Power to the standards

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Gergana Baeva, Michael Puntschuh and Matthieu Binder: “Standards and norms will be of central importance when it comes to the practical implementation of legal requirements for developed and deployed AI systems.

Using expert interviews, our study “Power to the standards” documents the existing obstacles on the way to the standardization of AI. In addition to practical and technological challenges, questions of democratic policy arise. After all, requirements such as fairness or transparency are often regarded as criteria to be determined by the legislator, meaning that they are only partially susceptible to standardization.

Our study concludes that the targeted and comprehensive participation of civil society actors is particularly necessary in order to compensate for existing participation deficits within the standardization process…(More)”.

What It Takes to Build Democratic Institutions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Daron Acemoglu: “Chile’s failure to draft a new constitution that enjoys widespread support from voters is the predictable result of allowing partisans and ideologues to lead the process. Democratic institutions are built by delivering what ordinary voters expect and demand from government, as the history of Nordic social democracy shows…

There are plenty of good models around to help both developing and industrialized countries build better democratic institutions. But with its abortive attempts to draft a new constitution, Chile is offering a lesson in what to avoid.

Though it is one of the richest countries in Latin America, Chile is still suffering from the legacy of General Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship and historic inequalities. The country has made some progress in building democratic institutions since the 1988 plebiscite that began the transition from authoritarianism, and education and social programs have reduced income inequality. But major problems remain. There are deep inequalities not just in income, but also in access to government services, high-quality educational resources, and labor-market opportunities. Moreover, Chile still has the constitution that Pinochet imposed in 1980.

Yet while it seems natural to start anew, Chile has gone about it the wrong way. Following a 2020 referendum that showed overwhelming support for drafting a new constitution, it entrusted the process to a convention of elected delegates. But only 43% of voters turned out for the 2021 election to fill the convention, and many of the candidates were from far-left circles with strong ideological commitments to draft a constitution that would crack down on business and establish myriad new rights for different communities. When the resulting document was put to a vote, 62% of Chileans rejected it…(More)”

Toward a Solid Acceptance of the Decentralized Web of Personal Data: Societal and Technological Convergence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Ana Pop Stefanija et al: “Citizens using common online services such as social media, health tracking, or online shopping effectively hand over control of their personal data to the service providers—often large corporations. The services using and processing personal data are also holding the data. This situation is problematic, as has been recognized for some time: competition and innovation are stifled; data is duplicated; and citizens are in a weak position to enforce legal rights such as access, rectification, or erasure. The approach to address this problem has been to ascertain that citizens can access and update, with every possible service provider, the personal data that providers hold of or about them—the foundational view taken in the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Recently, however, various societal, technological, and regulatory efforts are taking a very different approach, turning things around. The central tenet of this complementary view is that citizens should regain control of their personal data. Once in control, citizens can decide which providers they want to share data with, and if so, exactly which part of their data. Moreover, they can revisit these decisions anytime…(More)”.

Privacy and the City: How Data Shapes City Identities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Bilyana Petkova: “This article bridges comparative constitutional law to research inspired by city leadership and the opportunities that technology brings to the urban environment. It looks first to some of the causes of rapid urbanization and finds them in the pitfalls of antidiscrimination law in federations and quasi-federations such as the United States and the European Union. Short of achieving antidiscrimination based on nationality, the EU has experimented with data privacy as an identity clause that could bring social cohesion the same way purportedly freedom of speech has done in the US. In the City however, diversity replaces antidiscrimination, making cities attractive to migrants across various walks of life. The consequence for federalism is the obvious decline of top-down or vertical, state-based federalism and the rise of legal urbanism whereby cities establish loose networks of cooperation between themselves. These types of arrangements are not yet a threat to the State or the EU but might become such if cities are increasingly isolated from the political process (e.g. at the EU level) and lack legal means to assert themselves in court. City diversity and openness to different cultures in turn invites a connection to new technologies since unlike antidiscrimination that is usually strictly examined on a case-by-case level, diversity can be more readily computed. Finally, the article focuses on NYC and London initiatives to suggest a futuristic vision of city networks that instead of using social credit score like in China, deploy data trusts to populate their urban environments, shape city identities and exchange ideas for urban development…(More)”.

