The European Union-U.S. Data Privacy Framework

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

White House Fact Sheet: “Today, President Biden signed an Executive Order on Enhancing Safeguards for United States Signals Intelligence Activities (E.O.) directing the steps that the United States will take to implement the U.S. commitments under the European Union-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (EU-U.S. DPF) announced by President Biden and European Commission President von der Leyen in March of 2022. 

Transatlantic data flows are critical to enabling the $7.1 trillion EU-U.S. economic relationship.  The EU-U.S. DPF will restore an important legal basis for transatlantic data flows by addressing concerns that the Court of Justice of the European Union raised in striking down the prior EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework as a valid data transfer mechanism under EU law. 

The Executive Order bolsters an already rigorous array of privacy and civil liberties safeguards for U.S. signals intelligence activities. It also creates an independent and binding mechanism enabling individuals in qualifying states and regional economic integration organizations, as designated under the E.O., to seek redress if they believe their personal data was collected through U.S. signals intelligence in a manner that violated applicable U.S. law.

U.S. and EU companies large and small across all sectors of the economy rely upon cross-border data flows to participate in the digital economy and expand economic opportunities. The EU-U.S. DPF represents the culmination of a joint effort by the United States and the European Commission to restore trust and stability to transatlantic data flows and reflects the strength of the enduring EU-U.S. relationship based on our shared values…(More)”.

Can critical policy studies outsmart AI? Research agenda on artificial intelligence technologies and public policy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Regine Paul: “The insertion of artificial intelligence technologies (AITs) and data-driven automation in public policymaking should be a metaphorical wake-up call for critical policy analysts. Both its wide representation as techno-solutionist remedy in otherwise slow, inefficient, and biased public decision-making and its regulation as a matter of rational risk analysis are conceptually flawed and democratically problematic. To ‘outsmart’ AI, this article stimulates the articulation of a critical research agenda on AITs and public policy, outlining three interconnected lines of inquiry for future research: (1) interpretivist disclosure of the norms and values that shape perceptions and uses of AITs in public policy, (2) exploration of AITs in public policy as a contingent practice of complex human-machine interactions, and (3) emancipatory critique of how ‘smart’ governance projects and AIT regulation interact with (global) inequalities and power relations…(More)”.

Governing the Environment-Related Data Space

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Stefaan G. Verhulst, Anthony Zacharzewski and Christian Hudson at Data & Policy: “Today, The GovLab and The Democratic Society published their report, “Governing the Environment-Related Data Space”, written by Jörn Fritzenkötter, Laura Hohoff, Paola Pierri, Stefaan G. Verhulst, Andrew Young, and Anthony Zacharzewski . The report captures the findings of their joint research centered on the responsible and effective reuse of environment-related data to achieve greater social and environmental impact.

Environment-related data (ERD) encompasses numerous kinds of data across a wide range of sectors. It can best be defined as data related to any element of the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) Framework. If leveraged effectively, this wealth of data could help society establish a sustainable economy, take action against climate change, and support environmental justice — as recognized recently by French President Emmanuel Macron and UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Climate Ambition and Solutions Michael R. Bloomberg when establishing the Climate Data Steering Committee.

While several actors are working to improve access to, as well as promote the (re)use of, ERD data, two key challenges that hamper progress on this front are data asymmetries and data enclosures. Data asymmetries occur due to the ever-increasing amounts of ERD scattered across diverse actors, with larger and more powerful stakeholders often maintaining unequal access. Asymmetries lead to problems with accessibility and findability (data enclosures), leading to limited sharing and collaboration, and stunting the ability to use data and maximize its potential to address public ills.

The risks and costs of data enclosure and data asymmetries are high. Information bottlenecks cause resources to be misallocated, slow scientific progress, and limit our understanding of the environment.

A fit-for-purpose governance framework could offer a solution to these barriers by creating space for more systematic, sustainable, and responsible data sharing and collaboration. Better data sharing can in turn ease information flows, mitigate asymmetries, and minimize data enclosures.

And there are some clear criteria for an effective governance framework…(More)”

How one group of ‘fellas’ is winning the meme war in support of Ukraine

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Suzanne Smalley: “The North Atlantic Fella Organization, or NAFO, has arrived.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry celebrated the group on Twitter for waging a “fierce fight” against Kremlin trolls. And Rep. Adam Kinzinger, D-Ill., tweeted that he was “self-declaring as a proud member of #NAFO” and “the #fellas shall prevail.”

