What does data collection actually mean for people like you and me? What are the dangers?

 

It has several dimensions: commercial collection and in this small game the big platforms like Facebook Google or Uber dominate in the matter. Collecting state, police force which is a temptation for all the powers, emphasizing according to the context either the security or the utility to justify what corresponds to the surveillance, and then there is the crime, the scaming in particular which Is the work of crooks and organized gangs.

The main danger, as black mirror shows, is that one already lives in the future and that one prepares without realizing all the tools dreamed of for the authoritarian or totalitarian governments without the least apprehension or Precaution. The political pragmatism on the matter outside the notable exception of the CNIL is rather distressing indeed. "If you have nothing to reproach yourself with, why not let yourself be fooled?"

 

 

Why and for whom is this information collected? Do personal data represent the new Eldorado of companies and governments?

 

What is said is that the information collected is a real marketing resource. It is also what certain initiates on Uber postulate: They deliberately lose money on their initial business, the transport of people, because in reality the profit that they hope to garner is that of the accumulation Data on the movement of people, lifestyle habits. At the same time when one sees the relative poverty of marketing translations of this big data (always the same emailing, banners that pursue us thanks to Criteo) it is difficult to locate the deposit or the genius of the data or the also treatment.

 

How do I protect my personal data? (Even partially)

 

Good question, I think we can not anymore, that we are too dependent on information-intensive services, we give everything to Google, because the service is too good, as with Amazon or Facebook. To protect oneself is to be paranoid from a certain point of view, to refuse Facebook for example it is often perceived as an assumed association, very badly seen in fact by the social co-operation.

 

 

Can we speak at the moment of a new kind of war, a cyber-war?

 

The Data War? In any case, there is a power struggle between states and platforms, and it must be recognized that platforms, services, and the giants of San Francisco do not go hand in hand in lobbying and soft Power.

 

In your opinion, are new technologies now bad for democracy?

 

Rather, I would say, conversely, why democracies do not have the added advantage of integrating the benefits, the advantages of technology to continue to improve, rather than to sink into institutional crises, particularly dangerous policies in many old countries.

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