What does it mean to trust a technology?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Jack Stilgoe: “A survey published in October 2023 revealed what seemed to be a paradox. Over the past decade, self-driving vehicles have improved immeasurably, but public trust in the technology is low and falling. Only 37% of Americans said they would be comfortable riding in a self- driving vehicle, down from 39% in 2022 and 41% in 2021. Those that have used the technology express more enthusiasm, but the rest have seemingly had their confidence shaken by the failure of the technology to live up to its hype.

Purveyors and regulators of any new technology are likely to worry about public trust. In the short term, they worry that people won’t want to make use of new innovations. But they also worry that a public backlash might jeopardize not just a single company but a whole area of technological innovation. Excitement about artificial intelligence (AI) has been accompanied by a concern about the need to “build trust” in the technology. Trust—letting one’s guard down despite incomplete information—is vital, but innovators must not take it for granted. Nor can it be circumvented through clever engineering. When cryptocurrency enthusiasts call their technology “trustless” because they think it solves age-old problems of banking (an unavoidably imperfect social institution), we should at least view them with skepticism.

For those concerned about public trust and new technologies, social science has some important lessons. The first is that people trust people, not things. When we board an airplane or agree to get vaccinated, we are placing our trust not in these objects but in the institutions that govern them. We trust that professionals are well-trained; we trust that regulators have assessed the risks; we trust that, if something goes wrong, someone will be held accountable, harms will be compensated, and mistakes will be rectified. Societies can no longer rely on the face-to-face interactions that once allowed individuals to do business. So it is more important than ever that faceless institutions are designed and continuously monitored to realize the benefits of new technologies while mitigating the risks….(More)”.

Navigating the Metrics Maze: Lessons from Diverse Domains for Federal Chief Data Officers

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by the CDO Council: “In the rapidly evolving landscape of government, Federal Chief Data Officers (CDOs) have emerged as crucial leaders tasked with harnessing the power of data to drive organizational success. However, the relative newness of this role brings forth unique challenges, particularly in the realm of measuring and communicating the value of their efforts.

To address this measurement conundrum, this paper delves into lessons from non-data domains such as asset management, inventory management, manufacturing, and customer experience. While these fields share common ground with CDOs in facing critical questions, they stand apart in possessing established performance metrics. Drawing parallels with domains that have successfully navigated similar challenges offers a roadmap for establishing metrics that can transcend organizational boundaries.

By learning from the experiences of other domains and adopting a nuanced approach to metrics, CDOs can pave the way for a clearer understanding of the impact and value of their vital contributions to the data-driven future…(More)”.

How to craft fair, transparent data-sharing agreements

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Stephanie Kanowitz: “Data collaborations are critical to government decision-making, but actually sharing data can be difficult—not so much the mechanics of the collaboration, but hashing out the rules and policies governing it. A new report offers three resources that will make data sharing more straightforward, foster accountability and build trust among the parties.

“We’ve heard over and over again that one of the biggest barriers to collaboration around data turns out to be data sharing agreements,” said Stefaan Verhulst, co-founder of the Governance Lab at New York University and an author of the November report, “Moving from Idea to Practice.” It’s sometimes a lot to ask stakeholders “to provide access to some of their data,” he said.

To help, Verhulst and other researchers identified three components of successful data-sharing agreements: conducting principled negotiations, establishing the elements of a data-sharing agreement and assessing readiness.

To address the first, the report breaks the components of negotiation into a framework with four tenets: separating people from the problem, focusing on interests rather than positions, identifying options and using objective criteria. From discussions with stakeholders in data sharing agreement workshops that GovLab held through its Open Data Policy Lab, three principles emerged—fairness, transparency and reciprocity…(More)”.

Global Digital Data Governance: Polycentric Perspectives

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

(Open Access) Book edited by Carolina Aguerre, Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn, and Jan Aart Scholte: “This book provides a nuanced exploration of contemporary digital data governance, highlighting the importance of cooperation across sectors and disciplines in order to adapt to a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Most of the theory around global digital data governance remains scattered and focused on specific actors, norms, processes, or disciplinary approaches. This book argues for a polycentric approach, allowing readers to consider the issue across multiple disciplines and scales.

