Governing the Digital Future

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the New America Foundation: “…The first part of this analysis was focused on five issue areas in digital technology that are driving conflict, human rights violations, and socioeconomic displacement: (1) AI and algorithmic decision-making, (2) digital access and divides, (3) data protection and data sovereignty, (4) digital identity and surveillance, and (5) transnational cybercrime...

From our dialogues, consultations, and analysis, a fundamental conclusion emerged: An over-concentration of power and severe power asymmetries are causing conflict, harm, and governance dysfunction in the digital domain. Whereas the internet began as a distributed enterprise that connected and empowered individuals worldwide, extreme concentrations of political, economic, and social power now characterize the digital domain. Power imbalances are especially acute between developing and wealthy nations, as a handful of rich-world tech companies and nation-states control the terms and trajectory of digitization…

On a more practical level, a few takeaways and first principles stood out as in need of urgent attention:

  1. We have a critical opportunity to get ahead of possible harms that will stem from AI; science and citizen-centric fora like the Pugwash Conferences on Science and Technology offer a model means of refocusing the digital governance ecosystem beyond the myopic logic of national sovereignty.
  2. Amid digital divides and increasing government control over the internet, multilateral and multi-stakeholder agencies should invest in fail-safes, alternative or redundant means of access, that can shift the stewardship of connectivity away from concentrated power centers.
  3. Regional standards that respect diverse local circumstances can help generate global cooperation on challenges such as cybercrime.
  4. To reduce global conflict in digital surveillance, democracies should practice what they preach and ban commercial spyware outright.
  5. Redistributing the value from big data can diminish corporate power and empower individuals…(More)”

The Forgotten “Emerging” Technology

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Michael Garcia: “The widespread deployment of 5G devices in the United States will spur widespread use of augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality applications—collectively known as extended reality. The over-commercialization of the term “metaverse” has impeded honest conversations about the implications of an insecure metaverse and the technologies associated with it. While these applications and devices will bring significant benefits, they will be accompanied by numerous cybersecurity challenges. As a result, U.S. policymakers run afoul of repeating past mistakes: failing to secure technology before it ushers in a new era of national security concerns. The U.S. government must work closely with industry, academia, nonprofits, and international partners to begin thinking about these consequential issues…(More)”.

Peace by Design? Unlocking the Potential of Seven Technologies for a More Peaceful Future

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Stefaan G. Verhulst and Artur Kluz: “Technology has always played a crucial role in human history, both in winning wars and building peace. Even Leonardo da Vinci, the genius of the Renaissance time, in his 1482 letter to Ludovico Il Moro Sforza, Duke of Milan promised to invent new technological warfare for attack or defense. While serving top military and political leaders, he was working on technological advancements that could potentially have a significant impact on geopolitics.

(Picture from @iwpg_la)

Today, we are living in exceptional times, where disruptive technologies such as AI, space-based technologies, quantum computing, and many others are leading to the reimagination of everything around us and transforming our lives, state interactions in the global arena, and wars. The next great industrial revolution may well be occurring over 250 miles above us in outer space and putting our world into a new perspective. This is not just a technological transformation; this is a social and human transformation.

Perhaps to a greater extent than ever since World War II, recent news has been dominated by talk of war, as well as the destructive power of AI for human existence. The headlines are of missiles and offensives in Ukraine, of possible — and catastrophic — conflict over Taiwan, and of AI as humanity’s biggest existential threat.

A critical difference between this era and earlier times of conflict is the potential role of technology for peace. Along with traditional weaponry and armaments, it is clear that new space, data, and various other information and communication technologies will play an increasingly prominent role in 21st-century conflicts, especially when combined.

Much of the discussion today focuses on the potential offensive capabilities of technology. In a recent report titled “Seven Critical Technologies for Winning the Next War”, CSIS highlighted that “the next war will be fought on a high-tech battlefield….The consequences of failure on any of these technologies are tremendous — they could make the difference between victory and defeat.”

However, in the following discussion, we shift our focus to a distinctly different aspect of technology — its potential to cultivate peace and prevent conflicts. We present seven forms of PeaceTech, which encompass technologies that can actively avert or alleviate conflicts. These technologies are part of a broader range of innovations that contribute to the greater good of society and foster the overall well-being of humanity.

