Rania Fakhoury at the Conversation: “Privacy is no longer a social norm, said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2010, as social media took a leap to bring more private information into the public domain. But what does it mean for governments, citizens and the exercise of democracy? Donald Trump is clearly not the first leader to use his Twitter account as a way to both proclaim his policies and influence the political climate. Social media presents novel challenges to strategic policy, and has become a managerial issues for many governments. But it also offers a free platform for public... (More >)
Google DeepMind and healthcare in an age of algorithms
Julia Powles and Hal Hodson in Health and Technology: “Data-driven tools and techniques, particularly machine learning methods that underpin artificial intelligence, offer promise in improving healthcare systems and services. One of the companies aspiring to pioneer these advances is DeepMind Technologies Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Google conglomerate, Alphabet Inc. In 2016, DeepMind announced its first major health project: a collaboration with the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, to assist in the management of acute kidney injury. Initially received with great enthusiasm, the collaboration has suffered from a lack of clarity and openness, with issues of privacy... (More >)
Dark Web
Kristin Finklea for the Congressional Research Service: “The layers of the Internet go far beyond the surface content that many can easily access in their daily searches. The other content is that of the Deep Web, content that has not been indexed by traditional search engines such as Google. The furthest corners of the Deep Web, segments known as the Dark Web, contain content that has been intentionally concealed. The Dark Web may be used for legitimate purposes as well as to conceal criminal or otherwise malicious activities. It is the exploitation of the Dark Web for illegal practices... (More >)
The Crowd & the Cloud
The Crowd & the Cloud (TV series): “Are you interested in birds, fish, the oceans or streams in your community? Are you concerned about fracking, air quality, extreme weather, asthma, Alzheimer’s disease, Zika or other epidemics? Now you can do more than read about these issues. You can be part of the solution. Smartphones, computers and mobile technology are enabling regular citizens to become part of a 21st century way of doing science. By observing their environments, monitoring neighborhoods, collecting information about the world and the things they care about, so-called “citizen scientists” are helping professional scientists to advance... (More >)
Migration tracking is a mess
Huub Dijstelbloem in Nature: “As debates over migration, refugees and freedom of movement intensify, technologies are increasingly monitoring the movements of people. Biometric passports and databases containing iris scans or fingerprints are being used to check a person’s right to travel through or stay within a territory. India, for example, is establishing biometric identification for its 1.3 billion citizens. But technologies are spreading beyond borders. Security policies and humanitarian considerations have broadened the landscape. Drones and satellite images inform policies and direct aid to refugees. For instance, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), maps refugee camps... (More >)
Bit By Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age
Open Review of Book by Matthew J. Salganik: “In the summer of 2009, mobile phones were ringing all across Rwanda. In addition to the millions of calls between family, friends, and business associates, about 1,000 Rwandans received a call from Joshua Blumenstock and his colleagues. The researchers were studying wealth and poverty by conducting a survey of people who had been randomly sampled from a database of 1.5 million customers from Rwanda’s largest mobile phone provider. Blumenstock and colleagues asked the participants if they wanted to participate in a survey, explained the nature of the research to them, and... (More >)
Watchdog to launch inquiry into misuse of data in politics
Jamie Doward, Carole Cadwalladr and Alice Gibbs in The Guardian: “The UK’s privacy watchdog is launching an inquiry into how voters’ personal data is being captured and exploited in political campaigns, cited as a key factor in both the Brexit and Trump victories last year. The intervention by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) follows revelations in last week’s Observer that a technology company part-owned by a US billionaire played a key role in the campaign to persuade Britons to vote to leave the European Union. It comes as privacy campaigners, lawyers, politicians and technology experts express fears that electoral... (More >)
Open Data Privacy Playbook
A data privacy playbook by Ben Green, Gabe Cunningham, Ariel Ekblaw, Paul Kominers, Andrew Linzer, and Susan Crawford: “Cities today collect and store a wide range of data that may contain sensitive or identifiable information about residents. As cities embrace open data initiatives, more of this information is available to the public. While releasing data has many important benefits, sharing data comes with inherent risks to individual privacy: released data can reveal information about individuals that would otherwise not be public knowledge. In recent years, open data such as taxi trips, voter registration files, and police records have revealed... (More >)
Denmark is appointing an ambassador to big tech
Matthew Hughes in The Next Web: “Question: Is Facebook a country? It sounds silly, but when you think about it, it does have many attributes in common with nation states. For starters, it’s got a population that’s bigger than that of India, and its 2016 revenue wasn’t too far from Estonia’s GDP. It also has a ‘national ethos’. If America’s philosophy is capitalism, Cuba’s is communism, and Sweden’s is social democracy, Facebook’s is ‘togetherness’, as corny as that may sound. Given all of the above, is it really any surprise that Denmark is considering appointing a ‘big tech ambassador’... (More >)
Data Disrupts Corruption
Carlos Santiso & Ben Roseth at Stanford Social Innovation Review: “…The Panama Papers scandal demonstrates the power of data analytics to uncover corruption in a world flooded with terabytes needing only the computing capacity to make sense of it all. The Rousse impeachment illustrates how open data can be used to bring leaders to account. Together, these stories show how data, both “big” and “open,” is driving the fight against corruption with fast-paced, evidence-driven, crowd-sourced efforts. Open data can put vast quantities of information into the hands of countless watchdogs and whistleblowers. Big data can turn that information into... (More >)
