Collection

The ‘Datasphere’, Data Flows Beyond Control, and the Challenges for Law and Governance

Curated on July 25, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jean-Sylvestre Bergé, Stephane Grumbach and Vincenzo Zeno-Zencovich: “The flows of people, goods and capital, which have considerably increased in recent history, are leading to crises (e.g., migrants, tax evasion, food safety) which reveal the failure to control them. Much less visible, and not yet included in economic measurements, data flows have increased exponentially in the last two decades, with the digitisation of social and economic activities. A new space – Datasphere – is emerging, mostly supported by digital platforms which provide essential services reaching half of the world’s population directly. Their control over data flows raises new challenges to governance, and increasingly conflicts with public administration.

In this paper, we consider the need and the difficulty of regulating this emerging space and the different approaches followed on both sides of the Atlantic. We distinguish between three situations. We first consider data at rest, which is from the point of view of the location where data are physically stored. We then consider data in motion, and the issues related to their combination. Finally, we investigate data in action, that is data as vectors of command of legal or illegal activities over territories, with impacts on economy and society as well as security, and raise governance challenges.

The notion of ‘Datasphere’ proposes a holistic comprehension of all the ‘information’ existing on earth, originating both in natural and socio-economic systems, which can be captured in digital form, flows through networks, and is stored, processed and transformed by machines. It differs from the ‘Cyberspace’, which is mostly concerned with the networks, the technical instruments (from software and protocols to cables and data centers) together with the social activities it allows, and to what extent they could/should be allowed.

The paper suggests one – out of the many possible – approach to this new world. Clearly it would be impossible to delve in depth into all its facets, which are as many as those of the physical world. Rather, it attempts to present how traditional legal notions could be usefully managed to put order in a highly complex environment, avoiding a piecemeal approach that looks only at details….(More)”.

Algorithms are taking over – and woe betide anyone they class as a ‘deadbeat’

Curated on July 25, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Zoe Williams at The Guardian: “The radical geographer and equality evangelist Danny Dorling tried to explain to me once why an algorithm could be bad for social justice.

Imagine if email inboxes became intelligent: your messages would be prioritised on arrival, so if the recipient knew you and often replied to you, you’d go to the top; I said that was fine. That’s how it works already. If they knew you and never replied, you’d go to the bottom, he continued. I said that was fair – it would teach me to stop annoying that person.

If you were a stranger, but typically other people replied to you very quickly – let’s say you were Barack Obama – you’d sail right to the top. That seemed reasonable. And if you were a stranger who others usually ignored, you’d fall off the face of the earth.

“Well, maybe they should get an allotment and stop emailing people,” I said.

“Imagine how angry those people would be,” Dorling said. “They already feel invisible and they [would] become invisible by design.”…

All our debates about the use of big data have centred on privacy, and all seem a bit distant: I care, in principle, whether or not Ocado knows what I bought on Amazon. But in my truest heart, I don’t really care whether or not my Frube vendor knows that I also like dystopian fiction of the 1970s.

I do, however, care that a program exists that will determine my eligibility for a loan by how often I call my mother. I care if landlords are using tools to rank their tenants by compliant behaviour, to create a giant, shared platform of desirable tenants, who never complain about black mould and greet each rent increase with a basket of muffins. I care if the police in Durham are using Experian credit scores to influence their custodial decisions, an example – as you may have guessed by its specificity – that is already real. I care that the same credit-rating company has devised a Mosaic score, which splits households into comically bigoted stereotypes: if your name is Liam and you are an “avid texter”, that puts you in “disconnected youth”, while if you’re Asha you’re in “crowded kaleidoscope”. It’s not a privacy issue so much as a profiling one, although, as anyone who has ever been the repeated victim of police stop-and-search could have told me years ago, these are frequently the same thing.

Privacy isn’t the right to keep secrets: it’s the right to be an individual, not a type; the right to make a choice that’s entirely your own; the right to be private….(More)”.

The Magic of “Multisolving”

Curated on July 24, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Elizabeth Sawin at Stanford Social Innovation Review: “In Japan, manufacturing facilities use “green curtains”—living panels of climbing plants—to clean the air, provide vegetables for company cafeterias, and reduce energy use for cooling. A walk-to-school program in the United Kingdom fights a decline in childhood physical activity while reducing traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. A food-gleaning program staffed by young volunteers and families facing food insecurity in Spain addresses food waste, hunger, and a desire for sustainability.

Each of these is a real-life example of what I call “multisolving”—where people pool expertise, funding, and political will to solve multiple problems with a single investment of time and money. It’s an approach with great relevance in this era of complex, interlinked, social and environmental challenges. But what’s the best formula for implementing projects that tackle many problems at once?