The application of frontier technologies has speedy, broad, and impactful effects in building peace. From preventing military conflicts and disinformation, connecting people, facilitating dialogue, drone delivery of humanitarian aid, and solving water access conflicts, to satellite imagery to monitor human rights violations and monitor peacekeeping efforts; technology has demonstrated its strong footprint in building peace.

One important caveat is in order: readers may note the absence of data in the list below. We have chosen to include data as a cross-cutting category that applies across the seven technologies. This points to the ubiquity of data in today’s digital ecology. In an era of rapid datafication, data can no longer be classified as a single technology, but rather as an asset or tool embedded within virtually every other technology. (See our writings on the role of data for peace here)…(More)”.

Enhancing the security of communication infrastructure

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “The digital security of communication networks is crucial to the functioning of our societies. Four trends are shaping networks, raising digital security implications: i) the increasing criticality of communication networks, ii) increased virtualisation of networks and use of cloud services, iii) a shift towards more openness in networks and iv) the role of artificial intelligence in networks. These trends bring benefits and challenges to digital security. While digital security ultimately depends on the decisions made by private actors (e.g. network operators and their suppliers), the report underlines the role governments can play to enhance the digital security of communication networks. It outlines key policy objectives and actions governments can take to incentivise the adoption of best practices and support stakeholders to reach an optimal level of digital security, ranging from light-touch to more interventionist approaches…(More)”.

Wartime Digital Resilience

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Gulsanna Mamediieva: “Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, technology was already a growing part of the Ukrainian economy and was central to the government’s vision to reimagine the way citizens and businesses interact with the state in the digital era: paperless, cashless, and without bureaucracy. Even before the conflict, we in government believed that technology holds the promise of making government more transparent, efficient, and accountable, empower citizens, increase participation, and combat corruption.

However, technology has become even more central to helping the country defend itself and mitigate the effect of Russian attacks on civilians. As a result, Ukraine has emerged as a leading example of digital innovation and resilience in the face of challenges, particularly through its gov-tech solutions, using digital governance capacities to maintain basic governance functions in crisis situations and showing a strong case for digital public innovation to support its people. Digital government plays a central role in Ukraine’s ability to continue to fight for its very existence and respond to the aggressor…(More)”

Russia Is Trying to Leave the Internet and Build Its Own

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Timmy Broderick: “Last week the Russian government tried to disconnect its Internet infrastructure from the larger global Web. This test of Russia’s “sovereign Internet” seemingly failed, causing outages that suggest the system is not ready for practical use.

“Sovereign Internet is not really a whole different Internet; it is more like a project that uses various tools,” says Natalia Krapiva, tech-legal counsel at the international digital-rights nonprofit Access Now. “It involves technology like deep packet inspection, which allows major filtering of the Internet and gives governments the ability to throttle certain connections and websites.” By cutting off access to sites such as Western social media platforms, the Russian government could restrict residents from viewing any source of information other than the country’s accepted channels of influence.

This method of curtailing digital freedom goes beyond Russia: other countries are also attempting to develop their own nationwide Internet. And if successful, these endeavors could fragment the World Wide Web. Scientific American talked with Krapiva over Zoom about the implications of this latest test, the motive behind Russia’s actions and the ways the push for a sovereign Internet affect the digital rights of all users…(More)”.

How data helped Mexico City reduce high-impact crime by more than 50%

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Alfredo Molina Ledesma: “When Claudia Sheimbaum Pardo became Mayor of Mexico City 2018, she wanted a new approach to tackling the city’s most pressing problems. Crime was at the very top of the agenda – only 7% of the city’s inhabitants considered it a safe place. New policies were needed to turn this around.

Data became a central part of the city’s new strategy. The Digital Agency for Public Innovation was created in 2019 – tasked with using data to help transform the city. To put this into action, the city administration immediately implemented an open data policy and launched their official data platform, Portal de Datos Abiertos. The policy and platform aimed to make data that Mexico City collects accessible to anyone: municipal agencies, businesses, academics, and ordinary people.

“The main objective of the open data strategy of Mexico City is to enable more people to make use of the data generated by the government in a simple and interactive manner,” said Jose Merino, Head of the Digital Agency for Public Innovation. “In other words, what we aim for is to democratize the access and use of information.” To achieve this goal a new tool for interactive data visualization called Sistema Ajolote was developed in open source and integrated into the Open Data Portal…

Information that had never been made public before, such as street-level crime from the Attorney General’s Office, is now accessible to everyone. Academics, businesses and civil society organizations can access the data to create solutions and innovations that complement the city’s new policies. One example is the successful “Hoyo de Crimen” app, which proposes safe travel routes based on the latest street-level crime data, enabling people to avoid crime hotspots as they walk or cycle through the city.

