Vulnerable People and Data Protection Law

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Gianclaudio Malgieri: “Human vulnerability has traditionally been viewed through the lens of specific groups of people, such as ethnic minorities, children, the elderly, or people with disabilities. With the rise of digital media, our perceptions of vulnerable groups and individuals have been reshaped as new vulnerabilities and different vulnerable sub-groups of users, consumers, citizens, and data subjects emerge.

Vulnerable People and Data Protection Law not only depicts these problems but offers the reader a detailed investigation of the concept of data subjects and a reconceptualisation of the notion of vulnerability within the General Data Protection Regulation. The regulation offers a forward-facing set of tools that – though largely underexplored – are essential in rebalancing power asymmetries and mitigating induced vulnerabilities in the age of artificial intelligence.

This book proposes a layered approach to data subject definition. Considering the new potentialities of the digital market, the new awareness about cognitive weaknesses, and the new philosophical sensitivity about vulnerability conditions, the author looks for a more general definition of vulnerability that goes beyond traditional labels. In doing so, he seeks to promote a ‘vulnerability-aware’ interpretation of the GDPR.

A heuristic analysis that re-interprets the whole GDPR, this work is a must-read for both scholars of data protection law and for policymakers looking to strengthen regulations and protect the data of vulnerable individuals…(More)”.

Digitization, Surveillance, Colonialism

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Carissa Veliz: “As I write these words, articles are mushrooming in newspapers and magazines about how privacy is more important than ever after the Supreme Court ruling that has overturned the constitutionality of the right to have an abortion in the United States. In anti-abortion states, browsing histories, text messages, location data, payment data, and information from period-tracking apps can all be used to prosecute both women seeking an abortion and anyone aiding them. The National Right to Life Committee recently published policy recommendations for anti-abortion states that include criminal penalties for people who provide information about self-managed abortions, whether over the phone or online. Women considering an abortion are often in distress, and now they cannot even reach out to friends or family without endangering themselves and others. 

So far, Texas, Oklahoma, and Idaho have passed citizen-enforced abortion bans, according to which anyone can file a civil lawsuit to report an abortion and have the chance of winning at least ten thousand dollars. This is an incredible incentive to use personal data towards for-profit witch-hunting. Anyone can buy personal data from data brokers and fish for suspicious behavior. The surveillance machinery that we have built in the past two decades can now be put to use by authorities and vigilantes to criminalize pregnant women and their doctors, nurses, pharmacists, friends, and family. How productive.

It is not true, however, that the overturning of Roe v. Wade has made privacy more important than ever. Rather, it has provided yet another illustration of why privacy has always been and always will be important. That it is happening in the United States is helpful, because human beings are prone to thinking that whatever happens “over there” — say, in China now, or in East Germany during the Cold War — to those “other people,” doesn’t happen to us — until it does. 

Privacy is important because it protects us from possible abuses of power. As long as human beings are human beings and organizations are organizations, abuses of power will be a constant temptation and threat. That is why it is supremely reckless to build a surveillance architecture. You never know when that data might be used against you — but you can be fairly confident that sooner or later it will be used against you. Collecting personal data might be convenient, but it is also a ticking bomb; it amounts to sensitive material waiting for the chance to turn into an instance of public shaming, extortion, persecution, discrimination, or identity theft. Do you think you have nothing to hide? So did many American women on June 24, only to realize that week that their period was late. You have plenty to hide — you just don’t know what it is yet and whom you should hide it from.

In the digital age, the challenge of protecting privacy is more formidable than most people imagine — but it is nowhere near impossible, and every bit worth putting up a fight for, if you care about democracy or freedom. The challenge is this: the dogma of our time is to turn analog into digital, and as things stand today, digitization is tantamount to surveillance…(More)”.

How Confucianism could put fear about Artificial Intelligence to bed

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Tom Cassauwers: “Western culture has had a long history of individualism, warlike use of technology, Christian apocalyptic thinking and a strong binary between body and soul. These elements might explain the West’s obsession with the technological apocalypse and its opposite: techno-utopianism. In Asia, it’s now common to explain China’s dramatic rise as a leader in AI and robotics as a consequence of state support from the world’s largest economy. But what if — in addition to the massive state investment — China and other Asian nations have another advantage, in the form of Eastern philosophies?