The brainchild of former Marine Matt Moores, NAFO launched in May and quickly blew up on Twitter. It’s become something of a movement, drawing support in military and cybersecurity circles who circulate its meme backing Ukraine in its war against Russia.

“The power of what we’re doing is that instead of trying to come in and point-by-point refute, and argue about what’s true and what isn’t, it’s coming and saying, ‘Hey, that’s dumb,’” Moores said during a panel on Wednesday at the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington. “And the moment somebody’s replying to a cartoon dog online, you’ve lost if you work for the government of Russia.”

Memes have figured heavily in the information war following the Russian invasion. The Ukrainian government has proven eager to highlight memes on agency websites and officials have been known to personally thank online communities that spread anti-Russian memes. The NAFO meme shared by the defense ministry in August showed a Shiba Inu dog in a military uniform appearing to celebrate a missile launch.

The Shiba Inu has long been a motif in internet culture. According to Vice’s Motherboard, the use of Shiba Inu to represent a “fella” waging online war against the Russians dates to at least May when an artist started rewarding fellas who donated money to the Georgian Legion by creating customized fella art for online use…(More)”.

Policy evaluation in times of crisis: key issues and the way forward

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Paper: “This paper provides an overview of the challenges policy evaluators faced in the context of COVID19, both due to pandemic-specific hurdles and resource constraints within governments. Then, the paper provides an overview of OECD governments evaluation practices during COVID-19, with a specific
emphasis on the actors, the aims and the methods involved. Finally, the third and final section sets out lessons for future policy evaluations in light of advances made during the period, both for evaluating crisis responses, as well as for the evaluation field in general…(More)”.

AI Audit Washing and Accountability

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Ellen P. Goodman and Julia Trehu: “Algorithmic decision systems, many using artificial intelligence, are reshaping the provision of private and public services across the globe. There is an urgent need for algorithmic governance. Jurisdictions are adopting or considering mandatory audits of these systems to assess compliance with legal and ethical standards or to provide assurance that the systems work as advertised. The hope is that audits will make public agencies and private firms accountable for the harms their algorithmic systems may cause, and thereby lead to harm reductions and more ethical tech. This hope will not be realized so long as the existing ambiguity around the term “audit” persists, and until audit standards are adequate and well-understood. The tacit expectation that algorithmic audits will function like established financial audits or newer human rights audits is fanciful at this stage. In the European Union, where algorithmic audit requirements are most advanced, to the United States, where they are nascent, core questions need to be addressed for audits to become reliable AI accountability mechanisms. In the absence of greater specification and more independent auditors, the risk is that AI auditing becomes AI audit washing. This paper first reports on proposed and enacted transatlantic AI or algorithmic audit provisions. It then draws on the technical, legal, and sociotechnical literature to address the who, what, why, and how of algorithmic audits, contributing to the literature advancing algorithmic governance…(More)“.

Digital Constitutionalism: The Role of Internet Bills of Rights

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Edoardo Celeste: “Investigating the impact of digital technology on contemporary constitutionalism, this book offers an overview of the transformations that are currently occurring at constitutional level, highlighting their link with ongoing societal changes. It reconstructs the multiple ways in which constitutional law is reacting to these challenges and explores the role of one original response to this phenomenon: the emergence of Internet bills of rights.

Over the past few years, a significant number of Internet bills of rights have emerged around the world. These documents represent non-legally binding declarations promoted mostly by individuals and civil society groups that articulate rights and principles for the digital society. This book argues that these initiatives reflect a change in the constitutional ecosystem. The transformations prompted by the digital revolution in our society ferment under a vault of constitutional norms shaped for ‘analogue’ communities. Constitutional law struggles to address all the challenges of the digital environment. In this context, Internet bills of rights, by emerging outside traditional institutional processes, represent a unique response to suggest new constitutional solutions for the digital age.

Explaining how constitutional law is reacting to the advent of the digital revolution and analysing the constitutional function of Internet Bills of Rights in this context, this book offers a global comparative investigation of the latest transformations that digital technology is generating in the constitutional ecosystem and highlights the plural and multilevel process that is contributing to shape constitutional norms for the Internet age…(More)”.

