Transatlantic Data Privacy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paul M. Schwartz and Karl-Nikolaus Peifer in Georgetown Law Journal: “International flows of personal information are more significant than ever, but differences in transatlantic data privacy law imperil this data trade. The resulting policy debate has led the EU to set strict limits on transfers of personal data to any non-EU country—including the United States—that lacks sufficient privacy protections. Bridging the transatlantic data divide is therefore a matter of the greatest significance.

In exploring this issue, this Article analyzes the respective legal identities constructed around data privacy in the EU and the United States. It identifies profound differences in the two systems’ images of the individual as bearer of legal interests. The EU has created a privacy culture around “rights talk” that protects its “datasubjects.” In the EU, moreover, rights talk forms a critical part of the postwar European project of creating the identity of a European citizen. In the United States, in contrast, the focus is on a “marketplace discourse” about personal information and the safeguarding of “privacy consumers.” In the United States, data privacy law focuses on protecting consumers in a data marketplace.

This Article uses its models of rights talk and marketplace discourse to analyze how the EU and United States protect their respective data subjects and privacy consumers. Although the differences are great, there is still a path forward. A new set of institutions and processes can play a central role in developing mutually acceptable standards of data privacy. The key documents in this regard are the General Data Protection Regulation, an EU-wide standard that becomes binding in 2018, and the Privacy Shield, an EU–U.S. treaty signed in 2016. These legal standards require regular interactions between the EU and United States and create numerous points for harmonization, coordination, and cooperation. The GDPR and Privacy Shield also establish new kinds of governmental networks to resolve conflicts. The future of international data privacy law rests on the development of new understandings of privacy within these innovative structures….(More)”.

The Challenge of VR to the Liberal Democratic Order

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Edward Castronova: “The rapid expansion of virtual reality (VR) technology in the years 2016-2021 awakens a significant constitutional issue. In a liberal democratic order, rule is by consent of the governed. In the medium-term future, many of the governed will be immersed fully within VR environments, environments which, we are told, will provide entertainment of extraordinary power. These people will be happy. Happy people do not demand change. Yet there surely will be a change as VR takes hold: The quality of life will erode. People fully immersed in VR will come to be isolated, sedentary, and unhealthy. Objectively speaking, this is nothing to be desired. Subjectively, however, it will seem to be wonderful. The people themselves will be happy, and they will resist interference. At the moment this matter concerns only a few thousand nerds, but trends in technology and entertainment point to a future in which many people will be happily living awful, VR-dominated lives. How then will the liberal democratic order promote human well-being while remaining a liberal and democratic order?…(More)”

plainlanguage.gov

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

plainlanguage.gov: “The Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN) is a group of federal employees from different agencies and specialties who support the use of clear communication in government writing. Originally called the Plain English Network, PLAIN has been meeting informally since the mid 1990s.

Our goal is to promote the use of plain language for all government communications. We believe that using plain language will save federal agencies time and money and provide better service to the American public.

To promote plain language, we:

It’s Time to Tax Companies for Using Our Personal Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Saadia Madsbjerg in the New York Times: “Our data is valuable. Each year, it generates hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of economic activity, mostly between and within corporations — all on the back of information about each of us.

It’s this transaction — between you, the user, giving up details of yourself to a company in exchange for a product like a photo app or email, or a whole ecosystem like Facebook — that’s worth by some estimates $1,000 per person per year, a number that is quickly rising.

The value of our personal data is primarily locked up in the revenues of large corporations. Some, like data brokerages, exist solely to buy and sell sets of that data.

Why should companies be the major, and often the only, beneficiaries of this largess? They shouldn’t. Those financial benefits need to be shared, and the best way to do it is to impose a small tax on this revenue and use the proceeds to build a better, more equitable internet and society that benefit us all.

The data tax could be a minor cost, less than 1 percent of the revenue companies earn from selling our personal data, spread out over an entire industry. Individually, no company’s bottom line would substantially suffer; collectively, the tax would pull money back to the public, from an industry profiting from material and labor that is, at its very core, our own.

This idea is not new. It is, essentially, a sales tax, among the oldest taxes that exist, but it hasn’t been done because assigning a fixed monetary value to our data can be very difficult. For a lot of internet businesses, our personal data either primarily flows through the business or remains locked within….(More)”.

Participatory Grant Making: Has its Time Come?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Cynthia Gibson for the Ford Foundation: “…During the past decade, all sectors of society have faced heightened demand for greater accountability and transparency. People have become more distrustful of established institutions, they are demanding more information about issues and decisions afecting them and their families and communities, and they want more voice in decision-making processes. Technological innovation also has created new possibilities — and new pressures — for organizations and institutions to become more democratic by involving the public in their work.

Philanthropy is not immune from these trends. While for decades, philanthropy was seen as endowed foundations set up by the rich, recent years have seen a surge in crowdfunding, giving circles, donor-advised funds, and a panoply of digital giving platforms that allow anyone to be a philanthropist. Alongside these, traditions of giving from within communities that existed long before philanthropy became professionalized have become more prominent.

