I will start here it is July 11, 2024, the morning is gust of cold breeze and struggling sunshine that hardly scared the dew let alone warm for skin. Ours was a generational march to the clinic. Knowing humanity is about service and they had promised to be as human as I, so I bought into the promise and entered in.
Customarily, hopeful and expectantly, quite literally! My Kashaam heads for the pen to fill the paper form given at the reception. Handed her was another form from Data Protection department of the establishment so we spent time reading typically our mind has walked alongside us. We interrogated the language, tone, promises and deprivation that they had outline upfront in what was a summary of the policy document. Offcourse they characteristically redirected us to a website for more information and this website was non existent and amorphous. The Long story short we decline them to dine with our data in the corporate high table and shock on us SERVICE DENIED!
Yes! We were denied service for asserting that we cannot consent to the data policy that allow them to use our data mostly not for the improvement of service to us but for premium in corporate establishment. Medical data at least in my knowledge was to pile up the necessary medical history to better the service offered to any patient that walks right into their doors. Unfortunately, they sought this high horse of compliance over the real service they purport to serve which is ministering to the sick. That departure from their foundational purpose as a hospital meant only one thing which Edward Snowden calls Surveillance Capitalism, for the promise of convenience we are led to exchanging of personal information and sites that demanded constant and laborious upkeep to continue to use or access service.
Why am bothered
Am not bothered as much since multitude of my personal data stands somewhere in the server in Europe and America unguarded, unscripted being sold to the highest bidder. They remain in those storage location under amorphous names like cloud storage when in real sense they are data that can easy be intercepted, shared and monetized. So why is this unique? It is because it is a very bold capitalistic move to punish those who will step back and refuse to be squeezed into the corporate marketing mold. Maybe to deny right to be served and freedom to make uncoerced decision about how you want to live your life.
Denial of service is inhuman for a hospital and means that political correctness, being in synch with times and sketched compliance are more important commitment to serve the people coming their way. If sacred service industry that deals with lives are made to prioritize the data of their patient to attending to them and ministering health to them then we are stepping into a very scary high seas that will potentially sink not just those seeking service but even these industries.
Consent versus Decline
As a personal who has worked in an IT space, I am aware of data policies that declining means being denied access. This is mostly around application, specific documents someone might want to access and they will often provide a long writeup in legal language and is always upfront. Most of these outfits stores, trades and use our data for research and other commercial purposes. My worry is that an entity that does not trade on data or specific technologies denies their client service of the primary health which is why the outfit is established. The right to
From dime to Data, then Data to more dime
Seems like there is a new currency in the market, that’s Data. Its worthy just so much that it can have a priceless tag hanging around its neck. If money is not what we secure service and goods with then we might as well be tiptoeing right into authoritarian empires who will set the rule and any alternative won’t be offer; if offered it should never be decline and if declined, we as well can forget the services and goods we wanted to secure. I personally believe that we should be left free to make decision for ourselves and no one is to be coerced into some kinds of premade forethought of what progress, productivity and convenience ought to look like. If service can be denied, my little money foregone then there must be something more that they are making through my compliance. We as well might kiss goodbye the freedom we so little appreciate which is slowly being taken away but since the promise of convenience and better service is blinding us from the subtle unnoticeable departure from freedom. Anyway, they that has learned to enslave doesn’t come with dark stinky ships, chains and violence as they did in past centuries. No! they just study our desires, distractions and behaviour then package an appeal that comes with solemn promises but also serious takeaways.
Loss of Primacy
A physician must keep healing primary, hospital is meant for the sick, that’s primary and no matter the circumstances he/she must keep this for conscience and for professional requirements. Since our lives are supported for many multi-disciplinary spectra of trades that make it possible for our health, comfort, convenience, protection and our general wellbeing. It is important to do our primary vocations that serve others and ensures our livelihoods. It will be immoral if a plumber will turn down a well-meaning client whose toilet system has burst and made their habitation inhabitable who is ready to pay for the service but just because of compliance which in many instances are often have nothing to do with the job.
Way forward!
We need to have checks and balances as we seek to incorporate our tools and technologies into our service industries. The primary intention of the industry must come prior and of utmost importance. If the service industry is to serve any other subservient purpose than what it is established to do then we need to bring them to book. We to petition regulators to weed out any of players in the industries who have neglected their primary responsibility to the citizens. Any departure to serve politically correct interests, corporate and globalists agenda. At a personal level reject any demands in the service industry that over asks more than is necessary, decline!