There is lot of online petition these days but one makes you wonder what are you missing from your pocket and you would never-ever think of it as a value.

As of today international online petition A stand for democracy in digital age which was started by 562 authors, including 5 Nobel Prize laureates, from over 80 countries gained 178 thousand supporters. Not so impressive numbers compared to 7,1 billion people living on Earth according to US Census Bureau. But we are talking about authors i.e. creative people who are among those who are creating the biggest value in digital age.

Let’s consider who are these authors. Five Nobel Prize Winners who signed are Orhan Pamuk, J.M. Coetzee, Elfriede Jelinek, Günter Grass and Tomas Tranströmer. And on the petition page you can find that among the signatories are also Umberto Eco, Margaret Atwood, Don DeLillo, Daniel Kehlmann, Nawal El Saadawi, Arundhati Roy, Henning Mankell, Richard Ford, Javier Marias, Björk, David Grossman, Arnon Grünberg, Angeles Mastretta, Juan Goytisolo, Nuruddin Farah, João Ribeiro, Victor Erofeyev, Liao Yiwu and David Malouf.

There are others but this group here that consist of 24 names already is worth millions of dollars and their valuables are not only creative masterpieces that they made but also their tools which enabled that to do so.

Their tools are not only their brains but also their personal environments in which their are creating. And what better describes that than – their privacy.

According to Wikipedia, privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively. The boundaries and content of what is considered private differ among cultures and individuals, but share basic common themes.

Just think what would you need to do to create software that can mimic a Nobel Prize winning author’s (like Orham Pamuk’s) writing. Would it be enough to absorb everything that he has written so far or would that software be much more persuasive if it would be enriched by his private information? Isn’t that his digital identity?

Although online petition A stand for democracy in digital age is in its nature a political initiative, I on the other hand am not interested in it in that sense. I care about its other value.

We share the same message: state surveillance of personal data is theft.

My message is even brother:  surveillance of personal data is theft.

And the reason is that personal data are your valuables. This is so not only because in digital age your privacy is integral part of your digital identity, but is also a tool, even something that you can call goods in economic sense, that only you have and that is enabling you to be uniquely creative.

Personal data have economic value and that is one of the pillars of privacy industry and new valuables in the digital age.