Paper by Dragana Kaurin: “For the millions of refugees fleeing conflict and persecution every year, access to information about their rights and control over their personal data are crucial for their ability to assess risk and navigate the asylum process. While asylum seekers are required to provide significant amounts of personal information on their journey to safety, they are rarely fully informed of their data rights by UN agencies or local border control and law enforcement staff tasked with obtaining and processing their personal information. Despite recent improvements in data protection mechanisms in the European Union, refugees’ informed consent for the collection and use of their personal data is rarely sought. Using examples drawn from interviews with refugees who have arrived in Europe since 2013, and an analysis of the impacts of the 2016 EU-Turkey deal on migration, this paper analyzes how the vast amount of data collected from refugees is gathered, stored and shared today, and considers the additional risks this collection process poses to an already vulnerable population navigating a perilous information-decision gap….(More)”.
Pitfalls of Aiming to Empower the Bottom from the Top: The Case of Philippine Participatory Budgeting
Paper by Joy Aceron: “… explains why and how a reform program that opened up spaces for participatory budgeting was ultimately unable to result in pro-citizen power shifts that transformed governance. The study reviews the design and implementation of Bottom-Up Budgeting (BuB), the nationwide participatory budgeting (PB) program in the Philippines, which ran from 2012 to 2016 under the Benigno Aquino government. The findings underscore the importance of institutional design to participatory governance reforms. BuB’s goal was to transform local government by providing more space for civil society organizations (CSOs) to co-identify projects with the government and to take part in the budgeting process, but it did not strengthen CSO or grassroots capacity to hold their Local Government Units (LGUs) accountable.
The BuB design had features that delivered positive gains towards citizen empowerment, including: (1) providing equal seats for CSOs in the Local Poverty Reduction Action Team (LPRAT), which are formally mandated to select proposed projects (in contrast to the pre-existing Local Development Councils (LDCs), which have only 25 percent CSO representation); (2) CSOs identified their LPRAT representatives themselves (as opposed to local chief executives choosing CSO representatives, as in the LDCs); and (3) LGUs were mandated to follow participatory requirements to receive additional funding. However, several aspects of the institutional design shifted power from local governments to the central government. This had a “centralizing effect”…
This study argues that because of these design problems, BuB fell short in achieving its main political reform agenda of empowering the grassroots—particularly in enabling downward accountability that could have enabled lasting pro-citizen power shifts. It did not empower local civil society and citizens to become a countervailing force vis-à-vis local politicians in fiscal governance. BuB is a case of a reform that provided a procedural mechanism for civil society input into national agency decisions but was unable to improve government responsiveness. It provided civil society with ‘voice’, but was constrained in enabling ‘teeth’. Jonathan Fox (2014) refers to “voice” as citizen inputs, feedback and action, while “teeth” refer to the capacity of the state to respond to voice.
Finally, the paper echoes the results of other studies which find that PB programs become successful when complemented by other institutional and state democratic capacity-building reforms and when they are part of a broader progressive change agenda. The BuB experience suggests that to bolster citizen oversight, it is essential to invest sufficient support and resources in citizen empowerment and in creating an enabling environment for citizen oversight….(More)”.