There’s a growing view among independent researchers and philosophers that Confucianism and Buddhism could offer healthy alternative perspectives on the future of technology. And with AI and robots rapidly increasing in importance across industries, it’s time for the West to turn to the East for answers…

So what would a non-Western way of thinking about tech look like? First, there might be a different interpretation of personhood. Both Confucianism and Buddhism potentially open up the way for nonhumans to reach the status of humans. In Confucianism, the state of reaching personhood “is not a given. You need to work to achieve it,” says Wong. The person’s attitude toward certain ethical virtues determines whether or not they reach the status of a human. That also means that “we can attribute personhood to nonhuman things like robots when they play ethically relevant roles and duties as humans,” Wong adds.

Buddhism offers a similar argument, where robots can hypothetically achieve a state of enlightenment, which is present everywhere, not only in humans — an argument made as early as the 1970s by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. It may not be a coincidence that robots enjoy some of their highest social acceptance in Japan, with its Buddhist heritage. “Westerners are generally reluctant about the nature of robotics and AI, considering only humans as true beings, while Easterners more often consider devices as similar to humans,” says Jordi Vallverdú, a professor of philosophy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona….(More)”

A Philosophy for Future Generations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Tiziana Andina: “If societies, like institutions, are built to endure, then the bond that exists between generations must be considered. Constructing a framework to establish a philosophy of future generations, Tiziana Andina explores the factors that make it possible for a society to reproduce over time.

Andina’s study of the diachronic structure of societies considers the never-ending passage of generations, as each new generation comes to form a part of the new social fabric and political model.

Her model draws on the anthropologies offered by classical political philosophies such as Hobbes and Machiavelli and the philosophies of power as discussed by Nietzsche. She confronts the ethics and function of this fundamental relationship, examines the role of transgenerationality in the formation and endurance of Western democracies and recognizes an often overlooked problem: each new generation must form part of social and political arrangements designed for them by the generations that came before…(More)”.

Can Privacy Nudges be Tailored to Individuals’ Decision Making and Personality Traits?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Logan Warberg, Alessandro Acquisti and Douglas Sicker: “While the effectiveness of nudges in influencing user behavior has been documented within the literature, most prior work in the privacy field has focused on ‘one-size-fits-all’ interventions. Recent behavioral research has identified the potential of tailoring nudges to users by leveraging individual differences in decision making and personality. We present the results of three online experiments aimed at investigating whether nudges tailored to various psychometric scales can influence participants’ disclosure choices. Each study adopted a difference-in-differences design, testing whether differences in disclosure rates for participants presented with a nudge were affected by differences along various psychometric variables. Study 1 used a hypothetical disclosure scenario to measure participants’ responses to a single nudge. Study 2 and its replication (Study 3) tested responses in real disclosure scenarios to two nudges. Across all studies, we failed to find significant effects robustly linking any of the measured psychometric variables to differences in disclosure rates. We describe our study design and results along with a discussion of the practicality of using decision making and personality traits to tailor privacy nudges…(More)”.

Measuring human rights: facing a necessary challenge

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Eduardo Burkle: “Given the abundance of data available today, many assume the world already has enough accurate metrics on human rights performance. However, the political sensitivity of human rights has proven a significant barrier to access. Governments often avoid producing and sharing this type of information.

States’ compliance with their human rights obligations often receives a lot of attention. But there is still much discussion about how to measure it. At the same time, statistics and data increasingly drive political and bureaucratic decisions. This, in turn, brings some urgency to the task of ensuring the best possible data are available.

Establishing cross-national human rights measures is vital for research, advocacy, and policymaking. It can also have a direct effect on people’s enjoyment of human rights. Good data allow states and actors to evaluate how well their country is performing. It also lets them make comparisons that highlight which policies and institutions are truly effective in promoting human rights.

Good human rights data does more than simply evaluate how well a country is performing – it also identifies which policies and institutions are truly effective in promoting human rights

Such context makes it crucial to arm researchers, journalists, advocates, practitioners, investors, and companies with reliable information when raising human rights issues in their countries, and around the world…(More)”.

Protecting Children in Cyberconflicts

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Eleonore Pauwels: “Just as digital technologies have transformed myriad aspects of daily life, they are now transforming war, politics and the social fabric.

