Personal Data, Privacy and the Internet of Things: The Shifting Locus of Agency and Control

This paper examines the shifting the locus of agency and control in the processing of personal data, occasioned by the emerging digital ecosystem and the Internet of Things in particular. It reviews legal, policy, and industry initiatives that seek to respond to broad societal concerns over privacy, and initiatives within design that can be seen to respond to the core problem of empowering users and giving them active control over the processing of personal data. It is, in many respects, a clarion call for HCI to respond to a grand challenge in contemporary life. It suggests that current efforts to address the problem have been piecemeal and that a coherent interdisciplinary approach is required to affect the shift. It proposes that the nascent field of Human Data Interaction provides the necessary design framework needed to drive the research community forwards and put users in control in practice.