This article was translated from the original provided by Golden Finance.

Recently, Baidu CEO Li Yanhong made a comment regarding big data and user privacy that the Chinese are not concerned about privacy issues. “If users are willing to give up privacy for convenience — actually most of the users are, then we can use data for other reasons.” His words triggered a broader discussion. Meanwhile, IoT Chain, who claims that data sovereignty belongs to users, proposed a solution needed in the era of big data.

A trillion dollar IoT market is being divided up and closed off in advance.

Actions that contradict common sense are often driven by special interests. According to a Qianzhan Industry Research Report, the size of global IoT market is expected to reach $2.8 trillion, and behind it there is a plethora of big data.

Many international corporations, including Baidu, are making large investments in IoT. They are interested in a variety of areas including cloud platforms, intelligent hardware and specialized applications. Currently, it seems that the data market is monopolized by Internet giants such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Facebook, Google and Amazon, and they are dividing up the interests brought by data.

Through investment and acquisition, business giants set up ecosystems to try and cover all major data areas including social media, e-commerce, mobile payments, web traffic, and entertainment.

For example, the reason Alibaba and Tencent invested in online car-hailing and bicycle sharing services is not for the money these services earn, but for the access to the data they provide. If users want to use these services, they must register and submit relevant information. The information is data that has high commercial value.

It is important to protect data sovereignty? IoT Chain(ITC) claims that data sovereignty should be returned to users.

The IoT market is thriving, but data privacy is becoming a serious issue. How to use and protect personal data is one of the most important and pressing topics today.

In other words, it has never been more important to protect data sovereignty. But what is data sovereignty? With personal data sovereignty, users have complete control of their data. Regarding the statement at the start of this article, opinions like this about unprotected state of user data are not uncommon. Society is still largely unaware about data sovereignty, and Internet giants are free to misuse their data as a result. Moreover, domestic legal protection of data is also severely lacking.

Luckily, there is a blockchain project raising awareness about data privacy and insisting that data sovereignty should be returned to users. This project is IoT Chain (ITC).

IoT Chain (ITC): Returning data sovereignty to users is essential.

Simply speaking, IoT Chain (ITC) is developing a lite operating system for IoT using the blockchain. Their solution can be divided in two parts: main chain and OS. The main chain is responsible for setting up a value transfer network to deal with the exchange of valuable data and information. The OS is the interactive operating system of the IoT devices themselves with the main chain.

U sing PBFT consensus, DAG sub networks and a CPS structure, IoT Chain (ITC) gives devices a unique identity and minimizes the cost of connecting devices to the network.

On many occasions, the IoT Chain (ITC) team has stressed that the reason they launched their project is to help users securely control their devices. More importantly, they are returning data sovereignty to users. The ITC team believes that the prosperity of Internet is based on data contributions from countless users; the big data IoT era is even more dependent on user data contribution.

IoT Chain (ITC) protects user data sovereignty and data assets.

IoT Chain (ITC) uses a C2B2B model to achieve this goal. After obtaining user authorization, data providers can obtain data and cooperate with companies that need that data. These companies then transfer a portion of the value back to the data providers, who then return a portion to the users as previously agreed. In other words, data sovereignty belongs to users in two ways: one is that the data should be authorized by users when it was used; the other is that once the data creates value, the users should receive some benefit.

On the ITC network, users can choose to authorize use of particular types of data automatically, rather than investigating each specific case. One authorized, tokens are provided to users for the authorized data. Users can prove their identity through private keys, and they also can manage the profits generated by different devices through the wallet app. Users can then use the ITC tokens in a variety of ways on the blockchain. Obviously, this transmission of user data requires a safe environment. To solve this problem, IoT Chain (ITC) uses cryptographic asymmetric encryption technology. Users only need to protect their private keys to ensure their privacy, as even if the data is intercepted it cannot be deciphered without the private key. At the same time, nodes in the network are considered equal, which protects user privacy as well. Currently, the IoT Chain team is researching semi-homomorphic encryption techniques, which are designed to make the process of data processing even more secure.

Conclusion

With the growing supply of user data, most companies choose to blur the lines of responsibility in order to liquidate the data. In most cases, users choose to trade their privacy for convenience. This is not due to the absence of recognition, but the absence of real mechanism to protect this data. Not only is IoT Chain (ITC) working to return data sovereignty to users, but they are also working to protect data assets using blockchain technology. This is exceptionally important today as it will undoubtedly raise user awareness about data ownership and open up new possibilities for protecting their rights. We call on everyone to strengthen their awareness about data sovereignty and embrace blockchain technology.