Why We Should End the Data Economy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Carissa Véliz: “…The data economy undermines equality and fairness. You and your neighbor are no longer treated as equal citizens. You aren’t given an equal opportunity because you are treated differently on the basis of your data. The ads and content you have access to, the prices you pay for the same services, and even how long you wait when you call customer service depend on your data.

We are much better at collecting personal data than we are at keeping it safe. But personal data is a serious threat, and we shouldn’t be collecting it in the first place if we are incapable of keeping it safe. Using smartphone location data acquired from a data broker, reporters from The New York Times were able to track military officials with security clearances, powerful lawyers and their guests, and even the president of the United States (through the phone of someone believed to be a Secret Service agent).

Our current data economy is based on collecting as much personal data as possible, storing it indefinitely, and selling it to the highest bidder. Having so much sensitive data circulating freely is reckless. By designing our economy around surveillance, we are building a dangerous structure for social control that is at odds with freedom. In the surveillance society we are constructing, there is no such thing as under the radar. It shouldn’t be up to us to constantly opt out of data collection. The default matters, and the default should be no data collection…(More)”.

Virtual Juries

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Valerie P. Hans: “The introduction of virtual or remote jury trials in response to the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a remarkable natural experiment with one of our nation’s central democratic institutions. Although it is not a tightly controlled experimental study, real world experiences in this natural experiment offer some insights about how key features of trial by jury are affected by a virtual procedure. This article surveys the landscape of virtual jury trials. It examines the issues of jury representativeness, the adequacy of virtual jury selection, the quality of decision making, and the public’s access to jury trial proceedings. Many have expressed concern that the digital divide would negatively affect jury representativeness. Surprisingly, there is some preliminary evidence that suggests that virtual jury selection procedures lead to jury venires that are as diverse, if not more diverse, than pre-pandemic jury venires. Lawyers in a demonstration project reacted favorably to virtual voir dire when it was accompanied by expansive pretrial juror questionnaires and the opportunity to question prospective jurors. A number of courts provided public access by live streaming jury trials. How a virtual jury trial affects jurors’ interpretations of witness testimony, attorney arguments, and jury deliberation remain open questions….(More)”

Is there a role for consent in privacy?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Robert Gellman: “After decades, we still talk about the role of notice and choice in privacy. Yet there seems to be broad recognition that notice and choice do nothing for the privacy of consumers. Some American businesses cling to notice and choice because they hate all the alternatives. Some legislators draft laws with elements of notice and choice, either because it’s easier to draft a law that way, because they don’t know any better or because they carry water for business.

For present purposes, I will talk about notice and choice generically as consent. Consent is a broader concept than choice, but the difference doesn’t matter for the point I want to make. How you frame consent is complex. There are many alternatives and many approaches. It’s not just a matter of opt-in or opt-out. While I’m discarding issues, I also want to acknowledge and set aside the eight basic Fair Information Practices. There is no notice and choice principle in FIPS, and FIPs are not specifically important here.

Until recently, my view was that consent in almost any form is pretty much death for consumer privacy. No matter how you structure it, websites and others will find a way to wheedle consent from consumers. Those who want to exploit consumer data will cajole, pressure, threaten, mystify, obscure, entice or otherwise coax consumers to agree.

Suddenly, I’m not as sure of my conclusion about consent. What changed my mind? There is a new data point from Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework. Apple requires mobile application developers to obtain opt-in consent before serving targeted advertising via Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers. Early reports suggest consumers are saying “NO” in overwhelming numbers — overwhelming as in more than 90%.

It isn’t this strong consumer reaction that makes me think consent might possibly have a place. I want to highlight a different aspect of the Apple framework….(More)”.

Google launches new search tool to help combat food insecurity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Andrew J. Hawkins: “Google announced a new website designed to be a “one-stop shop” for people with food insecurity. The “Find Food Support” site includes a food locator tool powered by Google Maps which people can use to search for their nearest food bank, food pantry, or school lunch program pickup site in their community.

Google is working with non-profit groups like No Kid Hungry and FoodFinder, as well as the US Department of Agriculture, to aggregate 90,000 locations with free food support across all 50 states — with more locations to come.

The new site is a product of Google’s newly formed Food for Good team, formerly known as Project Delta when it was headquartered at Alphabet’s X moonshot division. Project Delta’s mission is to “create a smarter food system,” which includes standardizing data to improve communication between food distributors to curb food waste….(More)”.