Climate Interactive, which uses systems analysis to help people address climate change, recently completed a year-long study of multisolving for climate and health. We learned there is no one-size-fits-all recipe, but we did identify three operating principles and three practices that showed up again and again in the projects we studied. What’s more, anyone wanting to access the power of cross-sectoral partnership can adopt them….(More)”.

Information Asymmetries, Blockchain Technologies, and Social Change

Curated on July 24, 2018May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Reflections by Stefaan Verhulst on “the potential (and challenges) of Distributed Ledgers for “Market for Lemons” Conditions: We live in a data age, and it has become common to extol the transformative power of data and information. It is now conventional to assume that many of our most pressing public problems—everything from climate change to terrorism to mass migration—are amenable to a “data fix.”

The truth, though, is a little more complicated. While there is no doubt that data—when analyzed and used responsibly—holds tremendous potential, many factors affect whether, and to what extent, that potential will ultimately be fulfilled.

Our ability to address complex public problems using data depends vitally on how our respective data ecosystems is designed (as well as ongoing questions of representation in, power over, and stewardship of these ecosystems).

Flaws in our data ecosystem that prevent us from addressing problems; may also be responsible for many societal failures and inequalities result from the fact that:

some actors have better access to data than others;
data is of poor quality (or even “fake”); contains implicit bias; and/or is not validated and thus not trusted;
only easily accessible data are shared and integrated (“open washing”) while important data remain carefully hidden or without resources for relevant research and analysis; and more generally that
even in an era of big and open data, information too often remains stove-piped, siloed, and generally difficult to access.

Several observers have pointed to the relationship between these information asymmetries and, for example, corruption, financial exclusion, global pandemics, forced mass migration, human rights abuses, and electoral fraud.

Consider the transaction costs, power inequities and other obstacles that result from such information asymmetries, namely:

– At the individual level: too often someone who is trying to open a bank account (or sign up for new cell phone service) is unable to provide all the requisite information, such as credit history, proof of address or other confirmatory and trusted attributes of identity. As such, information asymmetries are in effect limiting this individual’s access to financial and communications services.

– At the corporate level, a vast body of literature in economics has shown how uncertainty over the quality and trustworthiness of data can impose transaction costs, limit the development of markets for goods and services, or shut them down altogether. This is the well-known “market for lemons” problem made famous in a 1970 paper of the same name by George Akerlof.

– At the societal or governance level, information asymmetries don’t just affect the efficiency of markets or social inequality. They can also incentivize unwanted behaviors that cause substantial public harm. Tyrants and corrupt politicians thrive on limiting their citizens’ access to information (e.g., information related to bank accounts, investment patterns or disbursement of public funds). Likewise, criminals, operate and succeed in the information-scarce corners of the underground economy.

Blockchain technologies and Information Asymmetries

This is where blockchain comes in. At their core, blockchain technologies are a new type of disclosure mechanism that have the potential to address some of the information asymmetries listed above. There are many types of blockchain technologies, and while I use the blanket term ‘blockchain’ in the below for simplicity’s sake, the nuances between different types of blockchain technologies can greatly impact the character and likelihood of success of a given initiative.

By leveraging a shared and verified database of ledgers stored in a distributed manner, blockchain seeks to redesign information ecosystems in a more transparent, immutable, and trusted manner. Solving information asymmetries may be the real potential of blockchain, and this—much more than the current hype over virtual currencies—is the real reason to assess its potential….(More)”.

The Case for Accountability: How it Enables Effective Data Protection and Trust in the Digital Society

Curated on July 24, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Centre for Information Policy Leadership: “Accountability now has broad international support and has been adopted in many laws, including in the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), regulatory policies and organisational practices. It is essential that there is consensus and clarity on the precise meaning and application of organisational accountability among all stakeholders, including organisations implementing accountability and data protection authorities (DPAs) overseeing accountability.

Without such consensus, organisations will not know what DPAs expect of them and DPAs will not know how to assess organisations’ accountability-based privacy programs with any degree of consistency and predictability. Thus, drawing from the global experience with accountability to date and from the Centre for Information Policy Leadership’s (CIPL) own extensive prior work on accountability, this paper seeks to explain the following issues:

The concept of organisational accountability and how it is reflected in the GDPR;
The essential elements of accountability and how the requirements of the GDPR (and of other normative frameworks) map to these elements;
Global acceptance and adoption of accountability;
How organisations can implement accountability (including by and between controllers and processors) through comprehensive internal privacy programs that implement external rules or the organisation’s own data protection policies and goals, or through verified or certified accountability mechanisms, such as Binding Corporate Rules (BCR), APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules (CBPR), APEC Privacy Recognition for Processors (PRP), other seals and certifications, including future GDPR certifications and codes of conduct; and
The benefits that accountability can deliver to each stakeholder group.

