Europe is engaged in all kinds of digital projects. It’s hard to keep track of it all. One of the topics Europe is working on that I haven’t gotten to is data altruism. What is being written about it worries me. A feature of much digitalisation is that theft of personal data and other forms of appropriation forms the basis of many digital business models.

This month I came across a notice on the ‘Rulebook for recognised data altruism organisations’, with the following description:

This Implementing Regulation, proposed further to an obligation in the Data Governance Act, establishes a European data altruism consent form for voluntary use by organisations collecting data from natural persons who want to make such data available for objectives of general interest. By mandating the development of a digital solution alongside a paper form, the consent form will ensure that data owners can easily give and withdraw their consent.

It does not look reassuring because the ‘data owner’ need not be the natural person (the data subject). I noted earlier (article in Dutch) that the data subject plays no role in Europe’s open finance plans, so it is to be feared that it will be the same with this new ‘altruism’.

Addition 8 February 2024
Digital thieves love data altruism, read this article: Een vals dilemma: privacy versus datasolidariteit by Antoinette Vlieger (HEALTH-RI), Egge van der Poel (Erasmus Centrum voor Zorgbestuur) and Daniel Kapitan (AI expert).