This rapid analysis examines the ways in which cyberconflict adversely affects children and offers actions that could strengthen safeguards to protect them.

Cyberconflict can impact children directly or indirectly. Harms range from direct targeting for influence and recruitment into armed forces and armed groups, to personal data manipulation and theft, to cyber attacks on infrastructure across sectors critical to child well-being such as education and health facilities.

Many experts believe that the combination of existing international humanitarian law, international criminal law, human rights law, and child rights law is adequate to address the emerging issues posed by cyberconflict. Nevertheless, several key challenges persist. Attribution of cyber attacks to specific actors and ensuring accountability has proven challenging, particularly in the so-called grey zone between war and peace.

There is an urgent need to clarify how child rights apply in the digital space and for Member States to place these rights at the centre of regulatory frameworks and legislation on new technologies…(More)”.

Using Wikipedia for conflict forecasting

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Christian Oswald and Daniel Ohrenhofer: “How can we improve our ability to predict conflicts? Scholars have struggled with this question for a long time. However, as a discipline, and especially over the last two decades, political science has made substantial progress. In general, what we need to improve predictions are advances in data and methodology. Data advances involve both improving the quality of existing data and developing new data sources. We propose a new data source for conflict forecasting efforts: Wikipedia.

The number of country page views indicates international salience of, or interest in, a country. Meanwhile, the number of changes to a country page indicate political controversy between opposing political views.

We took part in the Violence Early-Warning System’s friendly competition to predict changes in battle-related deaths. In our work, we evaluate our findings with out-of-sample predictions using held-out, previously unseen data, and true forecasts into the future. We find support for the predictive power of country page views, whereas we do not for page changes…

Globally available data, updated monthly, are ideal for (near) real-time forecasting. However, many commonly used data sources are available only annually. They are updated once a year, often with considerable delay.

Some of these variables, such as democracy or GDP, tend to be relatively static over time. Furthermore, many data sources face the problem of missing values. These occur when it is not possible to find reliable data for a variable for a given country.

Wikipedia is updated in real time, unlike many commonly used data sources, which may update only annually and with considerable delay

More recent data sources such as Twitter, images or text as data, or mobile phone data, often do not provide global coverage. What’s more, collecting and manipulating data from such sources is typically computationally and/or financially costly. Wikipedia provides an alternative data source that, to some extent, overcomes many of these limitations…(More)”.

Selected Readings on the LGTBQ+ Community and Data

Curated on Posted on by Uma

By Uma Kalkar, Salwa Mansuri, Marine Ragnet and Andrew J. Zahuranec

As part of an ongoing effort to contribute to current topics in data, technology, and governance, The GovLab’s Selected Readings series provides an annotated and curated collection of recommended works on themes such as open data, data collaboration, and civic technology.

Around the world, LGBTQ+ people face exclusion and discrimination that undermines their capacity to live their lives and succeed. Together with allies, many LGBTQ+ people are fighting to exercise their rights and achieve full equality. However, this struggle has been undermined by a lack of specific, quantifiable information on the challenges they face.

When collected and managed responsibly, data about sexual and gender minorities can be used to protect and empower LGBTQ+ people through informed policy and advocacy work. To this end, this Selected Reading investigates what data is (and is not) collected about LGBTQ+ individuals in the areas within healthcare, education, economics, and public policy and the ramifications of these outcomes. It offers a perspective on some of the existing gaps regarding LGBTQ+ data collection. It also examines the various challenges that LGBTQ+ groups have had to overcome through a data lens. While activism and advocacy has increased the visibility and acceptance of sexual and gender minorities and allowed them to better exercise their rights in society, significant inequities remain. Our literature review puts forward some of these recent efforts.

Most of the papers included in this review, however, conclude with similar findings: data for about LGBTQ+ communities is still lacking and as a result, research on the topic is often times also lagging behind. This is particularly problematic, as detailed in some of our readings, because LGBTQ+ populations are often at the center of discrimination and still face disparate health vulnerabilities. The LGBTQI+ Data Inclusion Act, which recently passed the US House of Representatives and would require over 100 federal agencies to improve data collection and surveying of LGBTQ communities, seeks to address this gap.

We hope this selection of readings can provide some clarity on current data-driven research for and about LGBTQ+ individuals. The readings are presented in alphabetical order.

