As internet users it is next to impossible not to leave a breadcrumb trail of data online. Not just Google and Facebook but companies from almost all sectors as well as governments use those data to make profiles of people. Based on those profiles they predict and influence your behavior. Bits of Freedom is very critical of this development.

What's going on?

Based on your profile you are offered or denied certain options. Information is presented to you, or kept from you. The objective is to manipulate your behavior. To let you spend more time on a website, for example, or to spend money. This undermines your freedom to form your own ideas and make your own choices without any interference. This affects not just you as an individual but society as a whole.

It is extremely unclear what corporations or government organizations know about you. They collect the data you leave or buy your profile from data brokers. This gives them a hold over your life, and you can barely escape these practices. Our dependence on digital services only increases, at home, at school and at work. To withdraw yourself from that dependence is increasingly synonymous to dropping out of society.

Transparancy
Your actions are becoming ever more transparent for corporations and government organizations, while their actions are increasingly becoming untransparent. We don’t know enough about what goes on behind the screens, what interests are at stake and what the implications are for you and for society. That lack of transparency makes it especially difficult to call corporations and government organizations to account. And that’s a concerning development for our democracy and our constitutional state.

Discrimination
Data about you and your behavior offer just a glimpse into who you really are. What’s more, collecting and analyzing the information about you is still done by humans, which means errors and prejudices are inevitable. What if you are put into the wrong box, or are discriminated? That’s incredibly hard to undo, and what makes it even more difficult is the blind but misplaced faith many people and organizations have in “data”.

What does Bits of Freedom do?

Bits of Freedom wants people to be online without their behavior constantly being studied and manipulated. These days the government may no longer force you to accept that other parties track your visits to government websites. You should be able to reject cookies. It is our opinion that this rule should apply to all services paid for with taxpayers’ money. But also to organizations that play a major part in our society, like hospitals, schools, healthcare insurers, banks and internet providers. Bits of Freedom wants to have this prohibition secured in European regulations. And wouldn’t it be nice that if you have paid for a service you are not followed by cookies and trackers of third parties?

Computer says no?
Bits of Freedom would like you to be fully aware of how corporations and government organizations make decisions that affect you. Even if the decision-making is automated. You should be able to know that a decision has been made, on what that decision is based. It is why we fight for a broad interpretation of the right of access. In addition, there should be a good way to contest decisions.

Big Data
The use of large volumes of data (“big data”) has its upside, but the drawbacks are underexposed. Because processed data are collected by humans, and human prejudices and limitations are carried over into the processing, there is always the risk of unfounded insinuations. The potential impact on individuals or groups of people is huge. Bits of Freedom calls attention to the fact that automated decisions are often riddled with errors. Attention is the first step to measures that prevent or avoid errors.

My Data Done Right
Bits of Freedom has developed a tool, My Data Done Right. With this tool you can request corporations and government organizations to provide all information they have on you. Once you know what they know about you, you have the right to demand that they delete, rectify or transfer your data. Moreover, it grants insight into how corporations and government organizations work. If we see something we don’t like, we can confront them, use a political lobby to tighten the rules or campaign together with you for better policies. Meanwhile My Data Done Right has helped tens of thousands to get more grip on their privacy and the tool is now available in several languages and dozens of European countries.