Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower’s 4 Tips for Data Protection | Brittany Kaiser at Davos 2020

Each year, at a snowy getaway nestled in the heart of the Swiss Alps, the most powerful people in the world gather to decide the fate of the global economy. This is the 2020 World Economic Forum Crypto Valley Summit, brought to you by Cointelegraph. Hey, YouTube, it's Dylan Love, head of news with Cointelegraph. We are here with Brittany Kaiser at Davos, the 50th edition of the World Economic Forum. Brittany is co founder of some nonprofits, but that's only after her experience working at Cambridge Analytica. Talk to us about Cambridge Analytica. What the hell?

Well, as I think a lot of the people that are here, specifically at the CVVC summit, believe that we can use data science in order to solve a lot of the world's biggest problems. So I joined Cambridge Analytica as perhaps naive, but an over enthusiastic and optimistic young technologist that wanted to learn how to use predictive analytics to improve the results of social impact campaigns. Now, I had also been working in political campaigning for quite a long time, and they had an entire elections division where you could learn about how to engage people politically. That was pretty exciting for me given that registering people to vote is hard, getting people to care about political issues is really hard, and the more accuracy you can have in actually showing people something that is going to engage them or matter to them is a really big deal. So I worked there for three and a half years and unfortunately, I didn't only learn how to use data for social impact. I learned a lot more than I ever bargained for, I suppose about how unregulated the digital asset spread space is in general. Just because you can't see it and you can't touch it doesn't mean that it isn't the most important and valuable asset class in the world. Now I started getting really into the blockchain industry while I was at Cambridge Analytica and we developed even a data driven way to find people that wanted to invest in blockchain, for instance, find people that cared about emerging technologies and start to engage them. Now that was really exciting for me. I really thought that if we're going to use data science in a way that is less invasive than micro targeting campaigns, why don't we use it in order to promote projects and companies that will have a huge social impact on the world in a positive way? When I started combining data science and blockchain in terms of the things that were most important to me, I started to realize that a lot of people were playing in the blockchain space without actually understanding whether they were going to have long term results for their company, because places like the United States did not have laws and regulations that allowed you to understand what you could and couldn't do with your companies. And all my friends were here in Switzerland starting companies that were actually American or they were from other countries around the world where they needed some sort of regulatory certainty in order to buy it in order to build their blockchain companies. So I ended up leaving Cambridge Analytica, not originally to become a whistleblower. I left Cambridge Analytica because I saw the opportunity to work in the blockchain space as much bigger than data science itself.

So talk to us about you've been two nonprofits today. Please tell us what each one is. What are they all about? How are they different from each other?

Of course. So right when I left Cambridge, actually two weeks before I left Cambridge, I was told by Brock Pierce actually that there were new blockchain laws that were being introduced into the Congress in Wyoming. And these were the first two laws in the United States that were what I call blockchain positive laws, as opposed to the New York bit license, which makes it very difficult for people to do business in blockchain in the state of New York. Instead, these were laws that helped define a utility token for the first time. And even going as far as to describe your digital assets is your intangible personal property. So you actually had rights to your blockchain tokens, which can also be considered rights to data and other forms of digital assets, which were still, you know, quite in a gray area legally and regulatory. So I flew to Wyoming, quit Cambridge Analytica and sat in Wyoming Congress with an amazing woman who you've probably heard of, called Caitlin Long, and followed her lead. She taught me how to lobby in the state of Wyoming. She taught me about all of the laws that they were writing. And I helped gather a very large group of people to switch in and out and sit there with her in Congress working with the amazing legislators like Tyler Lindholm who were pushing forward these bills and trying to get real positive change and regulatory certainty for blockchain entrepreneurs. And so we formed the Digital Asset Trade Association. It's Data for Short. Now we're a 501 in Wyoming. So we're a nonprofit lobbying firm and we work with former regulators and technologists to bring them closer to legislators so that we don't have laws that hamper innovation. Now my second nonprofit is more recent, not from two years ago, like Data, but about six months ago, I founded the own Youn Data foundation with my sister. And this kind of comes out of my campaign that I started last year called hashtag own your data, in order to raise awareness of how there is basically a full lack of control and rights to digital assets. And what does that mean? You know, as much as I like to say our data rights should be like human rights, it should be fundamental for every person on Earth. It's very hard to enforce human rights in court, but it's pretty easy to enforce property rights. So what we have done is raise awareness of these problems and what are some of the practical solutions. And one of those solutions is education. So the own youn Data foundation does digital literacy training, specifically in schools. It's actually a program that was partially developed by the World Economic Forum, so very topical for this week. And they just started teaching in schools this year. They developed the curriculum for 10 years. And it's everything about what are your data rights? How do you understand how to protect them? What are basic cybersecurity protocols so that you can protect your data if you want to, or share it if you want to? How do you remain ethical to other people on social media? Media literacy questions like how can you spot disinformation and fake news? These are all the types of things that kids should probably learn before they're given their first device. And so we're helping the WAF and other organizations and bringing that into more schools around the world.

