Property, privacy and personhood in a world of ambient intelligence

Authors:
Niels Dijk
Affiliations:
Center for Law, Science, Technology & Society Studies (LSTS), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium 1050
Venue:
Ethics and Information Technology
Year:
2010

Citing 6
Cited 1

Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape

Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape
Mobile Identity Management: An Enacted View

International Journal of Electronic Commerce
Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence (The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology)

Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence (The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology)
Profiling the European Citizen: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives

Profiling the European Citizen: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives
Review: Ambient intelligence: Technologies, applications, and opportunities

Pervasive and Mobile Computing
code 2.0

code 2.0

Challenges of ethical and legal responsibilities when technologies' uses and users change: social networking sites, decision-making capacity and dementia

Ethics and Information Technology

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Profiling technologies are the facilitating force behind the vision of Ambient Intelligence in which everyday devices are connected and embedded with all kinds of smart characteristics enabling them to take decisions in order to serve our preferences without us being aware of it. These technological practices have considerable impact on the process by which our personhood takes shape and pose threats like discrimination and normalisation. The legal response to these developments should move away from a focus on entitlements to personal data, towards making transparent and controlling the profiling process by which knowledge is produced from these data. The tendency in intellectual property law to commodify information embedded in software and profiles could counteract this shift to transparency and control. These rights obstruct the access and contestation of the design of the code that impacts one's personhood. This triggers a political discussion about the public nature of this code and forces us to rethink the relations between property, privacy and personhood in the digital age.