privacy

GitHub and Government

Curated on October 17, 2013August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New site: “Make government better, together. Stories of open source, open data, and open government.
This site is an open source effort to showcase best practices of open sourcing government. See something that you think could be better? Want to submit your own story? Simply fork the project and submit a pull request.
…

Ready to get started on GitHub? Here are some ideas that are easy to get your feet wet with.

Feedback Repository

GitHub’s about connecting with developers. Whether you’re an API publishing pro, or just getting started, creating a “feedback” repository can go a long way to connect your organization with the community. Get feedback from current and potential data consumers by creating a specific repository for them to contribute ideas and suggestions for types of data or other information they’d like to see opened. Here’s how:

Create a new repository
- Choose your organization as the Owner
- Name the repository “feedback” or similar
- Click the checkbox to automatically create a README.md file
Set up your Readme
- Click README.md within your newly created repository
- Click Edit
- Introduce yourself, describe why you’ve joined GitHub, what you’re hoping to do and what you’d like to learn from the development community. Encourage them to leave feedback through issues on the repository.

Sample text for your README.md:

# City of Gotham Feedback
We've just joined GitHub and want to know what data would be interesting to our development community?
Leave us comments via issues!

Open source a Dataset

Open sourcing a dataset can be as simple as uploading a .csv to GitHub and letting people know about it. Rather than publishing data as a zip file on your website or an FTP server, you can add the files through the GitHub.com web interface, or via the GitHub for Windows or GitHub for Mac native clients. Create a new repository to store your datasets – in many cases, it’s as easy as drag, drop, sync.
GitHub can host any file type (although open, non-binary files like .csvs tend to work best). Plus, GitHub supports rendering certain open data formats interactively such as the popular geospacial .geojson format. Once uploaded, citizens can view the files, and can even open issues or submit pull requests with proposed fixes.

Explore Open Source Civic Apps

There are many open source applications freely available on GitHub that were built just for government. Check them out, and see if it fits a need. Here are some examples:

Adopt-a – This open source web app was created for the City of Boston in 2011 by Code for America fellows. It allows residents to “adopt” a hydrant and make sure it’s clear of snow in the winter so that emergency crews can locate them when needed. It has since been adopted in Chicago (for sidewalks), Seattle (for storm drains), and Honolulu (for tsunami sirens).
StreetMix – Another creation of Code for America fellows (2013) this website, www.streetmix.net, allows anyone to create street sections in a way that is not only beautiful but educational, too. No downloading, no installing, no paying – make and save your creations right at the website. Great for internal or public community planning meetings.
We The People – We The People, the White House’s petitions application hosted at petitions.whitehouse.gov is a Drupal module to allow citizens to submit and digitally sign petitions.

Open source something small

Chances are you’ve got something small you can open source. Check in with your web or new media team, and see if they’ve got something they’ve been dying to share or blog about, no matter how small. It can be snippet of analytics code, or maybe a small script used internally. It doesn’t even have to be code.
Post your website’s privacy policy, comment moderation policy, or terms of service and let the community weigh in before your next edit. No matter how small it is, getting your first open source project going is a great first step.

Improve an existing project

Does you agency use an existing open source project to conduct its own business? Open an issue on the project’s repository with a feature request or a bug you spot. Better yet, fork the project, and submit your improvements. Even if it’s one or two lines of code, such examples are great to blog about to showcase your efforts.
Don’t forget, this site is an open source project, too. Making an needed edit is another great way to get started.”

The move toward 'crowdsourcing' public safety

Curated on October 11, 2013August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

PhysOrg: “Earlier this year, Martin Dias, assistant professor in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, presented research for the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System in which he examined Nlets’ network and how its governance and technology helped enable inter-agency information sharing. This work builds on his research aimed at understanding design principles for this public safety “social networks” and other collaborative networks. We asked Dias to discuss how information sharing around public safety has evolved in recent years and the benefits and challenges of what he describes as “crowdsourcing public safety.” …