So I want good examples and bad examples. Which countries or jurisdictions are leading the way for data rights and which countries are blowing it?

So the two best countries for data protection are Germany and Switzerland. Germany number one, Switzerland number two, because Germany has its own national legislation as well as EU law to protect individuals. Now, that's for a reason. In Germany, During World War II, national data sets were abused by the government in order to to create the Holocaust. I mean, they've really seen the worst of the worst of how governments or even companies can abuse data, personal data of individuals. And so that's what has driven their very strict regime of data control. And it's led the way for very ethical ways that companies can still interact with clients. But that brand, customer relationship is a lot more trustworthy and a lot more transparent. So I think the way that German companies do business and the way that they market is the most ethical and responsible way of communicating with the buying public that I've ever seen. So that's pretty cool. The worst is America, my home country, has had nearly zero data legislation or regulation throughout all of time, and only just passed the California Consumer Privacy Act. CCPA, kind of modeled off of GDPR. It went into enactment on January 1st, so it's only been around for a couple weeks. And although it provides some protections and that is very exciting, it's not comprehensive and it only applies technically to California. Although we're very lucky that a lot of amazing tech companies have decided that they are going to apply CCPA to the whole United States because it's too expensive to have two different regulations within America. I've also been working with legislators in New York on the New York Privacy act, which goes even further than CCPA to provide people protections. And that will probably get through this year, meaning that we have a chance to actually have national regulation in America soon.

What kinds of small changes or tweaks could somebody make to their digital habits today to improve the way that they're sharing or not sharing their data?

Right. So I think education and awareness is number one. I don't know if you've read the terms and conditions of any of the apps on your phone. Yeah, you're. You're the same as most people. I spent a decade in law school and I preach this every day and I still don't read them every time if I'm in a hurry. But educating yourself about what you are giving away and deciding whether or not you're okay with that is a very important first step. So if you opened up one of those apps and it told you that they had 24. 7 access to all of your contacts, all the data that you created in other apps, your location, your photos, your camera, and your microphone, and it was a random company that you didn't have any trust in. Would you consider deleting that, Apple?

Depends on how much I like it, right?

It depends on how much convenience it gives you. So deciding what you are comfortable with and what your boundaries are in terms of what you're willing to give away, what you're willing to sell in exchange for convenience, I think is a question that everyone should be asking themselves now in terms of education and awareness, the next step is learning how to use more ethical technology solutions. So if you haven't tried DuckDuckGo or Brave Browser instead of your Google Chrome, I suggest you give it a try. You'll find that the results are pretty similar in terms of search and that they're. I mean, it's just a very normal alternative where you have understanding that they are not tracking and tracing you and they're not selling what you're searching for to hundreds or thousands of Companies like Google does use Signal, don't use WhatsApp. Mark Zuckerberg owns that. Would you trust him with your data? I wouldn't. But there are things like that that I think are very important for you to just make incremental small steps. If you want a lot more information about better use of screen time, how to lessen technology's addictive control over you, I would check out the center for Humane Technologies website. They have a huge list of hints and tips that you can integrate into your daily life. But I would say if you don't need so much screen time, if you could consume content in another way, I would suggest doing it like actually buy a real newspaper or pick up a real newspaper every now and then as opposed to only getting your news off your social media feed. There are a lot of things like that that you can do. But I'm really excited to see some of the new blockchain based social media solutions as ways where even if we have to have screen time or we have to connect with loved ones or colleagues or supporters around the world, that we would have a safer place to do that than Facebook.

My final question for you is really more of a request. Could you please show off your necklace and talk about it?

It's very kind of you. So this necklace says own your data. The original one was designed for my film launch at Sundance. This was designed by an amazing woman called Shannon Shion. I also met her through Brock Pearson and Crystal Rose and she's an incredible metal worker and designer. And these were the first one actually had metal letters on a circuit board and now there's molds made of them. So I designed this jewelry line in order to promote awareness of what data ownership means, how the world's most valuable asset, personal data, is somehow something that we do not have rights to, even though we've produced it. There's no other asset class where if you are a producer or an original owner of that asset, that you have zero rights. So this is something that needs to change very badly. I sell these online@ownyourdatafoundation.com that's our shop. We have. If you're not a necklace person, we have loads of other own your data stuff. And you know, in my opinion, it's really blockchain tech and blockchain entrepreneurs that are going to solve a lot of the problems of the data protection crisis. So I'm really excited to be here at this event to check out some of the new solutions. And I'm about to hop on a privacy panel very shortly.

Well, we won't make you late. Thank you for speaking to me today.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Cointelegraph like subscribe and hodl. Sam.