One of the more substantial critiques of data ownership is that if you treat data as purely a property right, it means that you can sell that right. If we treat privacy as a property right what that means is that we essentially have that right to trade it. And the problem is that it could worsen financial inequities. People with less income might be more willing to trade their important personal data for a small payment, while those who are better off can say, “I don’t need the dividend. I’ll keep my data.” How do you balance that?

There’d be less of a sense of desperation in a society where there’s a freedom dividend and everyone’s getting $1,000 per month. But it is the case that certain people’s data is worth more than others’ data. And if you look right now there are many people with different preferences. There are people out there choosing to share the intimate details of their lives with millions of people; some make a living off it. So, if individuals want to share their data or information or even their private lives with other people, then that’s their prerogative.

Some of the plans you outline for data are quite broad and amount to “Data needs to be owned by the people.” Some companies already subscribe to this but, in practice, we’re still at their mercy. Does the extent of your plan amount to more than just saying, “You can have your data deleted?”

What’s going to happen in real life is you’re going to use these companies. Things will happen behind the scenes while you’re busy living your life. And then, if you want to, you can go and delete your data. That’s a reasonable estimation of how it would work for many people. What I’m suggesting is that we can do better. But it’s not like individual consumers can band together to make this happen. Government needs to be a counterweight to the massive power and information inequities between us and the technology companies.

What I think most people would want is a place they could go to see what’s happening to their data, the option to delete their data and a record or log of all the times it trades hands. Then the companies do their thing and people would live with greater confidence that, if there are abuses, they’ll be made aware of that and can always pull the plug.

We’ve become like rats in a maze where we’re constantly hit by messages from these companies know everything about us. They know more about us than our families do. We’re responding to stimuli and we think we’re making choices. But it’s because we’ve shared so much over time that they have a keen sense of what we want. There’s something fundamental at stake here, which is: What does human agency look like? What are our rights as citizens?