Philanthropy and other felds also are being reshaped by the attitudes and capacities of a new generation of young people who have grown up with the Internet and embrace its culture of transparency and bottom-up action. Additionally, there is a growing awareness that many public challenges are exceedingly complex and won’t respond to one-shot solutions from experts or institutions working on their own.

These and other trends refect a backlash against the “establishment” occurring in politics, higher education, the media, and other felds in which elite interests are perceived to have drowned out the concerns of ordinary people. Americans of all stripes and political persuasions have come to believe they have little say in guiding public decisions and improving the health and well-being of their communities..

This paper assesses the embrace of participatory approaches to date by philanthropy and other felds. In assessing philanthropy’s record, the paper fnds examples of individual foundations and networks of funders that are experimenting with participatory approaches. It also, however, fnds that there is a great deal of talk about participation in the feld but comparatively little commitment to integrating these practices into foundations’ strategies and activities, and especially their cultures, over the long term…(More)”.

Crowd.Law

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New project by The GovLab: “With rates of trust in government at historic lows, the legitimacy of traditional representative models of lawmaking — often conducted by professional staff and politicians working behind closed doors and distorted by political party agendas–is called into question. New forms of public participation could help to improve both legitimacy and effectiveness by introducing more data and diverse viewpoints at each stage of the lawmaking process.

CrowdLaw is the practice of using technology to tap the intelligence and expertise of the public in order to improve the quality of lawmaking. Around the world, there are already over two dozen examples of local legislatures and national parliaments turning to the Internet to involve the public in legislative drafting and decision-making. These ambitious crowdlaw initiatives show that the public can, in many cases, go beyond contributing opinions and signing petitions online to playing a more substantive role, including: proposing legislation, drafting bills, monitoring implementation, and supplying missing data. Through such processes, the public becomes collaborators and co-creators in the legislative process to the end of improving the quality of legislative outcomes and the effectiveness of governing.

GovLab is supporting legislative bodies in investigating, designing, implementing, and testing crowdlaw initiatives. Our work includes:

  • Studying and sharing learnings about CrowdLaw practices in use around the world and convening practitioners to share learnings.
  • Synthesizing best practices for the design of CrowdLaw initiatives — including platforms, processes, and policies — through an on-going survey of over 25 public engagement initiatives.
  • Cultivating a thriving network of now more than 90 CrowdLaw and public engagement experts and practitioners.
  • Crafting a model legal framework to accelerate the integration of public input into the legislative process.
  • Advising on the implementation of CrowdLaw practices….(More)”

Manipulating Social Media to Undermine Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Freedom of the Net 2017 Report by the Freedom House: “Governments around the world have dramatically increased their efforts to manipulate information on social media over the past year. The Chinese and Russianregimes pioneered the use of surreptitious methods to distort online discussions and suppress dissent more than a decade ago, but the practice has since gone global. Such state-led interventions present a major threat to the notion of the internet as a liberating technology.

Online content manipulation contributed to a seventh consecutive year of overall decline in internet freedom, along with a rise in disruptions to mobile internet service and increases in physical and technical attacks on human rights defenders and independent media.

Nearly half of the 65 countries assessed in Freedom on the Net 2017 experienced declines during the coverage period, while just 13 made gains, most of them minor. Less than one-quarter of users reside in countries where the internet is designated Free, meaning there are no major obstacles to access, onerous restrictions on content, or serious violations of user rights in the form of unchecked surveillance or unjust repercussions for legitimate speech.

The use of “fake news,” automated “bot” accounts, and other manipulation methods gained particular attention in the United States. While the country’s online environment remained generally free, it was troubled by a proliferation of fabricated news articles, divisive partisan vitriol, and aggressive harassment of many journalists, both during and after the presidential election campaign.

Russia’s online efforts to influence the American election have been well documented, but the United States was hardly alone in this respect. Manipulation and disinformation tactics played an important role in elections in at least 17 other countries over the past year, damaging citizens’ ability to choose their leaders based on factual news and authentic debate. Although some governments sought to support their interests and expand their influence abroad—as with Russia’s disinformation campaigns in the United States and Europe—in most cases they used these methods inside their own borders to maintain their hold on power.

Venezuela, the Philippines, and Turkey were among 30 countries where governments were found to employ armies of “opinion shapers” to spread government views, drive particular agendas, and counter government critics on social media. The number of governments attempting to control online discussions in this manner has risen each year since Freedom House began systematically tracking the phenomenon in 2009. But over the last few years, the practice has become significantly more widespread and technically sophisticated, with bots, propaganda producers, and fake news outlets exploiting social media and search algorithms to ensure high visibility and seamless integration with trusted content.

Unlike more direct methods of censorship, such as website blocking or arrests for internet activity, online content manipulation is difficult to detect. It is also more difficult to combat, given its dispersed nature and the sheer number of people and bots employed for this purpose… (More)”.

