective, you have a little one second, hey, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. Oh, sorry, somebody wanted to bring into the conversation. You've got, you know, if you really slip and fall, for example, there may be some responsibility for that person inside of your house. So they have a certain kind of, there's certain expectations that they see stuff in their house. You know, they have a right to know that in your foyer, but there's not much there. It's kind of a quasi-public space almost. When I come back into the kitchen in the living room, it's a little bit deeper. I'm going to go right back to like the bedroom where you may have like much more personal things there. And people kind of know from the context, you know, what to expect and how to behave. And so like, you know, we know when it's our home and people know when it's someone else's home. And that's from centuries and millennia of socialization and development of these underlying frameworks, which are reflected in law, but fundamentally come from, you know, much deeper social layer, I think. But all that is just totally blown up in cyberspace. You know, we've got such little information about whose location are we in. What kind of location is this commercial? Oh, good. Is this commercial? Or is this, pull up a chair and just throw stuff on the ground or something. Is this commercial? Or is this, is this residential? Is this industrial? Is it educational? Is it a public space? Is it a government space? So, we know very little. And sometimes that's, you know, confusing because, you know, the user interface design, sometimes it's deliberately obfuscated, you know. And so when I now try to think about, you know, the context of just what kind of culture applies here. Is it European culture? Is it Asian culture? What Asian culture? In a sense, this thing is a European culture or an Asian culture or American, well, United States, Massachusetts or Texas. And so, I just would love to know how to, how to do a better job of knowing what context we're in and what which underlying frameworks of human rights or property law for that matter would even apply in the first place before we even get to which one should apply. But leading that aside, I have a treat for you, Elizabeth. A very special treat. It has a name and an identity. This is Johnny. Johnny, this is Elizabeth and I wanted you two to meet for a while. And Johnny is leading a session that we're gonna actually postpone and do after the class on an adjacent topic related to basically workers in a, in this case, an employment environment and rights with respect to data, identity, personal data, expectations that could have a major impact on your life opportunities, you know? And your livelihood. And so, oh Johnny, let me give you a little bit of care. And so, I just wanted to allow Johnny to ask or to first of all express how is this question of human rights versus property rights show up in the big world of labor and work? And how would it show up if I was now in, whether in the United States or Europe or somewhere, but I'm now at my work place? You know, and when I was in the 90s, I was practicing law and had to deal with, you know, an organization that had tens of thousands of workers and some things that came up was, you know, that they have a mobile phone now that was new, believe it or not, once a time, once upon a time and they're doing some conversations. Is that private? I mean, they're not using the work phone, but they're sitting in the work desk and then they have lockers, but the lockers maybe don't have locks. Can we look in their locker if we were wondering if that's where the stapler is or something? Can we inspect the locker if we're wondering if they're stealing stuff? And then can we look at the top of their desk, can we open a drawer? Can we strip search people in their work? Just what are the expectations in a work environment? And now what are the major implications now that so much of our stuff and our identity exists online? It's not even a physical drawer. So, I mean, can you just say a few words on how does this kind of question of privacy and liberties and rights show up in this world of work? And what are the big issues with respect to, you know, from the labor perspective going forward? Can you hear me if I speak from here? Yeah. Put this on, okay. I can just say briefly that you see this with professional athletes, I think, initially because their data is really valuable and so it's being harvested to make a lot of money. Currently, right now in the NFL, every player has a little chip on their shoulder, literally a chip on their shoulder that all the teams have access to when they're choosing who to keep and trade, et cetera. Players don't currently A, get access to the data or B, get paid for the value that that data is generating. So there was a contract for $10 million in a hotel in Las Vegas that was using this to kind of place bets about who's gonna skate the fastest on a hockey game or something like that. I hope I'm not repeating your research and mentioning this. I can't remember. At least it's new to what Elizabeth has said so far. Okay. Uni Global Union is a federation of 650 unions around the world, private sector trade unions that I've been working with, helping them think through how they can use, how they can represent workers' interests in this. I think the core immediate challenges there about surveillance that if you lose your job because of something that's been revealed about your activity at work that you feel is totally unethical, that becomes a very difficult case to fight if your employer also owns that data. And then as I mentioned or kind of alluded to with the professional athletes, the value of it, that's an open question too. If you're a Uber driver in New York City and the data that you are helping, build around the traffic patterns is sold for millions of dollars to the city, do