magazine article

Commit to transparent COVID data until the WHO declares the pandemic is over

Curated on February 23, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Edouard Mathieu at Nature: “…There are huge inequalities in data reporting around the world. Most of my time over the past two years has been spent digging through official websites and social-media accounts of hundreds of governments and health authorities. Some governments still report official statistics in low-resolution images on Facebook or infrequent press conferences on YouTube — often because they lack resources to do better. Some countries, including China and Iran, have provided no files at all.

Sometimes, it’s a lack of awareness: government officials might think that a topline figure somewhere in a press release is sufficient. Sometimes, the problem is reluctance: publishing the first file would mean a flood of requests for more data that authorities can’t or won’t publish.

Some governments rushed to launch pandemic dashboards, often built as one-off jobs by hired contractors. Civil servants couldn’t upgrade them as the pandemic shifted and new metrics and charts became more relevant. I started building our global data set on COVID-19 vaccinations in 2021, but many governments didn’t supply data for weeks — sometimes months — after roll-outs because their dashboards couldn’t accommodate the data. Worse, they rarely supplied underlying data essential for others to download and produce their own analyses. (My team asked repeatedly.)

Over and over, I’ve seen governments emphasize making dashboards look good when the priority should be making data available. A simple text file would do. After all, research groups like mine and citizens with expertise in data-visualization tools are more than willing to create a useful website or mobile app. But to do so, we need the raw material in a machine-readable format….(More)”.

Ukraine prepares to remove data from Russia’s reach

Curated on February 22, 2022February 24, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Eric Geller: “Ukraine’s government is preparing to wipe its computer servers and transfer its sensitive data out of Kyiv if Russian troops move to seize the capital, a senior Ukrainian cyber officialsaid Tuesday.

The worst-case contingency planning addresses an unintended consequence of a security measure the government took in 2014, when it began centralizing its computer systems after Russia and pro-Moscow separatists seized control of Crimea and the Donbas region.

That measure made it harder for Russian hackers to penetrate computers that store critical data and provide services such as pension benefits, or to use formerly government-run networks in the occupied territories to launch cyberattacks on Kyiv. But it’s also created a tempting target in the capital for Russia’s military, which has begun moving into separatist-controlled territories of eastern Ukraine.

Seizing Ukraine’s computer networks intact would give Moscow not only troves of classified documents but also detailed information about the population under its control. So Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration says it isn’t taking any chances.

“We have plans and we have scenarios,” Victor Zhora, the deputy chief of Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, said in an interview from Kyiv. “We can move to new locations, we can save data and we can delete data and prevent capturing all this data,” even if Russian forces take control of the government’s offices….(More)”

We need to build a deliberative democracy

Curated on February 21, 2022February 23, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Neera Chandhoke: “There was a time when elections in India were described as ‘the carnival of democracy’. Today, they are a theatre of war. And war has no rules. In the Mahabharata, law-giver Krishna advises deceit: recollect the killing of Karna, the tragic hero who epitomised courage, valour, honour, generosity and loyalty. Analogously, in the current elections to five Assemblies, every rule protecting human dignity has been violated. Wild allegations are thrown around, history is distorted, people are divided, the hijab becomes a core issue, poverty and unemployment are non-issues and politicians strike Faustian bargains. Political languages are turned upside down, and we no longer know who stands for what, or whether they stand for anything at all.

The unnecessary hype over elections is odd. In parliamentary democracies, elections come and go, politicians appear and disappear, and life goes on. In India, elections are a matter of life and death. Television channels carry no other news. Ministers of the Central government focus their attention on state and even panchayat elections, and pay scant attention to what they should be doing: governing the country, providing jobs, ensuring wellbeing, moderating political excesses.

Considering that every year some or the other state goes into the election mode, we are fated to live amidst this hysteria and this name-calling, this empty symbolism and even emptier rhetoric…(More)”.

End the State Monopoly on Facts

Curated on February 21, 2022February 21, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Adam J. White: “…This Covid-era dynamic has accelerated broader trends toward the consolidation of informational power among a few centralized authorities. And it has further deformed the loose set of institutions and norms that Jonathan Rauch, in a 2018 National Affairs article, identified as Western civilization’s “constitution of knowledge.” This is an arrangement in science, journalism, and the courts in which “any hypothesis can be floated” but “can join reality only insofar as it persuades people after withstanding vigorous questioning and criticism.” The more that Americans delegate the hard work of developing and distributing information to a small number of regulatory institutions, the less capable we all will be of correcting the system’s mistakes — and the more likely the system will be to make mistakes in the first place.