Facial Recognition Technology: Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Should Better Assess Privacy and Other Risks

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office: “GAO surveyed 42 federal agencies that employ law enforcement officers about their use of facial recognition technology. Twenty reported owning systems with facial recognition technology or using systems owned by other entities, such as other federal, state, local, and non-government entities (see figure).

Ownership and Use of Facial Recognition Technology Reported by Federal Agencies that Employ Law Enforcement Officers

HLP_5 - 103705

Note: For more details, see figure 2 in GAO-21-518.

Agencies reported using the technology to support several activities (e.g., criminal investigations) and in response to COVID-19 (e.g., verify an individual’s identity remotely). Six agencies reported using the technology on images of the unrest, riots, or protests following the death of George Floyd in May 2020. Three agencies reported using it on images of the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Agencies said the searches used images of suspected criminal activity.

All fourteen agencies that reported using the technology to support criminal investigations also reported using systems owned by non-federal entities. However, only one has awareness of what non-federal systems are used by employees. By having a mechanism to track what non-federal systems are used by employees and assessing related risks (e.g., privacy and accuracy-related risks), agencies can better mitigate risks to themselves and the public….GAO is making two recommendations to each of 13 federal agencies to implement a mechanism to track what non-federal systems are used by employees, and assess the risks of using these systems. Twelve agencies concurred with both recommendations. U.S. Postal Service concurred with one and partially concurred with the other. GAO continues to believe the recommendation is valid, as described in the report….(More)”.

America’s ‘Smart City’ Didn’t Get Much Smarter

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Aarian Marshall: “In 2016, Columbus, Ohio, beat out 77 other small and midsize US cities for a pot of $50 million that was meant to reshape its future. The Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge was the first competition of its kind, conceived as a down payment to jump-start one city’s adaptation to the new technologies that were suddenly everywhere. Ride-hail companies like Uber and Lyft were ascendant, car-sharing companies like Car2Go were raising their national profile, and autonomous vehicles seemed to be right around the corner.

“Our proposed approach is revolutionary,” the city wrote in its winning grant proposal, which pledged to focus on projects to help the city’s most underserved neighborhoods. It laid out plans to experiment with Wi-Fi-enabled kiosks to help residents plan trips, apps to pay bus and ride-hail fares and find parking spots, autonomous shuttles, and sensor-connected trucks.

Five years later, the Smart City Challenge is over, but the revolution never arrived. According to the project’s final report, issued this month by the city’s Smart Columbus Program, the pandemic hit just as some projects were getting off the ground. Six kiosks placed around the city were used to plan just eight trips between July 2020 and March 2021. The company EasyMile launched autonomous shuttles in February 2020, carrying passengers at an average speed of 4 miles per hour. Fifteen days later, a sudden brake sent a rider to the hospital, pausing service. The truck project was canceled. Only 1,100 people downloaded an app, called Pivot, to plan and reserve trips on ride-hail vehicles, shared bikes and scooters, and public transit.

The discrepancy between the promise of whiz-bang technology and the reality in Columbus points to a shift away from tech as a silver bullet, and a newer wariness of the troubles that web-based applications can bring to IRL streets. The “smart city” was a hard-to-pin-down marketing term associated with urban optimism. Today, as citizens think more carefully about tech-enabled surveillance, the concept of a sensor in every home doesn’t look as shiny as it once did….(More)”.

The Returns to Public Library Investment

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Working Paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago: “Local governments spend over 12 billion dollars annually funding the operation of 15,000 public libraries in the United States. This funding supports widespread library use: more than 50% of Americans visit public libraries each year. But despite extensive public investment in libraries, surprisingly little research quantities the effects of public libraries on communities and children. We use data on the near-universe of U.S. public libraries to study the effects of capital spending shocks on library resources, patron usage, student achievement, and local housing prices. We use a dynamic difference-in-difference approach to show that library capital investment increases children’s attendance at library events by 18%, children’s checkouts of items by 21%, and total library visits by 21%. Increases in library use translate into improved children’s test scores in nearby school districts: a $1,000 or greater per-student capital investment in local public libraries increases reading test scores by 0.02 standard deviations and has no effects on math test scores. Housing prices do not change after a sharp increase in public library capital investment, suggesting that residents internalize the increased cost and improved quality of their public libraries….(More)”.

Realtime Climate

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Climate Central …:”launched this tool to help meteorologists and journalists cover connections between weather, news, and climate in real time, and to alert public and private organizations and individuals about particular local conditions related to climate change, its impacts, or its solutions.

Realtime Climate monitors local weather and events across the U.S. and generates alerts when certain conditions are met or expected. These alerts provide links to science-based analyses and visualizations—including locality-specific, high-quality graphics—that can help explain events in the context of climate change….

