In 2014, Jennifer Lyn Morone decided to protect her data the only way she could as an individual: She incorporated herself. Jennifer Lyn Morone Inc. operates as an independent data processing business of Morone, providing “a new business model designed to determine value of an individual relative to society and the data he or she generates. The project began as an exploration of market alternatives to deal with the lack of federal data protection measures in the United States, a topic that has attracted renewed interest since the Court of Justice. Supreme Court overthrow Roe v. Wade.
Our technology landscape tracks more than many people realize, as Shoshana Zuboff describes in stunning detail on every page of our website. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: “Real-world activity is continuously displayed from phones, cars, streets, houses, shops, bodies, trees, buildings, airports and cities back to the digital realm. , where it finds new life as data ready to turn into predictions.” The association of data collection with pregnancy in particular has a strange media history. Back in 2012, Target faces a PR scandal when certain purchases linked to a woman’s browsing profile led the company to send a coupon related to her pregnancy, helping her family deal with her condition . Digital trails provide predictive algorithms to be used as proof, although the algorithms themselves are still black boxes because they form a trade secret for the corporations behind them.
Data brokers capture and sell location, health and personal data that police and others use to harass, misinform, and criminalize pregnant women, among others — and, were Border Patrol, FBI, IRS and Secret Service have contracts with data brokers, an alternative to the time-consuming effort of pursuing legal subpoenas. Anti-abortion groups have partnered with reproductive health app to identify users whose devices reveal their geolocation near the fertility care clinic. The groups then try to target them with ads and misinformation as they sit in the waiting room browsing online. Information entered into reproductive health self-report applications is not covered under HIPAA, nor travel assistance is provided by the companies to take care of abortionunless administered by a health insurance company.
Online searches are just some of the data extracted by law enforcement with the rise of digital forensics. Latice Fisher in Mississippi is arrested, tried and jailed for miscarriage because she looked up abortion information online; The prosecutor presented that as proof she committed the murder. In July 2022, criminal charges for a self-inflicted abortion were brought against 17-year-old Clarice Burgess, based on a make sure to search her Facebook messages where she talked to her mother about her condition. Overall, anyone using an app or website should be wary. (Health and Human Services has a data sheet to better understand the public nature of the information included in the application.)
Individuals can generate data but do not own or protect it, leading to wide-ranging privacy concerns. Political scientists, economists, computer scientists and legal scholars, among others, have argued in favor of interpreting personal data as property. They argue that the rise of data analytics reinforces the way data is a “property is created, produced, handled, stored, transferred, licensed, sold and stolen“And they argue that the data is lacking material, substance affects its real and abstract relationship to each person. Along with this academic debate, a variety of companies have emerged to help people profit from their personal data, naturalizing this concept of property. Data exchange 360ofMe aims to centralize and contextualize personal information to help users hone more knowledge about themselves and to target selling such information. The CitizenMe The app offers users the chance to get rewards from businesses and charities that need data. Digi.me helps users aggregate personal data to intentionally share it with responsible businesses. BitClave uses blockchain technology to secure personal data, manage access rights, and create sales opportunities.
The “data is property” argument was introduced into the market to change the rights and regulations affecting tech companies that scan data about the people who produce it. But does it work? Morone sees the aspirations of these middle-class people as an opportunity to investigate the potential of a free-market solution. The results were disappointing.
Company siege
As tech companies collect personal data from our walks and scrolls through various websites, they may not know how they will use the data, but they realize its inherent value. once consolidated, analyzed and packaged for sale to advertisers and others. Everything we’re doing online, and everything that’s being tracked about us offline, is an economic opportunity for companies somewhere. Value? End 1.5 billion dollars, because now we’re all Six Million Dollar Man.
Since companies can claim trade secrets, Morone decided against rampant data collection by incorporating itself, so that the company, JLM Inc., contains the intellectual property and activities of Morone people. If a company can be a person, maybe a person can be a company and so protect their data! The terms of incorporation allow Morone’s data to qualify as intellectual property and are therefore intended to provide protections from the data market. Morone’s privacy is possible because it is a product and trade secret of a company, JLM Inc., incorporated in the state of Delaware. With its own Premier Court that hears cases involving corporate law, Delaware’s legal structure is very conducive to business. The state also does not collect corporate taxes from people doing business outside of the state or tax “intangible assets”—like data.