What is “crowdsourcing public safety” and why are public safety agencies moving toward this trend?
Crowdsourcing—the term coined by our own assistant professor of journalism Jeff Howe—involves taking a task or job traditionally performed by a distinct agent, or employee, and having that activity be executed by an “undefined, generally large group of people in an open call.” Crowdsourcing public safety involves engaging and enabling private citizens to assist public safety professionals in addressing natural disasters, terror attacks, organized crime incidents, and large-scale industrial accidents.
Public safety agencies have long recognized the need for citizen involvement. Tip lines and missing persons bulletins have been used to engage citizens for years, but with advances in mobile applications and big data analytics, the ability of public safety agencies to receive, process, and make use of high volume, tips, and leads makes crowdsourcing searches and investigations more feasible. You saw this in the FBI Boston Marathon Bombing web-based Tip Line. You see it in the “See Something Say Something” initiatives throughout the country. You see it in AMBER alerts or even remote search and rescue efforts. You even see it in more routine instances like Washington State’s HERO program to reduce traffic violations.
Have these efforts been successful, and what challenges remain?
There are a number of issues to overcome with regard to crowdsourcing public safety—such as maintaining privacy rights, ensuring data quality, and improving trust between citizens and law enforcement officers. Controversies over the National Security Agency’s surveillance program and neighborhood watch programs – particularly the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman, reflect some of these challenges. It is not clear yet from research the precise set of success criteria, but those efforts that appear successful at the moment have tended to be centered around a particular crisis incident—such as a specific attack or missing person. But as more crowdsourcing public safety mobile applications are developed, adoption and use is likely to increase. One trend to watch is whether national public safety programs are able to tap into the existing social networks of community-based responders like American Red Cross volunteers, Community Emergency Response Teams, and United Way mentors.
The move toward crowdsourcing public safety is part of an overall trend toward improving community resilience, which refers to a system’s ability to bounce back after a crisis or disturbance. Stephen Flynn and his colleagues at Northeastern’s George J. Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security are playing a key role in driving a national conversation in this area. Community resilience is inherently multi-disciplinary, so you see research being done regarding transportation infrastructure, social media use after a crisis event, and designing sustainable urban environments. Northeastern is a place where use-inspired research is addressing real-world problems. It will take a village to improve community resilience capabilities, and our institution is a vital part of thought leadership for that village.”

If big data is an atomic bomb, disarmament begins in Silicon Valley

Curated on October 10, 2013August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Derrick Harris at GigaOM: “Big data is like atomic energy, according to scientist Albert-László Barabási in a Monday column on Politico. It’s very beneficial when used ethically, and downright destructive when turned into a weapon. He argues scientists can help resolve the damage done by government spying by embracing the principles of nuclear nonproliferation that helped bring an end to Cold War fears and distrust.
Barabási’s analogy is rather poetic:

“Powered by the right type of Big Data, data mining is a weapon. It can be just as harmful, with long-term toxicity, as an atomic bomb. It poisons trust, straining everything from human relations to political alliances and free trade. It may target combatants, but it cannot succeed without sifting through billions of data points scraped from innocent civilians. And when it is a weapon, it should be treated like a weapon.”

tweet this

I think he’s right, but I think the fight to disarm the big data bomb begins in places like Silicon Valley and Madison Avenue. And it’s not just scientists; all citizens should have a role…
I write about big data and data mining for a living, and I think the underlying technologies and techniques are incredibly valuable, even if the applications aren’t always ideal. On the one hand, advances in machine learning from companies such as Google and Microsoft are fantastic. On the other hand, Facebook’s newly expanded Graph Search makes Europe’s proposed right-to-be-forgotten laws seem a lot more sensible.
But it’s all within the bounds of our user agreements and beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Perhaps the reason we don’t vote with our feet by moving to web platforms that embrace privacy, even though we suspect it’s being violated, is that we really don’t know what privacy means. Instead of regulating what companies can and can’t do, perhaps lawmakers can mandate a degree of transparency that actually lets users understand how data is being used, not just what data is being collected. Great, some company knows my age, race, ZIP code and web history: What I really need to know is how it’s using that information to target, discriminate against or otherwise serve me.
An intelligent national discussion about the role of the NSA is probably in order. For all anyone knows, it could even turn out we’re willing to put up with more snooping than the goverment might expect. But until we get a handle on privacy from the companies we choose to do business with, I don’t think most Americans have the stomach for such a difficult fight.”

The Value of Personal Data

Curated on October 8, 2013August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

The Digital Enlightenment Yearbook 2013 is dedicated this year to Personal Data: “The value of personal data has traditionally been understood in ethical terms as a safeguard for personality rights such as human dignity and privacy. However, we have entered an era where personal data are mined, traded and monetized in the process of creating added value – often in terms of free services including efficient search, support for social networking and personalized communications. This volume investigates whether the economic value of personal data can be realized without compromising privacy, fairness and contextual integrity. It brings scholars and scientists from the disciplines of computer science, law and social science together with policymakers, engineers and entrepreneurs with practical experience of implementing personal data management.
The resulting collection will be of interest to anyone concerned about privacy in our digital age, especially those working in the field of personal information management, whether academics, policymakers, or those working in the private sector.”

