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.
Years later, through legal and human-rights work, I saw that privacy could mean far more than simply being left alone. It could mean safety, dignity, voice, autonomy, and the ability to decide what parts of your life belong to others and what should remain yours.
On an ordinary train journey from Leeds to London, I found myself wondering how many different organisations were collecting information about me right now. The question became bigger: where did that information go next, who else might receive it, what could be connected to it, and how long might it remain?
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. 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.
A coffee purchase can become a preference. A location point can become a pattern. A job application can become a score. A conversation with an AI system can become memory, inference or action.
These are not only questions about data. They are questions about power, choice, systems and accountability. That is why KORU begins with people. It follows ordinary moments into the systems behind them and asks what information travels, what decisions become possible, where responsibilities sit, and whether the people affected can still understand and challenge what is happening.
That is where KORU lives: where privacy meets humanity.