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GEORGE Gilder and I have little common ground in politics or, for that matter, in many other things, yet the quote from his book Life After Google opens the door to a world in which we are already living, a world in which every digital door is wide open and, as Gilder has stated, it is a world in which access by others to our individual and collective data will open “your front door, and your car and doors of perception”.

While Gilder is a millionaire and techno-utopian (yes that is a word), I am neither, though we both seem to recognise that while our digital front door is open, we are at risk socially, economically and politically. To paraphrase Janey Godley: “Frank, shut the digital door.”

Why do we need to close the door? The issue is of unregulated access to our individual and collective identities and for Scotland to succeed in the digital age as an independent and sovereign nation we will need to learn and learn fast from our fellow Europeans, especially Estonia.

We find ourselves in a digital world burdened by free apps for every device, from your mobile phone to your watch, draining our data of power and value. All the while our data and that intrinsic value float to the top of the digital swamp, feeding the unbridled greed of conglomerates. It is a system which uses our data and its commercial and social value to direct our choices in consumption of goods, social connection and even seeks to influence our political outlook, and with that our vote, if we live in a country in which we are lucky to have one. It is an environment in which truth and trust become merely words with little weight, a world in which the nation and the citizens that comprise it are mere sets of digital information to be used for profit and power, with little thought for us or our planet.

It is therefore essential for us to recognise a few things about our individual data. Firstly, it’s practically indelible – each footstep we leave on the digital beach never truly washes away in the digital tide. Imagine your younger self, inquisitive and looking out to the digital world – making, as we all do, mistakes. This time in the digital world they will follow you as you grow, and as a child you may have been carefree of the consequences. Yet as a digital adult you suddenly realise that family, friends, employers, your partner, children and even your grandchildren will see and know that which in the pre-digital age would have remained private and part of your journey to adulthood. Our digital past can and does come back to haunt us. That is not to excuse illegal behaviour but merely an illustration of the consequence for those vulnerable and less knowledgeable of those lying in wait who will seek out our vulnerabilities for economic and social advantage.

In a collective effort of solidarity to defend our digital rights, the European Union laid the foundation for one of the most progressive and supported regulations – GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) – copied across the

globe by other states and held as a model of best practice. So much so that even the Westminster Government recognises it will have no other choice than to emulate it on January 1, 2021.

It was hoped that GDPR would and could slam a digital door shut on misuse, and while it is a strong piece of legislation it still suffers from the likes of GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) who utilise dark patterns, which some would say trick consumers into purchases they otherwise would not have made.

In 2015, at the World Economic Forum, Professor Margo Seltzer of Harvard University rang the death knell of privacy of the pre-digital age: “Privacy as I knew it in the past is no longer feasible … how we conventionally think of privacy is dead.”

At privacy’s wake we will remember our ability to close the front door. In a world where everyone wants their Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame via Instagram and Facebook, our digital immaturity does not require the resurrection of the old notion of privacy but one fit for the digital age. One in which our data is safeguarded against the conglomerates, in which the nation state as a digital state even recognises the limitations placed on it as well as its duty to protect our digital citizenship. And yet in due recognition of that, without sharing elements of data collectively with each other via the state, especially a newly independent one, Scotland could and cannot exist; as an independent state we will require to offer radically different digital policies in the fields of learning and knowledge, health and wellbeing, justice, security, defence, allowing Scotland to exist and flourish in the digital age.

To do so we should, as I have argued before, build on the founding institutions created since the re-convening of Holyrood in 1999. Scotland must and can place at its digital heart the only true defence for our digital nationhood – transparency. The digital state requires it to be transparent to those who are its citizens, if it is to be a democratic digital state.

Read the next part in this series tomorrow