E-Government Survey 2022

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

UN Report: “The United Nations E-Government Survey 2022 is the 12th edition of the United Nations’ assessment of the digital government landscape across all 193 Member States. The E-Government Survey is informed by over two decades of longitudinal research, with a ranking of countries based on the United Nations E-Government Development Index (EGDI), a combination of primary data (collected and owned by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and secondary data from other UN agencies

This edition of the Survey includes data analysis in global and regional contexts, a study of local e-government development based on the United Nations Local Online Service Index (LOSI), consideration of inclusion in the hybrid digital society, and a concluding chapter that outlines the trends and developments related to the future of digital government. As wish all editions, it features extensive annexes on its data, methodology and related pilot study initiatives…(More)”.

How Game Design Principles Can Enhance Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Adrian Hon: “Gamification — the use of ideas from game design for purposes beyond entertainment — is everywhere. It’s in our smartwatches, cajoling us to walk an extra thousand steps for a digital trophy. It’s in our classrooms, where teachers use apps to reward and punish children with points. And it’s in our jobs, turning the work of Uber drivers and call center staff into quests and missions, where success comes with an achievement and $50 bonus, and failure — well, you can imagine.

Many choose to gamify parts of their lives to make them a little more fun, like learning a new language with Duolingo or going for a run with my own Zombies, Run! app. But the gamification we’re most likely to encounter in our lives is something we have no control over — in our increasingly surveilled and gamified workplaces, for instance, or through the creeping advance of manipulative gamification in financial, insurance, travel and health services.

In my new book, “You’ve Been Played,” I argue that governments must regulate gamification so that it respects workers’ privacy and dignity. Regulators must also ensure that gamified finance apps and video games don’t manipulate users into losing more money than they can afford. Crucially, I believe any gamification intended for schools and colleges must be researched and debated openly before deployment.

But I also believe gamification can strengthen democracies, by designing democratic participation to be accessible and to build consensus. The same game design ideas that have made video games the 21st century’s dominant form of entertainment — adaptive difficulty, responsive interfaces, progress indicators and multiplayer systems that encourage co-operative behaviour — can be harnessed in the service of democracies and civil society…

Fully participating in democracy today — not just voting, but getting involved in local planning and budgeting processes, or building and sharing knowledge — involves navigating increasingly complex systems that desperately need to be made more welcoming and accessible. So while the idea of gamifying democracy may seem to trivialize the deep problems we face today or be another instance of techno-solutionism, that’s not my intention. It’s a recognition that we already live in a digital democracy — one where deliberation takes place on social media that’s gamified to reward and promote the hottest takes and most divisive comments by means of upvotes and karma points; where people learn about the world through the warped lens of conspiracy theories that resemble alternate reality games; and where collective action is enabled and amplified by popularity contests on crowdfunding websites and Reddit.

“The same game design ideas that have made video games the 21st century’s dominant form of entertainment can be harnessed in the service of democracies and civil society.”…(more)”

A ‘Feminist’ Server to Help People Own Their Own Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Padmini Ray Murray: “All of our digital lives reside on servers – mostly in corporate server farms owned by the likes of Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft.  These farms contain machines that store massive volumes of data generated by every single user of the internet. These vast infrastructures allow people to store, connect, and exchange information on the internet. 

Consequently, there is a massive distance between users and where and how the data is stored, which means that individuals have very little control over how their data is stored and used. However, due to the huge reliance on these massive corporate technologies, individuals are left with very little choice but to accept the terms dictated by these businesses. The conceptual alternative of the feminist server was created by groups of feminist and queer activists who were concerned about how little power they have over owning and managing their data on the internet. The idea of the feminist server was described as a project that is interested in “creating a more autonomous infrastructure to ensure that data, projects and memory of feminist groups are properly accessible, preserved and managed” – a safe digital library to store and manage content generated by feminist groups. This was also a direct challenge to the traditionally male-dominated spaces of computer hardware management, spaces which could be very exclusionary and hostile to women or queer individuals who might be interested in learning how to use these technologies. 

There are two related ways by which a server can be considered as feminist. The first is based on who runs the server, and the second is based on who owns the server. Feminist critics have pointed out how the running of servers is often in the hands of male experts who are not keen to share and explain the knowledge required to maintain a server – a role known as a systems admin or, colloquially, a “sysadmin” person. Thus the concept of feminist servers emerged out of a need to challenge patriarchal dominance in hardware and infrastructure spaces, to create alternatives that were nurturing, anti-capitalist, and worked on the basis of community and solidarity…(More)”.