Artificial Intelligence and Digital Repression: Global Challenges to Governance
Paper by Steven Feldstein: “Across the world, artificial intelligence (AI) is showing its potential for abetting repressive regimes and upending the relationship between citizen and state, thereby exacerbating a global resurgence of authoritarianism. AI is a component in a broader ecosystem of digital repression, but it is relevant to several different techniques, including surveillance, censorship, disinformation, and cyber attacks. AI offers three distinct advantages to autocratic leaders: it helps solve principal-agent loyalty problems, it offers substantial cost-efficiencies over traditional means of surveillance, and it is particularly effective against external regime challenges. China is a key proliferator of AI technology to authoritarian and illiberal regimes; such proliferation is an important component of Chinese geopolitical strategy. To counter the spread of high-tech repression abroad, as well as potential abuses at home, policy makers in democratic states must think seriously about how to mitigate harms and to shape better practices….(More)”
Internet Democracy and Social Change: The Case of Israel
Book by Carmit Wiesslitz: “What role does the Internet play in the activities of organizations for social change? This book examines to what extent the democratic potential ascribed to the Internet is realized in practice, and how civil society organizations exploit the unique features of the Internet to attain their goals. This is the story of the organization members’ outlooks and impressions of digital platforms’ role as tools for social change; a story that debunks a common myth about the Internet and collective action. In a time when social media are credited with immense power in generating social change, this book serves as an important reminder that reality for activists and social change organizations is more complicated. Thus, the book sheds light on the back stage of social change organizations’ operations as they struggle to gain visibility in the infinite sea of civil groups competing for attention in the online public sphere. While many studies focus on the performative dimension of collective action (such as protests), this book highlights the challenges of these organizations’ mundane routines. Using a unique analytical perspective based on a structural-organizational approach, and a longitudinal study that utilizes a decade worth of data related to the specific case of Israel and its highly conflicted and turbulent society, the book makes a significant contribution to study of new media and to theories of Internet, democracy, and social change….(More)”.
The EU Wants to Build One of the World’s Largest Biometric Databases. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Grace Dobush at Fortune: “China and India have built the world’s largest biometric databases, but the European Union is about to join the club.
The Common Identity Repository (CIR) will consolidate biometric data on almost all visitors and migrants to the bloc, as well as some EU citizens—connecting existing criminal, asylum, and migration databases and integrating new ones. It has the potential to affect hundreds of millions of people.
The plan for the database, first proposed in 2016 and approved by the EU Parliament on April 16, was sold as a way to better track and monitor terrorists, criminals, and unauthorized immigrants.
The system will target the fingerprints and identity data for visitors and immigrants initially, and represents the first step towards building a truly EU-wide citizen database. At the same time, though, critics argue its mere existence will increase the potential for hacks, leaks, and law enforcement abuse of the information….
The European Parliament and the European Council have promised to address those concerns, through “proper safeguards” to protect personal privacy and to regulate officers’ access to data. In 2016, they passed a law regarding law enforcement’s access to personal data, alongside General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR.
But total security is a tall order. Germany is currently dealing with multipleinstances of police officers allegedly leaking personal information to far-right groups. Meanwhile, a Swedish hacker went to prison for hacking into Denmark’s public records system in 2012 and dumping online the personal data of hundreds of thousands of citizens and migrants….(More)”.
Facebook will open its data up to academics to see how it impacts elections
MIT Technology Review: “More than 60 researchers from 30 institutions will get access to Facebook user data to study its impact on elections and democracy, and how it’s used by advertisers and publishers.
A vast trove: Facebook will let academics see which websites its users linked to from January 2017 to February 2019. Notably, that means they won’t be able to look at the platform’s impact on the US presidential election in 2016, or on the Brexit referendum in the UK in the same year.
Despite this slightly glaring omission, it’s still hard to wrap your head around the scale of the data that will be shared, given that Facebook is used by 1.6 billion people every day. That’s more people than live in all of China, the most populous country on Earth. It will be one of the largest data sets on human behavior online to ever be released.
The process: Facebook didn’t pick the researchers. They were chosen by the Social Science Research Council, a US nonprofit. Facebook has been working on this project for over a year, as it tries to balance research interests against user privacy and confidentiality.
Privacy: In a blog post, Facebook said it will use a number of statistical techniques to make sure the data set can’t be used to identify individuals. Researchers will be able to access it only via a secure portal that uses a VPN and two-factor authentication, and there will be limits on the number of queries they can each run….(More)”.
Nagging misconceptions about nudge theory
Cass Sunstein at The Hill: “Nudges are private or public initiatives that steer people in particular directions but that also allow them to go their own way.
A reminder is a nudge; so is a warning. A GPS device nudges; a default rule, automatically enrolling people in some program, is a nudge.
To qualify as a nudge, an initiative must not impose significant economic incentives. A subsidy is not a nudge; a tax is not a nudge; a fine or a jail sentence is not a nudge. To count as such, a nudge must fully preserve freedom of choice.
In 2009, University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and I co-wrote a book that drew on research in psychology and behavioral economics to help people and institutions, both public and private, improve their decision-making.
