Down in the data dumps

EU monopoly fears may defeat data-sharing phobia

Not all data is private, even in the European Union (EU). A traditional right to privacy has translated into a technology scene which lags the United States in information-sharing. Facebook and Alphabet, the former Google, are in the European Commission's crosshairs. But another European trait, a distrust of monopolies, may liberate data for purposes like medical research and even new ways to do banking.

Europe's competition czar, Margrethe Vestager, is on the case. At the DLD Munich conference on January 17, she emphasised the plight of internet users whose data was effectively being sold to pay for services. She warned that if a few firms had a stranglehold on useful private data then other companies could find it hard to compete. New data-sharing rules governing the relationship between Europe and the United States are expected on January 31. Many headlines have focused on controlling government access to personal information, but how to make companies share data is another facet of the debate.

There are some areas in which privacy concerns shouldn't apply. One is metagenomics, the study of genetic material in the environment. The average human has up to 1,000 external organisms accounting for as much as two kilograms of body mass, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Kevin Slavin. Analysing how these occur in public places can improve healthcare and doesn't obviously raise privacy worries. Samples collected from US subway stations have proved revealing and Carlo Ratti, another MIT professor, suggested at the DLD event that human sewage holds similar promise.

In finance, meanwhile, strict data protection rules come with the territory. But Neelie Kroes, a former EU competition commissioner, reckons Europe missed a big opportunity to compete head-on with US carmakers and she doesn't want financial services innovators to suffer similarly. The so-called PSD2 directive, once adopted, will force big banks to give qualified third parties access to customer data. That's a bone of contention between American banks and upstart providers of account aggregation services. European fintech firms could soon have freer rein.

Europe suffers disadvantages in tech relative to Silicon Valley, including geographic fragmentation and much scarcer funding. The EU's restrictive attitude to data-sharing has mostly been another. At least in some domains, that may change - and sewage could show the way.