In a 1999 law review article, Timur Kuran and Cass Sunstein warned of availability cascades, a process in which activists promote factual assertions and narratives that in a self-reinforcing dynamic become more plausible the more widely available they are, and can eventually overwhelm the public’s perception. The Covid-19 era has been marked by the opposite problem: unavailability cascades, in which media institutions and social media platforms swiftly erase disfavored narratives and dissenting contentions from the marketplace of ideas, making them seem implausible by their near unavailability. Such cascades occur because legacy media and social media platforms have come to rely overwhelmingly, even exclusively, on federal regulatory agencies’ factual assertions and the pronouncements of a small handful of other favored institutions, such as the World Health Organization, as the gold standard of facts. But availability and unavailability cascades, even when intended in good faith to prevent the spread of disinformation among the public, risk misinforming the very people they purport to inform. A more diverse and vibrant ecosystem of informational institutions would disincentivize the platforms’ and media’s reflexive, cascading reactions to dissenting views.

This second problem — the concentration of informational power — exacerbates the first one: how to counterbalance the executive branch’s power after an emergency. In order for Congress, the courts, and other governing institutions to reassert their own constitutional roles after the initial weeks and months of crisis, they (and the public) need credible sources of information outside the administration itself. An informational ecosystem not overweighted so heavily toward administrative agencies, one that benefits more from the independent contributions of experts in universities, think tanks, journalism, and other public and private institutions, would improve the quality of information that it produces. It would also be less susceptible to the reflexively partisan skepticism that has become endemic in the polarization of modern president-centric government…(More)”.

This Is the Difference Between a Family Surviving and a Family Sinking

Curated on February 20, 2022February 20, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Bryce Covert: “…The excitement around policymaking is almost always in the moments after ink dries on a bill creating something new. But if a benefit fails to reach the people it’s designed for, it may as well not exist at all. Making government benefits more accessible and efficient doesn’t usually get the spotlight. But it’s often the difference between a family getting what it needs to survive and falling into hardship and destitution. It’s the glue of our democracy.

President Biden appears to have taken note of this. Late last year, he issued an executive order meant to improve the “customer experience and service delivery” of the entire federal government. He put forward some ideas, including moving Social Security benefit claims and passport renewals online, reducing paperwork for student loan forgiveness and certifying low-income people for all the assistance they qualify for at once, rather than making them seek out benefits program by program. More important, he shifted the focus of government toward whether or not the customers — that’s us — are having a good experience getting what we deserve.

It’s a direction all lawmakers, from the federal level down to counties and cities, should follow.

One of the biggest barriers to government benefits is all of the red tape to untangle, particularly for programs that serve low-income people. They were the ones wrangling with the I.R.S.’s nonfiler portal while others got their payments automatically. Benefits delivered through the tax code, which flow so easily that many people don’t think of them as government benefits at all, mostly help the already well-off. Programs for the poor, on the other hand, tend to be bloated with barriers like income tests, work requirements and in-person interviews. It’s not just about applying once, either; many require people to continually recertify, going through the process over and over again.

The hassle doesn’t just cost time and effort. It comes with a psychological cost. “You get mad at the D.M.V. because it takes hours to do something that should only take minutes,” Pamela Herd, a sociologist at Georgetown, said. “These kind of stresses can be really large when you’re talking about people who are on a knife’s edge in terms of their ability to pay their rent or feed their children.”…(More)”.

Effective and Trustworthy Implementation of AI Soft Law Governance

Curated on February 19, 2022February 23, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction by Carlos Ignacio Gutierrez, Gary E. Marchant and Katina Michael: “This double special issue (together with the IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Dec 2021) is dedicated to examining the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) through soft law. This kind of law is considered “soft” as opposed to “hard” because it comes in the form of governance programs whose goal is to create substantive expectations that are not directly enforceable by government [1], [2]. Soft law materializes out of necessity to enable a technological innovation to thrive and not be hampered by disparate heterogeneous practices that may negatively impact its trajectory, causing a premature “valley of death” exit scenario [3]. Soft laws are meant to be “just in time” to grant industry fundamental guidance when dealing with complex socio-technical assemblages that may have significant socio-legal implications upon diffusion into the market. Anticipatory governance is closely connected with soft law, in that intended and unintended consequences of a new technology may well be anticipated and proactively addressed [4].

Soft law’s role in governance is to influence the implementation of new technologies whose inception into society have outpaced hard law. Its usage is not meant to diminish the need for regulations, but rather be considered an interim solution when the roll-out of a new technology is happening rapidly, resisting the urge to create reactive and premature laws that may well take too long to enter legislation in a given state. Mutual agreement and conformance toward common goals and technical protocols through soft law among industry representatives, associated government agencies, auxiliary service providers, and other stakeholders, can lead to positive gains. Including the potential for societal acceptance of a new technology, especially where there are adequate provisions to safeguard the customer and the general public…(More)”.

We may have overdone it on citizens’ assemblies

Curated on February 14, 2022February 16, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by David Farrell: “Ireland has citizens’ assemblies aplenty. A few weeks ago the Cabinet gave the green light for two new citizens’ assemblies on biodiversity and a Dublin mayor. This immediately prompted a debate in the Oireachtas over why the Dublin mayor citizens’ assembly is being prioritised over one on drugs use that was promised in the Programme for Government, along with citizens’ assemblies on rural youth and the future of education. Almost every day there are groups calling for still more citizens’ assemblies: the recent list includes such topics as a united Ireland, the funding of our armed forces, and a new forest strategy.