Polycentrism, this book argues, provides a set of lenses that tie together the variety of actors, issues, and processes intertwined in digital data governance at subnational, national, regional, and global levels. Firstly, this approach uncovers the complex array of power centers and connections in digital data governance. Secondly, polycentric perspectives bridge disciplinary divides, challenging assumptions and drawing together a growing range of insights about the complexities of digital data governance. Bringing together a wide range of case studies, this book draws out key insights and policy recommendations for how digital data governance occurs and how it might occur differently…(More)”.

The new star wars over satellites

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Peggy Hollinger: “There is a battle brewing in space. In one corner you have the billionaires building giant satellite broadband constellations in low earth orbit (LEO) — Elon Musk with SpaceX’s Starlink and Jeff Bezos with Project Kuiper. 

In the other corner stand the traditional fixed satellite operators such as ViaSat and SES — but also a number of nations increasingly uncomfortable with the way in which the new space economy is evolving. In other words, with the dominance of US mega constellations in a strategic region of space.

The first shots were fired in late November at the World Radiocommunications Conference in Dubai. Every four years, global regulators and industry meet to review international regulations on the use of radio spectrum. 

For those who have only a vague idea of what spectrum is, it is the name for the radio airwaves that carry data wirelessly to enable a vast range of services — from television broadcasting to WiFi, navigation to mobile communications.

Most people are inclined to think that the airwaves have infinite capacity to connect us. But, like water, spectrum is a finite resource and much of it has already been allocated to specific uses. So operators have to transmit signals on shared bands of spectrum — on the promise that their transmissions will not interfere with others. 

Now SpaceX, Kuiper and others operating in LEO are pushing to loosen rules designed to prevent their signals from interfering with those of traditional operators in higher orbits. These rules impose caps on the power used to transmit signals, which facilitate spectrum sharing but also constrain the amount of data they can send. LEO operators say the rules, designed 25 years ago, are outdated. They argue that new technology would allow higher power levels — and greater capacity for customers — without degrading networks of the traditional fixed satellite systems operating in geostationary orbit, at altitudes of 36,000km.

It is perhaps not a surprise that a proposal to make LEO constellations more competitive drew protests from geo operators. Some, such as US-based Hughes Network Systems, have admitted they are already losing customers to Starlink.

What was surprising, however, was the strong opposition from countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Japan and others…(More)”.

How Tracking and Technology in Cars Is Being Weaponized by Abusive Partners

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Kashmir Hill: “After almost 10 years of marriage, Christine Dowdall wanted out. Her husband was no longer the charming man she had fallen in love with. He had become narcissistic, abusive and unfaithful, she said. After one of their fights turned violent in September 2022, Ms. Dowdall, a real estate agent, fled their home in Covington, La., driving her Mercedes-Benz C300 sedan to her daughter’s house near Shreveport, five hours away. She filed a domestic abuse report with the police two days later.

Her husband, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, didn’t want to let her go. He called her repeatedly, she said, first pleading with her to return, and then threatening her. She stopped responding to him, she said, even though he texted and called her hundreds of times.

Ms. Dowdall, 59, started occasionally seeing a strange new message on the display in her Mercedes, about a location-based service called “mbrace.” The second time it happened, she took a photograph and searched for the name online.

“I realized, oh my God, that’s him tracking me,” Ms. Dowdall said.

“Mbrace” was part of “Mercedes me” — a suite of connected services for the car, accessible via a smartphone app. Ms. Dowdall had only ever used the Mercedes Me app to make auto loan payments. She hadn’t realized that the service could also be used to track the car’s location. One night, when she visited a male friend’s home, her husband sent the man a message with a thumbs-up emoji. A nearby camera captured his car driving in the area, according to the detective who worked on her case.

Ms. Dowdall called Mercedes customer service repeatedly to try to remove her husband’s digital access to the car, but the loan and title were in his name, a decision the couple had made because he had a better credit score than hers. Even though she was making the payments, had a restraining order against her husband and had been granted sole use of the car during divorce proceedings, Mercedes representatives told her that her husband was the customer so he would be able to keep his access. There was no button she could press to take away the app’s connection to the vehicle.

“This is not the first time that I’ve heard something like this,” one of the representatives told Ms. Dowdall…(More)”.