Riding the Waves or Caught in the Tide? Navigating the Evolving Information Environment

Curated on September 19, 2013August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

IFLA Trend Report: “In the global information environment, time moves quickly and there’s an abundance of commentators trying to keep up. With each new technological development, a new report emerges assessing its impact on different sectors of society. The IFLA Trend Report takes a broader approach and identifies five high level trends shaping the information society, spanning access to education, privacy, civic engagement and transformation. Its findings reflect a year’s consultation with a range of experts and stakeholders from different disciplines to map broader societal changes occurring, or likely to occur in the information environment.
The IFLA Trend Report is more than a single document – it is a selection of resources to help you understand where libraries fit into a changing society.
From Five Key Trends Which Will Change Our Information Environment:
Trend 1:
New Technologies Will Both Expand and Limit Who Has Access to Information…
Trend 2:
Online Education Will Democratise and Disrupt Global Learning…
Trend 3:
The Boundaries of Privacy and Data Protection Will Be Redefined…
Trend 4:
Hyper-Connected Societies Will Listen to and Empower New Voices and Groups…In hyper-connected societies more opportunities for collective action are being realised – enabling the rise of new voices and promoting the growth of single-issue movements at the expense of traditional political parties. Open government initiatives and access to public sector data are leading to more transparency and citizen-focused public services.
Trend 5:
The Global Information Economy Will Be Transformed by New Technologies…”

A Theory of Creepy: Technology, Privacy and Shifting Social Norms

Curated on September 19, 2013August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Omer Tene and Jules Polonetsky in Yale Journal of Law & Technology: “The rapid evolution of digital technologies has hurled to the forefront of public and legal discourse dense social and ethical dilemmas that we have hardly begun to map and understand. In the near past, general community norms helped guide a clear sense of ethical boundaries with respect to privacy. One does not peek into the window of a house even if it is left open. One does not hire a private detective to investigate a casual date or the social life of a prospective employee. Yet with technological innovation rapidly driving new models for business and inviting new types of personal socialization, we often have nothing more than a fleeting intuition as to what is right or wrong. Our intuition may suggest that it is responsible to investigate the driving record of the nanny who drives our child to school, since such tools are now readily available. But is it also acceptable to seek out the records of other parents in our child’s car pool or of a date who picks us up by car? Alas, intuitions and perceptions of “creepiness” are highly subjective and difficult to generalize as social norms are being strained by new technologies and capabilities. And businesses that seek to create revenue opportunities by leveraging newly available data sources face huge challenges trying to operationalize such subjective notions into coherent business and policy strategies.
This article presents a set of social and legal considerations to help individuals, engineers, businesses and policymakers navigate a world of new technologies and evolving social norms. These considerations revolve around concepts that we have explored in prior work, including enhanced transparency; accessibility to information in usable format; and the elusive principle of context.”

OECD's Revised Guidelines on Privacy

Curated on September 17, 2013August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD: “Over many decades the OECD has played an important role in promoting respect for privacy as a fundamental value and a condition for the free flow of personal data across borders. The cornerstone of OECD work on privacy is its newly revised Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data (2013).
Another key component of work in this area aims to improve cross-border co-operation among privacy law enforcement authorities. This work produced an OECD Recommendation on Cross-border Co-operation in the Enforcement of Laws Protecting Privacy in 2007 and inspired the formation of the Global Privacy Enforcement Network, to which the OECD provides support.
Other projects have examined privacy notices and considered privacy in the context of horizontal issues such as radio frequency indentification (RFID), digital identity management, and looked at metrics to inform policy making in these areas. The important role of privacy is also addressed in the OECD Recommendation on Principles for Internet Policy Making (2011) and the Seoul Ministerial Declaration on the Future of the Internet Economy (2008).
Current work is examining privacy-related issues raised by large-scale data use and analytics. It is part of a broader project on the data-driven innovation and growth, which already produced a preliminary report identifying key issues.”

(Appropriate) Big Data for Climate Resilience?

Curated on September 13, 2013August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Amy Luers at the Stanford Social Innovation Review: “The answer to whether big data can help communities build resilience to climate change is yes—there are huge opportunities, but there are also risks.

