Where privacy
meets humanity

I grew up in a small Yorkshire town where I learned to crave privacy early.

There were twitching curtains, familiar faces, and the quiet sense that someone always knew where you had been, who you were with, or what you were doing. At the time, I experienced that watchfulness as something I wanted to escape.

I wanted privacy. I wanted space. I wanted the freedom to exist without always feeling observed.

Years later, my understanding of privacy changed.

Through legal and human-rights work, including whistleblowing investigations and human-rights cases, I saw that privacy could mean far more than simply being left alone. It could mean safety. Dignity. Voice. Autonomy. The ability to decide what parts of your life belong to others and what should remain yours.

I also began to recognise something more complicated.

The surveillance of small-town life, however uncomfortable it sometimes felt, was rooted in human relationships and community. Digital surveillance is different. Information can be collected, copied, combined, inferred from, shared and retained by systems and organisations we may never see.

And once information begins to travel, it can become something very different from the moment that created it.

That question followed me throughout my career in privacy, governance and complex organisations.

Then, on an ordinary train journey from Leeds to London, I found myself wondering:

And I realised something that stayed with me:

Even for someone working in privacy and governance, it was remarkably difficult to see my own data journey.

If the systems around an ordinary journey are difficult for someone inside the field to understand, what does meaningful transparency look like for everyone else?

KORU grew from that question. It began as an attempt to make the invisible more visible.

Not because data collection is inherently wrong. Technology can make our lives easier, safer, more connected and more creative. The harder question is what happens after the useful moment.