***

Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)

***

Annotated Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order):

D’Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren F. Klein. Data Feminism. MIT Press, 2020. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/data-feminism.

  • D’Ignazio and Klein investigate how data has been historically used to maintain specific social status quos. To overcome this challenge, they approach data collection and uses through an intersectional, feminist lens that identifies issues in current data handling systems and looks toward solutions for more inclusive data applications.
  • The editors define data feminism as “power, about who has it and who doesn’t, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed using data.” The book centers around seven principles that identify and challenge existing power structures around data and seek pluralist, context-based data processes that illuminate hidden and missed data.

Giblon, Rachel, and Greta R. Bauer. “Health care availability, quality, and unmet need: a comparison of transgender and cisgender residents of Ontario, Canada.” BMC Health Services Research 17, no. 1 (2017): 1–10. https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-017-2226-z.

  • Canada boasts a universal healthcare and insurance system, yet disparities exist between the treatment quality, services, and knowledge about transgender patients.
  • Data collection on transgender, non-binary, and intersex individuals is not conducted in Canadian health surveys, making it difficult to compare and contrast the healthcare provided to transgender people with that provided to cisgender people. Moreover, a lack of physician knowledge about trans needs and/or refusal to provide hormone therapy/ gender-affirming procedures result in trans individuals explicitly avoiding medical services. The lack of services, comfort, and data about transgender people in Canada demonstrate their severely “unmet health care need.”
  • Using data about Ontario residents from the Canadian Community Health Survey and the Trans PULSE survey, the researchers find that 33% transgender Ontarians had an unmet health need that would not be unmet if they were cisgender. As well, transgender men and women found the quality of healthcare in their community to be poor than compared to cisgender individuals. Twenty-one percent of transgender people avoided going to emergency rooms because of their gender identity.

Bowleg, Lisa, and Stewart Landers. “The need for COVID-19 LGBTQ-specific data.” American Journal of Public Health 111, no. 9 (2021): 1604–1605. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34436923/.

  • The adage “no data, no problem” has been magnified during the pandemic, highlighting gaps around data collection for LGBTQ communities, which often intersect with other communities who are disproportionately at-risk for COVID-19, such as minority populations in the service industry and those who smoke.
  • Despite concerns about the stigma facing LBGTQ communities, data collection from these demographics has been relatively feasible, with federal governments drastically increasing their data collection from LGBTQ communities.
  • However, the lack of direction and guidance at a federal level to collect sexual and gender minority data has stunted information about how this demographic has experienced COVID-19 when compared to cis-gender, heterosexual groups. The authors stress the need for data collection from LGBTQ communities and advocacy to encourage these practices to help address the pandemic.

Marshall, Zack, Vivian Welch, Alexa Minichiello, Michelle Swab, Fern Brunger, and Chris Kaposy. “Documenting research with transgender, nonbinary, and other gender diverse (trans) individuals and communities: introducing the global trans research evidence map.” Transgender Health 4, no. 1 (2019): 68–80. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/trgh.2018.0020.

  • Marshall and colleagues study a series of 15 academic databases to assemble a dataset describing 690 trans-focused articles. They then map where and how transgender “have been studied and represented within and across multiple fields of research” to understand the landscape of existing research on transgender people. They find that research around the trans community focused on physical and mental healthcare services and marginalization and were primarily observational research.
  • The authors found that social determinants of health for transgender people were the least studied, along with ethnicity, culture, and race, violence, early life experiences, activism, and education.
  • With this evidence map, researchers have a strong starting point to further explore issues through a LGBTQ lens and better engage with trans people and perspectives when looking at social problems.

Medina, Caroline and Lindsay Mahowald. “Collecting Data about LGBTQI+ and Other Sexual and Gender-Diverse Communities.” Center for American Progress, May 26, 2022. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/collecting-data-about-lgbtqi-and-other-sexual-and-gender-diverse-communities.

  • The paper argues, that despite advances “a persistent lack of routine data collection on sexual orientation, gender identity, and variations in sex characteristics (SOGISC) is still a substantial roadblock for policymakers, researchers, service providers, and advocates seeking to improve the health and well-being of LGBTQI+ people.”
  • Even though various types of data are integral to the experiences of LGBTQI+ people, the report narrows its focus to data collection in two forms of environments: general population surveys & surveys regarding LGBTQI+ people. Specific population surveys such as the latter provide significant advantage to capture specific and sensitive data.
  • It argues that a range of precautions can be adopted from a research design perspective to ensure that personal data and information is handled with care and matches ethical standards as outlined in the Data Ethics Framework of the Federal Data Strategy ranging from privacy and confidentiality to honesty and transparency.