Measuring Tomorrow: Accounting for Well-Being, Resilience, and Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Éloi Laurent on “How moving beyond GDP will improve well-being and sustainability…Never before in human history have we produced so much data, and this empirical revolution has shaped economic research and policy profoundly. But are we measuring, and thus managing, the right things—those that will help us solve the real social, economic, political, and environmental challenges of the twenty-first century? In Measuring Tomorrow, Éloi Laurent argues that we need to move away from narrowly useful metrics such as gross domestic product and instead use broader ones that aim at well-being, resilience, and sustainability. By doing so, countries will be able to shift their focus away from infinite and unrealistic growth and toward social justice and quality of life for their citizens.

The time has come for these broader metrics to become more than just descriptive, Laurent argues; applied carefully by private and public decision makers, they can foster genuine progress. He begins by taking stock of the booming field of well-being and sustainability indicators, and explains the insights that the best of these can offer. He then shows how these indicators can be used to develop new policies, from the local to the global….(More)”.

Understanding Corporate Data Sharing Decisions: Practices, Challenges, and Opportunities for Sharing Corporate Data with Researchers

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Leslie Harris at the Future of Privacy Forum: “Data has become the currency of the modern economy. A recent study projects the global volume of data to grow from about 0.8 zettabytes (ZB) in 2009 to more than 35 ZB in 2020, most of it generated within the last two years and held by the corporate sector.

As the cost of data collection and storage becomes cheaper and computing power increases, so does the value of data to the corporate bottom line. Powerful data science techniques, including machine learning and deep learning, make it possible to search, extract and analyze enormous sets of data from many sources in order to uncover novel insights and engage in predictive analysis. Breakthrough computational techniques allow complex analysis of encrypted data, making it possible for researchers to protect individual privacy, while extracting valuable insights.

At the same time, these newfound data sources hold significant promise for advancing scholarship and shaping more impactful social policies, supporting evidence-based policymaking and more robust government statistics, and shaping more impactful social interventions. But because most of this data is held by the private sector, it is rarely available for these purposes, posing what many have argued is a serious impediment to scientific progress.

A variety of reasons have been posited for the reluctance of the corporate sector to share data for academic research. Some have suggested that the private sector doesn’t realize the value of their data for broader social and scientific advancement. Others suggest that companies have no “chief mission” or public obligation to share. But most observers describe the challenge as complex and multifaceted. Companies face a variety of commercial, legal, ethical, and reputational risks that serve as disincentives to sharing data for academic research, with privacy – particularly the risk of reidentification – an intractable concern. For companies, striking the right balance between the commercial and societal value of their data, the privacy interests of their customers, and the interests of academics presents a formidable dilemma.

To be sure, there is evidence that some companies are beginning to share for academic research. For example, a number of pharmaceutical companies are now sharing clinical trial data with researchers, and a number of individual companies have taken steps to make data available as well. What is more, companies are also increasingly providing open or shared data for other important “public good” activities, including international development, humanitarian assistance and better public decision-making. Some are contributing to data collaboratives that pool data from different sources to address societal concerns. Yet, it is still not clear whether and to what extent this “new era of data openness” will accelerate data sharing for academic research.

Today, the Future of Privacy Forum released a new study, Understanding Corporate Data Sharing Decisions: Practices, Challenges, and Opportunities for Sharing Corporate Data with Researchers. In this report, we aim to contribute to the literature by seeking the “ground truth” from the corporate sector about the challenges they encounter when they consider making data available for academic research. We hope that the impressions and insights gained from this first look at the issue will help formulate further research questions, inform the dialogue between key stakeholders, and identify constructive next steps and areas for further action and investment….(More)”.

Somaliland’s voting technology shows how Africa can lead the world

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Calestous Juma in The Conversation: “Africa has become a testing ground for technological leapfrogging. This is a process that involves skipping stages and moving rapidly to the frontiers of innovation.

Technological leapfrogging in Africa has, so far, focused on economic transformation and the improvement of basic services. Drones are a good example: they’re used in the continent’s health services and in agriculture. In South Africa, robots play a crucial role in mining.

Now, in a remarkable extension of technological leapfrogging, Somaliland has become the first country in the world to use iris recognition in a presidential election. This means that a breakaway republic seeking international recognition will have the world’s most sophisticated voting register.

Democracy and tech in Africa

Somaliland’s shift to such advanced voting technology emerged from a lack of trust because of problems with the 2008 elections. For instance, names were duplicated in the voter register because of pressure from local elders. These fraudulent activities and other logistical issues threatened to undermine Somaliland’s good standing in the international community.

Of course, Somaliland is not the only country in Africa to experience problems with its election processes. Others, like Kenya, have also turned to technology to try and deal with their challenges. This is important. Being able to hold free, fair and credible elections is critical in democratic transitions. The lack of trust in the electoral process remains a key source of political tension and violence.

Technology can help – and Somaliland is set to become a regional powerhouse in the production and deployment of the technological know-how that underpins electronic voting.

So how did Somaliland reach this point? And what lessons do its experiences hold for other countries?…(More)”.