This all comes hot on the heels of three previous assemblies since 2012, the most recent of which, the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality, completed its work last year and, after some delay, its well-considered report is about to be considered by a special Oireachtas committee, chaired by Ivana Bacik.

It’s no wonder that Ireland is seen as a leading light in the world of citizens’ assemblies: they have made important contributions on issues like abortion and gay marriage. But these high-profile successes disguise the fact that many, many other recommendations from previous assemblies have been ignored, rejected, or left to gather dust: that’s a lot of time and effort (not least by citizens’ assembly members) and public funding wasted for rather little return…(More)”.

The Myth of Tech Exceptionalism

Curated on February 14, 2022February 16, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Yael Eisenstat and Nils Gilman: “…What has come to be known as “tech” presents a two-faced image. On the one hand, tech represents (and especially presents itself) as all that is good about contemporary capitalism: it produces delightful new products, generates vast new troves of wealth and inspires us quite literally to reach for the heavens. On the other hand, the harms caused by “tech” have become all too familiar: facial recognition technology disproportionately misidentifying people of color, Google reinforcing racist stereotypes, Facebook stoking political polarization, AirBnB hollowing out city centers, smartphones harming mental health and on and on. Some go so far as to claim that tech is depriving us of the very essence of our humanity.

Despite these critiques, Silicon Valley in recent decades has managed to build an anti-regulatory fortress around itself by promoting the myth — rarely stated plainly, but widely believed by tech practitioners — that “tech” is somehow fundamentally different from every other industry that has come before. It is different, the myth says, because it is inherently well-intentioned and will produce not just new but previously unthinkable products. Any micro-level harm — whether to an individual, a vulnerable community, even an entire country — is by this logic deemed a worthwhile trade-off for the society-shifting, macro-level “good.”

This argument, properly labelled “tech exceptionalism,” is rooted in tech leaders’ ideological view both of themselves and government. This ideology contributes to the belief that those who choose to classify themselves as “tech companies” deserve a different set of rules and responsibilities than the rest of private industry.

For tech evangelists, “disruption” as such has become a kind of holy grail, with “unintended consequences” treated as an acceptable by-product of innovation. “Move fast and break things” was Facebook’s original motto — and if a little thing like democracy got broken in the process, well, someone could clean that up later. An entire generation of “innovators” has grown up believing that technology is the key to making the world better, that founders’ visions for how to do so are unquestionably true and that government intervention will only stymie this engine of growth and prosperity, or even worse, their aspirational future innovations…(More)”.

Technology is revolutionizing how intelligence is gathered and analyzed – and opening a window onto Russian military activity around Ukraine

Curated on February 14, 2022February 17, 2022 by Stefaan Verhulst

Craig Nazareth at The Conversation: “…Through information captured by commercial companies and individuals, the realities of Russia’s military posturing are accessible to anyone via internet search or news feed. Commercial imaging companies are posting up-to-the-minute, geographically precise images of Russia’s military forces. Several news agencies are regularly monitoring and reporting on the situation. TikTok users are posting video of Russian military equipment on rail cars allegedly on their way to augment forces already in position around Ukraine. And internet sleuths are tracking this flow of information.

This democratization of intelligence collection in most cases is a boon for intelligence professionals. Government analysts are filling the need for intelligence assessments using information sourced from across the internet instead of primarily relying on classified systems or expensive sensors high in the sky or arrayed on the planet.

However, sifting through terabytes of publicly available data for relevant information is difficult. Knowing that much of the data could be intentionally manipulated to deceive complicates the task.

Enter the practice of open-source intelligence. The U.S. director of national intelligence defines Open-Source Intelligence, or OSINT, as the collection, evaluation and analysis of publicly available information. The information sources include news reports, social media posts, YouTube videos and satellite imagery from commercial satellite operators.

OSINT communities and government agencies have developed best practices for OSINT, and there are numerous free tools. Analysts can use the tools to develop network charts of, for example, criminal organizations by scouring publicly available financial records for criminal activity.

Private investigators are using OSINT methods to support law enforcement, corporate and government needs. Armchair sleuths have used OSINT to expose corruption and criminal activity to authorities. In short, the majority of intelligence needs can be met through OSINT…

Even with OSINT best practices and tools, OSINT contributes to the information overload intelligence analysts have to contend with. The intelligence analyst is typically in a reactive mode trying to make sense of a constant stream of ambiguous raw data and information.

Machine learning, a set of techniques that allows computers to identify patterns in large amounts of data, is proving invaluable for processing OSINT information, particularly photos and videos. Computers are much faster at sifting through large datasets, so adopting machine learning tools and techniques to optimize the OSINT process is a necessity.

Identifying patterns makes it possible for computers to evaluate information for deception and credibility and predict future trends. For example, machine learning can be used to help determine whether information was produced by a human or by a bot or other computer program and whether a piece of data is authentic or fraudulent…(More)”.