3 developments you might not see coming in the privacy space in the next decade

If you had talked with technology and privacy experts 30 years ago, few of them might have predicted all of the advances in technology, world events like COVID-19, and rapid advances in privacy laws that we see today that have had tremendous impacts on how organizations collect and handle personal data.  

That said, it can be useful to shake the magic 8-ball from time to time and make predictions – which can guide our long-range decisions as we all navigate the complex and ever-changing world of privacy.  

Since one of the best road maps to the future is the events of the past, before predicting the privacy environment of tomorrow we should quickly consider today’s privacy trends. One way to think about current (and future) privacy trends is to look at developments across science and technology.  

Today

Privacy enhancing technology

The last few years we have seen an enormous uptick in both privacy enhancing technologies and data using technologies. On the privacy enabling side, technologies can now help companies manage complex consents and preferences across ecosystems, as well as handle individual rights in an increasingly automated manner across companies and systems. There are technical methods to allow data operations even on encrypted data, and, through federated differential machine learning, ways to train machine learning models in a privacy-sensitive manner.  

Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things

Technology advancements also pose some privacy risk, as Artificial Intelligence (AI) opens the ability to effectively make sense of enormous amounts of data. Smaller, smarter devices have given people the convenience of wearable devices, including new medical devices. This has created a whole new set of available data about people, their activities, and their things. In fact, today we talk about the Internet of Things (IoTs) – a world in which we can seamlessly interact with home appliances, our own bodies, and each other in new and endless ways. Medical advances have also combined with the technical to give us new insights through data into our individual chemistries, genes, and physical geometries and traits. Even beyond smart medical devices and health/fitness wearables, we have more data available to us than ever before about ourselves, our environments, our connections and friends, our bodies, and our health.  

AI has also introduced the concept of deep fakes, which are realistic images, videos or audio recordings that are not, in fact, images/videos/audio recordings of a real human being. There are benign uses of this technology, of course, such as for developing realistic online games. However, deep fakes presented in other, more manipulative contexts can pose threats related to intellectual property, identity, child pornography, social engineering, and influence. 

Future trends

Quantum computing and Artificial Intelligence

First, an almost certain prediction is that technology will continue to improve in speed, capability, and sophistication, generating more data than ever. Quantum computing, for example, is already here – but the full set of benefits and risks to privacy and security are still in the front view windshield.  

As quantum computing and AI continue to develop, organizations will both have more sophisticated tools in their toolbox to secure data, enhance privacy, and manage complicated jurisdictional rules around consents and preferences. However, these same organizations will also face more sophisticated adversaries. Responsible companies (and regulators) of the future will have to solve the problem of how to effectively fight against bad actors using deep fakes and quantum computing encryption breaking technology.  

Internet of Things and Ambient Visibility Intelligence

Smart devices will continue to develop, creating a very 360 view and control of our environments. Gartner, in its evaluation of technology trends, proposes that this may give us ambient visibility intelligence – technology seamlessly integrated into our environment, generating more data and privacy risks along with the obvious benefits. While today we may have the ability to control and generate data about our home appliances and smart wearable devices, tomorrow we will have both more devices, more control, and more centralization and automation of decision-making. This reduces the human burden to turn lights on and off, open garage doors, and turn on the heater in cars – but it also creates a larger set of centralized data, which in turn creates data breach and data weaponization opportunities for the bad guys. Ponder, for a moment, the horror-movie scene of a homeowner sticking their hand in the ‘smart’ garbage disposal – and because someone else with bad intent gained access to the device, they can turn it on remotely.  

Neurological Enhancement

Additionally, as biomedicine and technology continue to expand, the concept of neurological enhancement becomes possible. That is, in addition to data about our heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure, we may have technology that measures and even interacts with brain functions. Through 2-day brain-technology interfaces, organizations may have the ability in the future to ‘read’ emotions and even influence thoughts, memories, and emotions. From a privacy and security perspective, the development of neurological enhancement technologies is much more than just an increase in personal data volume. Consider the privacy implications of advertisers having the ability to directly ‘read’ a positive reaction to an ad, organizations being able to cause an emotion, and even a brain being ‘hacked.’  

Final thoughts 

Based on real-world developments in science and technology, it is reasonable to track trends to make three predictions.  

1. Quantum computing, AI, and other technologies will increase our ability to generate and use enormous quantities of data. Technological advancements will also allow for better encryption and security, consent and preference management, and other privacy-sensitive activities. At the same time, history has shown us that ethical technology use and unethical use tend to leapfrog one another. It is easy to predict a similar, future cycle as bad guys use and develop technology to steal, trick, and misuse, and good guys develop technologies to combat the bad. Privacy pros of the future will have to continue to solve the problems that AI, deep fake, and quantum computing encryption breaker technologies create.  
2. In the future, we will be able to exert more control over more aspects of our environment. As this becomes a burden, we will develop centralized ‘controllers’ of the smart appliances, wearables, vehicles, and other devices around us. The privacy professionals of the future will face not only the volume challenge as more devices become interconnected and smart, and so generate more data. They will also face additional security and misuse problems as technology digs holes into security protocols and allows devices to be weaponized.  
3. The future will bring not only more data, but also an entirely different type of data – neurological data. With 2-way brain interfaces, it may be possible to extract information about, and even influence, how a person is thinking and feeling. If people are worried today about the sensitivity of their online behaviors, consider how much more sensitive data about their true thoughts and feelings would be – and how much more potential there is for this information to be misused.