Giving consent

Consent is an act by which a person, capable of understanding and free to refuse, changes what others may do to her body, her data, her property. A system can record, verify or predict consent; it cannot give it, because nothing is at stake for it and no one can hold it to a yes. Every regime that takes consent seriously (medical ethics, contract, data protection, sexual consent) locates it in a person for that reason. Consent delegated through an agent is still the principal's consent, and the principal remains the one who can be wronged.