Opportunities

Feedback: Strong negative feedback is core to resilience. A simple example is our body’s response to heat stress—sweating, which is a natural feedback to cool down our body. In social systems, feedbacks are also critical for maintaining functions under stress. For example, communication by affected communities after a hurricane provides feedback for how and where organizations and individuals can provide help. While this kind of feedback used to rely completely on traditional communication channels, now crowdsourcing and data mining projects, such as Ushahidi and Twitter Earthquake detector, enable faster and more-targeted relief.
Diversity: Big data is enhancing diversity in a number of ways. Consider public health systems. Health officials are increasingly relying on digital detection methods, such as Google Flu Trends or Flu Near You, to augment and diversify traditional disease surveillance.
Self-Organization: A central characteristic of resilient communities is the ability to self-organize. This characteristic must exist within a community (see the National Research Council Resilience Report), not something you can impose on it. However, social media and related data-mining tools (InfoAmazonia, Healthmap) can enhance situational awareness and facilitate collective action by helping people identify others with common interests, communicate with them, and coordinate efforts.

Risks

Eroding trust: Trust is well established as a core feature of community resilience. Yet the NSA PRISM escapade made it clear that big data projects are raising privacy concerns and possibly eroding trust. And it is not just an issue in government. For example, Target analyzes shopping patterns and can fairly accurately guess if someone in your family is pregnant (which is awkward if they know your daughter is pregnant before you do). When our trust in government, business, and communities weakens, it can decrease a society’s resilience to climate stress.
Mistaking correlation for causation: Data mining seeks meaning in patterns that are completely independent of theory (suggesting to some that theory is dead). This approach can lead to erroneous conclusions when correlation is mistakenly taken for causation. For example, one study demonstrated that data mining techniques could show a strong (however spurious) correlation between the changes in the S&P 500 stock index and butter production in Bangladesh. While interesting, a decision support system based on this correlation would likely prove misleading.
Failing to see the big picture: One of the biggest challenges with big data mining for building climate resilience is its overemphasis on the hyper-local and hyper-now. While this hyper-local, hyper-now information may be critical for business decisions, without a broader understanding of the longer-term and more-systemic dynamism of social and biophysical systems, big data provides no ability to understand future trends or anticipate vulnerabilities. We must not let our obsession with the here and now divert us from slower-changing variables such as declining groundwater, loss of biodiversity, and melting ice caps—all of which may silently define our future. A related challenge is the fact that big data mining tends to overlook the most vulnerable populations. We must not let the lure of the big data microscope on the “well-to-do” populations of the world make us blind to the less well of populations within cities and communities that have more limited access to smart phones and the Internet.”

Public Open Data: The Good, the Bad, the Future

Curated on September 5, 2013May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Camille Crittenden at IDEALAB: “Some of the most powerful tools combine official public data with social media or other citizen input, such as the recent partnership between Yelp and the public health departments in New York and San Francisco for restaurant hygiene inspection ratings. In other contexts, such tools can help uncover and ultimately reduce corruption by making it easier to “follow the money.”
Despite the opportunities offered by “free data,” this trend also raises new challenges and concerns, among them, personal privacy and security. While attention has been devoted to the unsettling power of big data analysis and “predictive analytics” for corporate marketing, similar questions could be asked about the value of public data. Does it contribute to community cohesion that I can find out with a single query how much my neighbors paid for their house or (if employed by public agencies) their salaries? Indeed, some studies suggest that greater transparency leads not to greater trust in government but to resignation and apathy.
Exposing certain law enforcement data also increases the possibility of vigilantism. California law requires the registration and publication of the home addresses of known sex offenders, for instance. Or consider the controversy and online threats that erupted when, shortly after the Newtown tragedy, a newspaper in New York posted an interactive map of gun permit owners in nearby counties.
…Policymakers and officials must still mind the “big data gap.”So what does the future hold for open data? Publishing data is only one part of the information ecosystem. To be useful, tools must be developed for cleaning, sorting, analyzing and visualizing it as well. …
For-profit companies and non-profit watchdog organizations will continue to emerge and expand, building on the foundation of this data flood. Public-private partnerships such as those between San Francisco and Appallicious or Granicus, startups created by Code for America’s Incubator, and non-partisan organizations like the Sunlight Foundation and MapLight rely on public data repositories for their innovative applications and analysis.
Making public data more accessible is an important goal and offers enormous potential to increase civic engagement. To make the most effective and equitable use of this resource for the public good, cities and other government entities should invest in the personnel and equipment — hardware and software — to make it universally accessible. At the same time, Chief Data Officers (or equivalent roles) should also be alert to the often hidden challenges of equity, inclusion, privacy, and security.”