Andrew Yang proposes policy that would classify all digital data as personal property

Andrew Yang is a Democratic presidential candidate for the 2020 elections. Yang is also an entrepreneur and founder of Venture for America, a nonprofit organization that helps young people to get the skills they need to work for startups in emerging cities of the US.

On top of that, Andrew Yang’s meme game is not the only thing that is on point, as the policy proposals of his party are also a point in favor. In this sense, Yang just proposed the “Data as a property right” policy, which has the goal of protecting the online data of the US citizens and reassuring the ownership of this information by the individuals, not the corporations.

Data Property as a Right

The candidate explains in his proposal that as of now, online data is owned by the people who collect it and they are pretty much allowed to do anything they want with it…. yes, we are looking at you Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and all the tech corporations that benefit from collecting and selling data.

Yang is proposing digital rights that make us wonder: why they don’t exist already? In this sense, the candidate is proposing things like the right to be informed of the data that is being collected from you, and how it will be put to use.

Other rights include:

• The right to opt-out of data collection or sharing
• The right to know if a website has data on you (and type of data specifically)
• The right to ask to have all the data related to you deleted
• The right to know when a data breach occurs as soon as it occurs
• The right to be informed when the ownership of your data switches hands
• The right to download all data in a standardized format

This policy seems to resonate a lot with the GPDR law that already protects the data of the European Union citizens, which ultimately can be a good thing if done right. Many other candidates could take note of Yang’s proposal since in this ever-growing digital world these rights are becoming a clear need.