Miner, Michael H., Walter O. Bockting, Rebecca Swinburne Romine, and Sivakumaran Raman. “Conducting internet research with the transgender population: Reaching broad samples and collecting valid data.” Social science computer review 30, no. 2 (2012): 202–211. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3769415/.

  • The internet has the potential to collect information from transgender people, who are “a hard-to-reach, relatively small, and geographically dispersed population” in a diverse and representative manner.
  • To study HIV risk behaviors of transgender individuals in the U.S., Miner et al. developed an online tool that recruited individuals who frequent websites that are important for the transgender community and used quantiative and qualitative methods to learn more about these individuals. They conclude that while online data collection can be difficult to ensure internal validity, careful testing and methods can overcome these issues to improve data quality on transgender people.

Pega, Frank, Sari L. Reisner, Randall L. Sell, and Jaimie F. Veale. “Transgender health: New Zealand’s innovative statistical standard for gender identity.” American journal of public health 107, no. 2 (2017): 217–221. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227923/.

  • Pega et al. discuss New Zealand’s national statistical standard for gender identity data collection, the first of its kind. More governments in Australia and the United States are now following suit to address the health access and information disparity that transgender people face.
  • Data about transgender people has advanced progressive policy action in New Zealand, and the authors celebrate this statistical standard as a way to collect high quality data for data-driven policies to support these groups.
  • While this move will help uncover LGBTQ individuals currently hidden in data, the authors critique the standard because it does not “promote the two-question method, risking misclassification and undercounts; does promote the use of the ambiguous response category “gender diverse” in standard questions; and is not intersex inclusive.”

Ruberg, Bonnie, and Spencer Ruelos. “Data for Queer Lives: How LGBTQ Gender and Sexuality Identities Challenge Norms of Demographics.” Big Data & Society 7, no. 1 (June 18, 2020): 205395172093328. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053951720933286.

  • Drawing from the responses of 178 people who identified as non-heterosexual or non-cisgender in a survey, this paper argues that “dominant notions of demographic data, […] that seeks to accurately categorize and “capture” identity do not sufficiently account for the complexities of LGBTQ lives.”
  • Demographic data commonly imagines identity as fixed, singular, and discrete. However, the researchers’ findings suggest that, for LGBTQ people, gender and sexual identities are often multiple and in flux. Most respondents reported their understanding of their identity shifting over time. For many, “gender identity was made up of overlapping factors, including the relationship between gender and transgender identities. These findings challenge researchers to reconsider how identity is understood as and through data.” They argue that considering identities as fixed and discrete are not only exclusionary but also do not wholly represent the dynamic and fluid nature of gender identities.
  • The piece offers several recommendations to address this challenge. Firstly, the researchers argue to remove data discreteness, which will enable users to select multiple identities rather than choose one from a drop-down list. Secondly, create communication and feedback channels for LGBTQ+ to express whether surveys and other data collection methods are sufficiently inclusive and gender-sensitive.

Sell, Randall L. “LGBTQ health surveillance: data = power.” American Journal of Public Health 107, no. 6 (2017): 843–844. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5425894/.

  • Sell recounts his motto: ‘data = power;’ ‘silence = death’ and how LGBTQ people have been victims of this situation. He argues that health research and surveillance has systemically ignored sexual and gender minorities, leading to gaps in administrative understanding and policies for LGBTQ population.
  • He laments that very few surveys on American health collect sexual and gender orientation data, and the lack of standardization around this data collection muddies researchers’ ability to collate and utilize the information meaningfully.
  • He calls for legislation that mandates the National Institutes of Health to include sexual and gender minorities in all publicly funded research similar to the specific inclusion requirement of women and racial and ethnic minorities in studies. Despite concerns about surveillance and targeting of LGBTQ minorities, Sell argues that data collection is imperative now for a long-scale understanding of the needs of the community, transcending political terms.

Snapp, Shannon D., Stephen T. Russell, Mariella Arredondo, and Russell Skiba. “A right to disclose: LGBTQ youth representation in data, science, and policy.” Advances in child development and behavior 50 (2016): 135–159. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26956072/.