In the 10 years since “Nudge” was published, there has been an extraordinary outpouring of new thought and action, with particular reference to public policy.
Behavioral insight teams, or “nudge units” of various sorts, can be found in many nations, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, Japan and Qatar.
Those teams are delivering. By making government more efficient, and by improving safety and health, they are helping to save a lot of money and a lot of lives. And in many countries, including the U.S., they don’t raise partisan hackles; both Democrats and Republicans have enthusiastically embraced them.
Still, there are a lot of mistakes and misconceptions out there, and they are diverting attention and hence stalling progress. Here are the three big ones:
1. Nudges do not respect freedom. …
2. Nudges are based on excessive trust in government...
3. Nudges cannot achieve a whole lot.…(More)”.
Politics and Technology in the Post-Truth Era
Book edited by Anna Visvizi and Miltiadis D. Lytras: “Advances in information and communication technology (ICT) have directly impacted the way in which politics operates today. Bringing together research on Europe, the US, South America, the Middle East, Asia and Africa, this book examines the relationship between ICT and politics in a global perspective.
Technological innovations such as big data, data mining, sentiment analysis, cognitive computing, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, social media and blockchain technology are reshaping the way ICT intersects with politics and in this collection contributors examine these developments, demonstrating their impact on the political landscape. Chapters examine topics such as cyberwarfare and propaganda, post-Soviet space, Snowden, US national security, e-government, GDPR, democratization in Africa and internet freedom.
Providing an overview of new research on the emerging relationship between the promise and potential inherent in ICT and its impact on politics, this edited collection will prove an invaluable text for students, researchers and practitioners working in the fields of Politics, International Relations and Computer Science…..(More)”
Drones to deliver medicines to 12m people in Ghana
Neil Munshi in the Financial Times: “The world’s largest drone delivery network, ferrying 150 different medicines and vaccines, as well as blood, to 2,000 clinics in remote parts of Ghana, is set to be announced on Wednesday.
The network represents a big expansion for the Silicon Valley start-up Zipline, which began delivering blood in Rwanda in 2016 using pilotless, preprogrammed aircraft. The move, along with a new agreement in Rwanda signed in December, takes the company beyond simple blood distribution to more complicated vaccine and plasma deliveries.
“What this is going to show is that you can reach every GPS co-ordinate, you can serve everybody,” said Keller Rinaudo, Zipline chief executive. “Every human in that region or country [can be] within a 15-25 minute delivery of any essential medical product — it’s a different way of thinking about universal coverage.”
Zipline will deliver vaccines for yellow fever, polio, diptheria and tetanus which are provided by the World Health Organisation’s Expanded Project on Immunisation. The WHO will also use the company’s system for future mass immunisation programmes in Ghana.
Later this year, Zipline has plans to start operations in the US, in North Carolina, and in south-east Asia. The company said it will be able to serve 100m people within a year, up from the 22m that its projects in Ghana and Rwanda will cover.
In Ghana, Zipline said health workers will receive deliveries via a parachute drop within about 30 minutes of placing their orders by text message….(More)”.
Five myths about whistleblowers
Dana Gold in the Washington Post: “When a whistleblower revealed the Trump administration’s decision to overturn 25 security clearance denials, it was the latest in a long and storied history of insiders exposing significant abuses of public trust. Whistles were blown on U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the Watergate coverup, Enron’s financial fraud, the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of domestic electronic communications and, during the Trump administration, the corruption of former Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt , Cambridge Analytica’s theft of Facebook users’ data to develop targeted political ads, and harm to children posed by the “zero tolerance” immigration policy. Despite the essential role whistleblowers play in illuminating the truth and protecting the public interest, several myths persist about them, some pernicious.
MYTH NO. 1 Whistleblowers are employees who report problems externally….
MYTH NO. 2 Whistleblowers are either disloyal or heroes….
MYTH NO. 3 ‘Leaker’ is another term for ‘whistleblower.’…
MYTH NO. 4 Remaining anonymous is the best strategy for whistleblowing….
MYTH NO. 5 Julian Assange is a whistleblower….(More)”.