In addition, the paper argues that accountability exists along a spectrum, ranging from basic accountability requirements required by law (such as under the GDPR) to stronger and more granular accountability measures that may not be required by law but that organisations may nevertheless want to implement because they convey substantial benefits….(More)”.

Regulation by Blockchain: The Emerging Battle for Supremacy between the Code of Law and Code as Law

Curated on July 24, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Karen Yeung at Modern Law Review: “Many advocates of distributed ledger technologies (including blockchain) claim that these technologies provide the foundations for an organisational form that will enable individuals to transact with each other free from the travails of conventional law, thus offering the promise of grassroots democratic governance without the need for third party intermediaries. But does the assumption that blockchain systems will operate beyond the reach of conventional law withstand critical scrutiny?

This is the question which this paper investigates, by examining the intersection and interactions between conventional law promulgated and enforced by national legal systems (ie the ‘code of law’) and the internal rules of blockchain systems which take the form of executable software code and cryptographic algorithms via a distributed computing network (‘code as law’).

It identifies three ways in which the code of law may interact with code as law, based primarily on the intended motives and purposes of those engaged in activities in developing, maintaining or undertaking transactions upon the network, referring to the use of blockchain: (a) with the express intention of evading the substantive limits of the law (‘hostile evasion’); (b) to complement and/or supplement conventional law with the aim of streamlining or enhancing compliance with agreed standards (‘efficient alignment’); and (c) to co-ordinate the actions of multiple participants via blockchain to avoid the procedural inefficiencies and complexities associated with the legal process, including the transaction, monitoring and agency costs associated with conventional law (‘alleviating transactional friction’).

These different classes of case are likely to generate different dynamic interactions between the blockchain code and conventional legal systems, which I describe respectively as ‘cat and mouse’, the ‘joys of (patriarchial) marriage’ and ‘uneasy coexistence and mutual suspicion’ respectively…(More)”.

Defending Politically Vulnerable Organizations Online

Curated on July 23, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC): “A new report …details how media outlets, human rights groups, NGOs, and other politically vulnerable organizations face significant cybersecurity threats—often at the hands of powerful governments—but have limited resources to protect themselves. The paper, “Defending Politically Vulnerable Organizations Online,” by CLTC Research Fellow Sean Brooks, provides an overview of cybersecurity threats to civil society organizations targeted for political purposes, and explores the ecosystem of resources available to help these organizations improve their cybersecurity.

“From mass surveillance of political dissidents in Thailand to spyware attacks on journalists in Mexico, cyberattacks against civil society organizations have become a persistent problem in recent years,” says Steve Weber, Faculty Director of CLTC. “While journalists, activists, and others take steps to protect themselves, such as installing firewalls and anti-virus software, they often lack the technical ability or capital to establish protections better suited to the threats they face, including phishing. Too few organizations and resources are available help them expand their cybersecurity capabilities.”

To compile their report, Brooks and his colleagues at CLTC undertook an extensive open-source review of more than 100 organizations supporting politically vulnerable organizations, and conducted more than 30 interviews with activists, threat researchers, and cybersecurity professionals. The report details the wide range of threats that politically vulnerable organizations face—from phishing emails, troll campaigns, and government-sanctioned censorship to sophisticated “zero-day” attacks—and it exposes the significant resource constraints that limit these organizations’ access to expertise and technology….(More)”.

Open Science by Design: Realizing a Vision for 21st Century Research

Curated on July 23, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the National Academies of Sciences: “Openness and sharing of information are fundamental to the progress of science and to the effective functioning of the research enterprise. The advent of scientific journals in the 17th century helped power the Scientific Revolution by allowing researchers to communicate across time and space, using the technologies of that era to generate reliable knowledge more quickly and efficiently. Harnessing today’s stunning, ongoing advances in information technologies, the global research enterprise and its stakeholders are moving toward a new open science ecosystem. Open science aims to ensure the free availability and usability of scholarly publications, the data that result from scholarly research, and the methodologies, including code or algorithms, that were used to generate those data.

Open Science by Design is aimed at overcoming barriers and moving toward open science as the default approach across the research enterprise. This report explores specific examples of open science and discusses a range of challenges, focusing on stakeholder perspectives. It is meant to provide guidance to the research enterprise and its stakeholders as they build strategies for achieving open science and take the next steps….(More)”.

How to Achieve and Sustain Government Digital Transformation

Curated on July 23, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Mike Bracken and Andrew Greenway for IADB: “Digital government is rapidly gathering momentum as an effective way for nations and regions to increase their administrative efficiency, develop resilience, and deliver simpler, clearer, and better services for their citizens and businesses. This report summarizes the conditions and context needed for government digital teams to succeed and be sustained across different administrations. The report explores the conditions needed to establish a digital team, examines the ideal environment to make that team successful, and concludes with the conditions required to help that team sustain as an institution across different political administrations…. (More)”.