you get access to that money? Not currently. The point is just I guess that some of the stuff that I think we'll face around identity, the really interesting questions you talked about today, Elizabeth, I think are hitting workers first. And that's one reason I've been trying to engage with that community. Yeah, it's an interesting point. I think it goes to what Dad was saying about you arrive at someone's house and you've got, like you said, you're on their property outside and you're progressively growing closer to the core. And it's the same idea that this digital creep has blurred all of these boundaries where there's no longer any separation between personal, professional employment or non-employment context, online or offline. You have this blurring of everything, this convergence and all these lanes breaking down. And the digital is length claimed to all of it, right? But that can't be valid because then there's no space left for us to be ourselves, right? There's no space left to completely crowds out any kind of autonomy or freedom of interference, right? It's really this notion of like, where is that space? If the digital is everywhere, if everything is data, where is that sort of freedom to be ourselves? And I don't think it's something that we can, that we should turn over. I think it's critical to, again, this conversation around what's left of humanity. I think we need a place that is not censored, right? And this movement, one of the things that I worry about a lot in the blockchain space that I've been spending the last three and a half to four years in is this drive towards, you know, we want everything to be transparent and readable and censorship resistant. But actually, what does that do to us? It makes us censor ourselves, right? It makes us worry about every transaction, every activity and we're no longer ourselves, right? We're completely subject to manipulation. So I think it's true in the employment context and, you know, obviously in the US, employees have always had more limited rights than they've had in a lot of other jurisdictions. And again, that's in part because what is the legal framework that we're applying? And in the US, we're often applying this sort of property, this commercial, commercially led framework around, well, the employer, you know, owns you and owns your work, works for hire, right? Owns the products and efforts of your labor, whereas in other jurisdictions, you know, like in Europe, you don't lose, you know, fundamental rights, human rights, privacy rights in the context of the employment relationship. So I think it is that, you know, that convergence of everything and data that's challenging these legal frameworks. And I think that's one of the problems around to these data-specific regulations is that, you know, we have, for example, even with the GDPR, which I think has been extremely useful in elevating this conversation and, you know, elevating our consciousness around it, data-specific regulations kind of fall flat because they ignore these other aspects that are, you know, you can't regulate data as data. Data takes on different significance and meaning, you know, in different contexts to different people. So, you know, even this idea of trying to demarcate, you know, this trend right now is, I've seen a lot of draft legislation in the US for privacy bill. And a lot of the common features are they'll try and draw a line between, you know, sensitive and non-sensitive data, right? Well, what does that mean? I don't think there's any way to pre-stipulate, you know, what's sensitive and what's not sensitive. We use very antiquated, backward-looking notions around social security number, which is public and on the dark web anyway, right? Or are these things, whereas, you know, for example, when we had the target data breach a few years ago and target was, you know, identifying pregnant women before their families knew they were pregnant, right? On the basis of their ordinary commercial purchases, the lotion they were buying or, you know, that wouldn't be classified as sensitive data. And yet it was highly revealing of very intimate details of their lives and personal information. So there's a lot of red herrings around there, around, you know, data-specific regulations of how we treat data. And, you know, I think most of them really fall short because they're losing sight of these aspects. So the employment context, you certainly highlight some of the issues, but it's really just this, the breaking down of all of these boundaries, right? They don't exist anymore. So it's a really interesting point. You're gonna follow up? What do you think, Will? Okay, I have a follow-up, please. So what is, could we just take one second on what is identity to start with? So I'm pretty comfortable with stuff. So I have my diaries like the, you know, that's always my go-to example. It's like, you know, it's kind of a piece of property. It's encapsulated, like in some, it's expressed as bits or on paper, but, you know, it's somewhere I can find it and, you know, kind of, you know, I can delete it, you know, it's got some, it's encapsulated. But what is the identity part of this equation? And is it the same as just a bucket of data that's really personal? Or is there something essential about an object or an essence of something that is our identity, or it is us, literally is us, and to which things like, I don't know, the prohibition against slavery would apply versus the prohibition against theft of property. I know there's a lot of blurry lines there because it's in the slaves that are deemed property, but there's also some distinctions between objects and live people. And I'm just wondering, what's the live people part of this equation online? Do you have any thoughts? Yeah, so if you take, you know, Shoshana Zuboff's surveillance capitalism and you take it to its full dystopian expression, right? And we fully submit to that