Power: Just to wrap it up, I imagine that there is an interesting privacy aspect to Lifepass. Talk to us about it offers, and what the implications are? Burgess: As you know, telephone operators have more customers than any other industry on the planet. There are people who have mobile phones, but no water! And because operators enjoy peoples trust and have so much data, they have the responsibility — and are ideally positioned — to provide privacy to their customers.
The conundrum lies with how operators can overcome the privacy barrier to use their customers personal data for their own and their customers benefit. They need a way to for customers to provide consent for the use of that data. Thats what Lifepass does. In a paradigm shift, it enables and encourages customers to make use of their personal data for their own benefit. As you have discerned, privacy is a foundational aspect of Lifepass. It is privacy by design and permeates everything within the ecosystem.
To enable privacy, individuals need control. So we are returning control to the individual end user. Once the individual has control and feels their personal data is safe, then they can start to make use of that data and let reap the benefits. Their data has huge value after all. Its what we call Data Equity. If someone uses your data, or targets you, for example, you should get something in return. And of course you want the benefits of crowd as well — not only to crowd-source, but also to crowd-feed.
You can decide yourself what communities and populations are relevant. So you can see Lifepass embraces 4 key principles: Privacy, Value, Control and Crowd. But it goes even further than that and gives you a very personal and relevant digital experience. Its a platform to enable your Digital Lifestyle.
Richard Power is a Distinguished Fellow and Director of Strategic Communications at Carnegie Mellon University CyLab, one of worlds leading academic cyber security research programs. His office is at the Carnegie Mellon Universitys Silicon Valley campus in NASA Research Park (Mountain View, California).