  • Despite significant and positive reforms such as the legalization of same-sex marriages and protection from intersectional sexual harrasment (Webb, 2011) in the United States, there is a striking gap in literature on evidence-based practices that support LGBTQ+ Youth (Kosciw & Pizmony-Levy, 2013). The lack of data-driven solutions stifle the creation of inclusive environments where members of the LGBTQI+ community feel heard and seen. There is a striking gap in literature on evidence-based practices that support LGBTQ+ Youth (also see Kosciw & Pizmony-Levy, 2013; Mustanski, 2011).
  • At present federal and local state data-states do not include SOGI (Sexual Oreintation & Gender Identity) in demographic questions. Data sets that do have spaces to disclose SOGI are largely in a health-related setting such as the Centre for Disease Control or Youth Risk Behavior. As such learning and education disparities and outcomes are not accurately measured.
  • Missing systematic SOGI data renders members of the LGBTQ+ community invisible and sidelined. As such several members of civil society have therefore demanded for the need to gather SOGI data in the Department of Health, Education & Justice. Such data is therefore central to holistically encapsulate the discriminatory experiencees LGBTQ+ Youth face in an education setting, integral to well-being and development. Scholars and research teams have thusfar overcome the barriers of data reliability and validity (see Ridolfo, Miller, & Maitland, 2012) by collating the most effective methods for data collection (Sexual Minority Assessment Research Team, 2009).

Wimberly, George L. “Chapter 10: Use of large-scale data sets and LGBTQ education.” LGBTQ issues in education: Advancing a research agenda (2015): 175–218. https://ebooks.aera.net/LGBTQCH10.

  • This book chapter highlighs the importance of large-scale data sets to gain understanding about LGBTQ students, school experiences, and academic achievement.
  • Young people who identify as LGBTQ tend to be generalized and ways that LGBTQ identification questions are asked by surveys change across years, making it important to disaggregate large-scale data for more granular knowledge about LGBTQ people in education.
  • Wimberly provides information about multiple datasets that collect this information, how they ask questions on LGBTQ identity, and ways in which the datasets have been used or have the potential to be leveraged for a more comprehensive understanding of students. He also points out the limitations of existing data sets, namely that they tend to be retrospective of the LGBTQ adolescent experience and collected from convenience samples, such as college students. This limitation also impacts the external validity of the data, especially with regard to rural, racialized, and lower-income LGBTQ students.

Africa: regulate surveillance technologies and personal data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst


Bulelani Jili in Nature: “…For more than a decade, African governments have installed thousands of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and surveillance devices across cities, along with artificial-intelligence (AI) systems for facial recognition and other uses. Such technologies are often part of state-led initiatives to reduce crime rates and strengthen national security against terrorism. For instance, in Uganda in 2019, Kampala’s police force procured digital cameras and facial-recognition technology worth US$126 million to help it address a rise in homicides and kidnappings (see go.nature.com/3nx2tfk).

However, digital surveillance tools also raise privacy concerns. Citizens, academics and activists in Kampala contend that these tools, if linked to malicious spyware and malware programs, could be used to track and target citizens. In August 2019, an investigation by The Wall Street Journal found that Ugandan intelligence officials had used spyware to penetrate encrypted communications from the political opposition leader Bobi Wine1.

Around half of African countries have laws on data protection. But these are often outdated and lack clear enforcement mechanisms and strategies for secure handling of biometric data, including face, fingerprint and voice records. Inspections, safeguards and other standards for monitoring goods and services that use information and communications technology (ICT) are necessary to address cybersecurity and privacy risks.

The African Union has begun efforts to create a continent-wide legislative framework on this topic. As of March this year, only 13 of the 55 member states have ratified its 2014 Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection; 15 countries must do so before it can take effect. Whereas nations grappling with food insecurity, conflict and inequality might not view cybersecurity as a priority, some, such as Ghana, are keen to address this vulnerability so that they can expand their information societies.

The risks of using surveillance technologies in places with inadequate laws are great, however, particularly in a region with established problems at the intersections of inequality, crime, governance, race, corruption and policing. Without robust checks and balances, I contend, such tools could encourage political repression, particularly in countries with a history of human-rights violations….(More)”.