kind of world order. There's still gonna be, and we're subject to all kinds of manipulation, all the data in real time is affecting all of our behavior and engineering, all of our decisions and all of our activities. And yet, they're probably, as individuals, we're gonna have different responses. So some of us might be more resistant to that even though we're making the same decisions outwardly. We might be, you know, we might harbor kind of anger or different sentiments towards it, our attitudes towards the same activities and the same behavior generating the same data might be different. I think there are still, I don't think you can, I think the whole point of identity, right? And as much as the term self-sovereign identity is like Marmite and divides a lot of people, I think the real value in it is that, you know, I am the only one who can determine, you know, what that means. And so the best that I think law and regulation can do is preserve space, hold space for someone to be someone, right? For a person to be themselves or an identity to express itself. And I don't think any law or regulation should seek to define what identity is. And again, going back to this, you know, sensitive versus non-sensitive, I'm the only one who can determine, and actually in reality, you know, if we were really aware of what's going on, you know, all data would be sensitive data, right? Because I have no control over the myriad unperceivable uses that these firms are gonna make of it with their, you know, their high tech tools and their algorithms and their asymmetric power. So it has to be driven by the individual, by their own selves to really be meaningfully identity and kind of a self-sovereign point of view. Can I just do a follow-up about that? Yeah. So, Jonathan Zittrain at Harvard Law School has made similar argument, I think, about like all data is personal data. I think of it as like a wave of inference that they're just in a world in which we have ubiquitous kind of surveillance technology, we can find out like the unusual cases are just gonna grow and grow and grow the way we find each other or find out things about each other. I guess my first question is what do you see as a kind of, I'll ask them, I guess the boldest version of the question is, do you think that the law as an iterative measure is going to be able to keep up with the sort of challenges that this poses? Or do you think in sci-fi land we might need some sort of paradigm change? I don't know what that would look like. I've never really thought about it till right now, but I can maybe gesture in the direction of something, which is the second question, what do you think of both the balance between individual and collective rights? Knowing that, yeah, I guess in this world. Yeah, it's a really great question. I'll start with the second one, because it's easier. So I think that technology is driving us to be more atomic and it's hyper focused on the individual right now. And I think commercial hierarchical firms are really exploiting that atomic sort of individualistic view because it just, it increases the information and the power asymmetry. And as much as there's an aversion, obviously, especially amongst Americans to any kind of collectivist approach, I think if we focus on what we're actually trying to achieve, if we're actually trying to achieve more human autonomy and freedom of expression and identity expression, all these things, we might have to rethink the means to get there because I think this highly individualistic focus is part of why we've lost so many individual rights. I think it, similar to what happens, what's happened in the self-help sector, right? It's all on you, it's all on the individual. There are no structural problems, right? There's nothing that you are so uncontrollable. That's not true, right? If you've got this entire world order built around surveillance capitalism, it doesn't really matter what you do as an individual. You go completely off the grid to your own detriment and still data inferences can be made about you or proxies or digital twins are built for you. So I think we have to stop being in denial around the fact that achieving individual ends and empowering individuals might require a more collectivist approach. That's your second question. Is there a follow-up to that? Well, another way to phrase the first question, which is connected to the second question is, historically, you mentioned that the example you gave around, I don't know what was it, kind of paradigm changes, but significant change in law emerging in response to kind of societal trauma. So during World War II, we have in response, yeah, new conceptions. Short of the sort of traumas, I guess my intuition says because the harms that we deal with these are often seemingly minute and distributed and difficult to characterize legally as true harms, to my understanding, I'm not a lawyer. It is probably anticipating a really traumatic event. Short of the sort of, there's a fire around here. People don't have to listen to this. Yeah, okay, if you wanna go on mute. So I think I know what you're getting at and I hope you can evacuate if you need to. So for me, I'm a minimalist about most everything and I would extend that to the law. And I think that, again, there's a lot of drive right now. You guys okay? Everybody? I'm going to ask you if there's a problem that shall follow the bill to meet the next situation. Hey, I don't know if you can hear this emergency. Attention please. Apparently there's been an emergency in the media line and we're all supposed to scramble out the shoot or something. So unfortunately, I have to terminate the broadcast a little bit early. I'm so sorry. We're all due. Thank you for, thank you Elizabeth. Thank you guys. You're welcome. You're welcome. Watch Telegram and we'll do a report out to your group and we'll keep you posted. Okay, thank you. Be safe. Thanks. You too. Bye.