The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has joined data protection authorities from around the world in calling for more openness about the proposed Libra digital currency and infrastructure.

Per the letter:

• The ambition to change the online payments landscape must work in tandem with people’s privacy expectations and rights.
•  Facebook’s involvement is particularly significant, as there is the potential to combine Facebook’s vast reserves of personal information with financial information and cryptocurrency, amplifying privacy concerns about the network’s design and data sharing arrangements.

Key issues to check:

• Robust measures to protect data including:
  • Sufficient disclosure: including the use of profiling and algorithms, and the sharing of personal information
  • Privacy protective default settings
  • Collection of minimum amount of data
  • Adequate measures to protect the data
  • Simple procedures for exercising rights
•  Privacy by design
• Compliance by all processors
•  DPIA’s
• Uniformity of data protection standards
• Data sharing and prevention of re-identification.

Read the full text of the letter.

[View source.]