WENDY WONG - Author of We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age

Tech, Innovation & Society - The Creative Process: Technology, AI, Software, Future, Economy, Science, Engineering & Robotics Interviews

Does privacy exist anymore? Or are humans just sets of data to be traded and sold?

Wendy H. Wong is Professor of Political Science and Principal's Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She is the author of two award-winning books: Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights and (with Sarah S. Stroup) The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs. Her latest book is We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age.

"Meta reaches between three and four billion people every day through their platforms, right? That's way more people than any government legitimately can claim to govern. And yet this one company with four major platforms that many of us use is able to reach so many people and make decisions about content and access that have real consequences. It's been shown they fueled genocide in multiple places like in Ethiopia and Myanmar. And I think that's exactly why human rights matter because human rights are obligations that states have signed on for, and they're supposed to protect human values. And I think from a human rights perspective, it's important to argue that we shouldn't be collecting certain types of data because it's excessive. It's violating autonomy. It starts violating dignity. And when you start violating autonomy and dignity through the collection of data, you can't just go back and fix that by making it private.”

www.wendyhwong.com
https://mitpress.mit.edu/author/wendy-h-wong-38397

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