Alerts are sent when particular conditions occur or are forecast to occur in the next few days. Examples include:

  • Unusual heat (single day and multi-day)
  • Heat Index
  • Unusual Rainfall
  • Coastal Flooding
  • Air Quality
  • Allergies
  • Seasonal shifts (spring leaf-out, etc.)
  • Ice/snow cover (Great Lakes)
  • Cicadas
  • High local or regional production of solar or wind energy

More conditions will be added soon, including:

  • Drought
  • Wildfire
  • and many more…(More)”.

Who’s Afraid of Big Numbers?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Aiyana Green and Steven Strogatz at the New York Times: “Billions” and “trillions” seem to be an inescapable part of our conversations these days, whether the subject is Jeff Bezos’s net worth or President Biden’s proposed budget. Yet nearly everyone has trouble making sense of such big numbers. Is there any way to get a feel for them? As it turns out, there is. If we can relate big numbers to something familiar, they start to feel much more tangible, almost palpable.

For example, consider Senator Bernie Sanders’s signature reference to “millionaires and billionaires.” Politics aside, are these levels of wealth really comparable? Intellectually, we all know that billionaires have a lot more money than millionaires do, but intuitively it’s hard to feel the difference, because most of us haven’t experienced what it’s like to have that much money.

In contrast, everyone knows what the passage of time feels like. So consider how long it would take for a million seconds to tick by. Do the math, and you’ll find that a million seconds is about 12 days. And a billion seconds? That’s about 32 years. Suddenly the vastness of the gulf between a million and a billion becomes obvious. A million seconds is a brief vacation; a billion seconds is a major fraction of a lifetime.

Comparisons to ordinary distances provide another way to make sense of big numbers. Here in Ithaca, we have a scale model of the solar system known as the Sagan Walk, in which all the planets and the gaps between them are reduced by a factor of five billion. At that scale, the sun becomes the size of a serving plate, Earth is a small pea and Jupiter is a brussels sprout. To walk from Earth to the sun takes just a few dozen footsteps, whereas Pluto is a 15-minute hike across town. Strolling through the solar system, you gain a visceral understanding of astronomical distances that you don’t get from looking at a book or visiting a planetarium. Your body grasps it even if your mind cannot….(More)”.

Why Business Schools Need to Teach Experimentation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Elizabeth R. Tenney, Elaine Costa, and Ruchi M. Watson at Harvard Business Review: “…The value of experiments in nonscientific organizations is quite high. Instead of calling in managers to solve every puzzle or dispute large and small (Should we make the background yellow or blue? Should we improve basic functionality or add new features? Are staff properly supported and incentivized to provide rapid responses?), teams can run experiments and measure outcomes of interest and, armed with new data, decide for themselves, or at least put forward a proposal grounded in relevant information. The data also provide tangible deliverables to show to stakeholders to demonstrate progress and accountability.

Experiments spur innovation. They can provide proof of concept and a degree of confidence in new ideas before taking bigger risks and scaling up. When done well, with data collected and interpreted objectively, experiments can also provide a corrective for faulty intuition, inaccurate assumptions, or overconfidence. The scientific method (which powers experiments) is the gold standard of tools to combat bias and answer questions objectively.

But as more and more companies are embracing a culture of experimentation, they face a major challenge: talent. Experiments are difficult to do well. Some challenges include special statistical knowledge, clear problem definition, and interpretation of the results. And it’s not enough to have the skillset. Experiments should ideally be done iteratively, building on prior knowledge and working toward deeper understanding of the question at hand. There are also the issues of managers’ preparedness to override their intuition when data disagree with it, and their ability to navigate hierarchy and bureaucracy to implement changes based on the experiments’ outcomes.

Some companies seem to be hiring small armies of PhDs to meet these competency challenges. (Amazon, for example, employs more than 100 PhD economists.) This isn’t surprising, given that PhDs receive years of training — and that the shrinking tenure-track market in academia has created a glut of PhDs. Other companies are developing employees in-house, training them in narrow, industry-specific methodologies. For example, General Mills recently hired for their innovator incubator group, called g-works, advertising for employees who are “using entrepreneurial skills and an experimental mindset” in what they called a “test and learn environment, with rapid experimentation to validate or invalidate assumptions.” Other companies — including Fidelity, LinkedIn, and Aetna — have hired consultants to conduct experiments, among them Irrational Labs, cofounded by Duke University’s Dan Ariely and the behavioral economist Kristen Berman….(More)”.