Since the introduction of the open data policy – which has contributed to a comprehensive crime reduction and social support strategy – high-impact crime in the city has decreased by 53%, and 43% of Mexico City residents now consider the city to be a safe place…(More)”.

Supporting Safer Digital Spaces

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Suzie Dunn, Tracy Vaillancourt and Heather Brittain: “Various forms of digital technology are being used to inflict significant harms online. This is a pervasive issue in online interactions, in particular with regard to technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) and technology-facilitated violence (TFV) against LGBTQ+ people. This modern form of violence perpetuates gender inequality and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and has significant impacts on its targets.

As part of a multi-year research project Supporting a Safer Internet (in partnership with the International Development Research Centre) exploring the prevalence and impacts of TFGBV experienced by women, transgender, gender non-conforming and gender-diverse people, as well as TFV against LGBTQ+ individuals, an international survey was conducted by Ipsos on behalf of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). The survey examined the influence of gender and sexual orientation on people’s experiences with online harms, with a focus on countries in the Global South. Data was collected from 18,149 people of all genders in 18 countries.

The special report provides background information on TFGBV and TFV against LGBTQ+ people by summarizing some of the existing research on the topic. It then presents the quantitative data collected on people’s experiences with, and opinions on, online harms. A list of recommendations is provided for governments, technology companies, academics, researchers and civil society organizations on how they can contribute to addressing and ending TFV…(More)”

(Read the Supporting Safer Digital Spaces: Highlights here.; Read the French translation of the Highlights here.)

Detecting Human Rights Violations on Social Media during Russia-Ukraine War

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Poli Nemkova, et al: “The present-day Russia-Ukraine military conflict has exposed the pivotal role of social media in enabling the transparent and unbridled sharing of information directly from the frontlines. In conflict zones where freedom of expression is constrained and information warfare is pervasive, social media has emerged as an indispensable lifeline. Anonymous social media platforms, as publicly available sources for disseminating war-related information, have the potential to serve as effective instruments for monitoring and documenting Human Rights Violations (HRV). Our research focuses on the analysis of data from Telegram, the leading social media platform for reading independent news in post-Soviet regions. We gathered a dataset of posts sampled from 95 public Telegram channels that cover politics and war news, which we have utilized to identify potential occurrences of HRV. Employing a mBERT-based text classifier, we have conducted an analysis to detect any mentions of HRV in the Telegram data. Our final approach yielded an F2 score of 0.71 for HRV detection, representing an improvement of 0.38 over the multilingual BERT base model. We release two datasets that contains Telegram posts: (1) large corpus with over 2.3 millions posts and (2) annotated at the sentence-level dataset to indicate HRVs. The Telegram posts are in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war. We posit that our findings hold significant implications for NGOs, governments, and researchers by providing a means to detect and document possible human rights violations…(More)” See also Data for Peace and Humanitarian Response? The Case of the Ukraine-Russia War

The Metaverse and Homeland Security

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Timothy Marler, Zara Fatima Abdurahaman, Benjamin Boudreaux, and Timothy R. Gulden: “The metaverse is an emerging concept and capability supported by multiple underlying emerging technologies, but its meaning and key characteristics can be unclear and will likely change over time. Thus, its relevance to some organizations, such as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), can be unclear. This lack of clarity can lead to unmitigated threats and missed opportunities. It can also inhibit healthy public discourse and effective technology management generally. To help address these issues, this Perspective provides an initial review of the metaverse concept and how it might be relevant to DHS. As a critical first step with the analysis of any emerging technology, the authors review current definitions and identify key practical characteristics. Often, regardless of a precise definition, it is the fundamental capabilities that are central to discussion and management. Then, given a foundational understanding of what a metaverse entails, the authors summarize primary goals and relevant needs for DHS. Ultimately, in order to be relevant, technologies must align with actual needs for various organizations or users. By cross-walking exemplary DHS needs that stem from a variety of mission sets with pervasive characteristics of metaverses, the authors demonstrate that metaverses are, in fact, relevant to DHS. Finally, the authors identify specific threats and opportunities that DHS could proactively manage. Although this work focuses the discussion of threats and opportunities on DHS, it has broad implications. This work provides a foundation on which further discussions and research can build, minimizing disparities and discoordination in development and policy…(More)”.