The Case for Accountability: How it Enables Effective Data Protection and Trust in the Digital Society

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Centre for Information Policy Leadership: “Accountability now has broad international support and has been adopted in many laws, including in the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), regulatory policies and organisational practices. It is essential that there is consensus and clarity on the precise meaning and application of organisational accountability among all stakeholders, including organisations implementing accountability and data protection authorities (DPAs) overseeing accountability.

Without such consensus, organisations will not know what DPAs expect of them and DPAs will not know how to assess organisations’ accountability-based privacy programs with any degree of consistency and predictability. Thus, drawing from the global experience with accountability to date and from the Centre for Information Policy Leadership’s (CIPL) own extensive prior work on accountability, this paper seeks to explain the following issues:

  • The concept of organisational accountability and how it is reflected in the GDPR;
  • The essential elements of accountability and how the requirements of the GDPR (and of other normative frameworks) map to these elements;
  • Global acceptance and adoption of accountability;
  • How organisations can implement accountability (including by and between controllers and processors) through comprehensive internal privacy programs that implement external rules or the organisation’s own data protection policies and goals, or through verified or certified accountability mechanisms, such as Binding Corporate Rules (BCR), APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules (CBPR), APEC Privacy Recognition for Processors (PRP), other seals and certifications, including future GDPR certifications and codes of conduct; and
  • The benefits that accountability can deliver to each stakeholder group.

In addition, the paper argues that accountability exists along a spectrum, ranging from basic accountability requirements required by law (such as under the GDPR) to stronger and more granular accountability measures that may not be required by law but that organisations may nevertheless want to implement because they convey substantial benefits….(More)”.

Regulation by Blockchain: The Emerging Battle for Supremacy between the Code of Law and Code as Law

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Karen Yeung at Modern Law Review: “Many advocates of distributed ledger technologies (including blockchain) claim that these technologies provide the foundations for an organisational form that will enable individuals to transact with each other free from the travails of conventional law, thus offering the promise of grassroots democratic governance without the need for third party intermediaries. But does the assumption that blockchain systems will operate beyond the reach of conventional law withstand critical scrutiny?

This is the question which this paper investigates, by examining the intersection and interactions between conventional law promulgated and enforced by national legal systems (ie the ‘code of law’) and the internal rules of blockchain systems which take the form of executable software code and cryptographic algorithms via a distributed computing network (‘code as law’).

It identifies three ways in which the code of law may interact with code as law, based primarily on the intended motives and purposes of those engaged in activities in developing, maintaining or undertaking transactions upon the network, referring to the use of blockchain: (a) with the express intention of evading the substantive limits of the law (‘hostile evasion’); (b) to complement and/or supplement conventional law with the aim of streamlining or enhancing compliance with agreed standards (‘efficient alignment’); and (c) to co-ordinate the actions of multiple participants via blockchain to avoid the procedural inefficiencies and complexities associated with the legal process, including the transaction, monitoring and agency costs associated with conventional law (‘alleviating transactional friction’).

These different classes of case are likely to generate different dynamic interactions between the blockchain code and conventional legal systems, which I describe respectively as ‘cat and mouse’, the ‘joys of (patriarchial) marriage’ and ‘uneasy coexistence and mutual suspicion’ respectively…(More)”.

Defending Politically Vulnerable Organizations Online

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC): “A new report …details how media outlets, human rights groups, NGOs, and other politically vulnerable organizations face significant cybersecurity threats—often at the hands of powerful governments—but have limited resources to protect themselves. The paper, “Defending Politically Vulnerable Organizations Online,” by CLTC Research Fellow Sean Brooks, provides an overview of cybersecurity threats to civil society organizations targeted for political purposes, and explores the ecosystem of resources available to help these organizations improve their cybersecurity.

“From mass surveillance of political dissidents in Thailand to spyware attacks on journalists in Mexico, cyberattacks against civil society organizations have become a persistent problem in recent years,” says Steve Weber, Faculty Director of CLTC. “While journalists, activists, and others take steps to protect themselves, such as installing firewalls and anti-virus software, they often lack the technical ability or capital to establish protections better suited to the threats they face, including phishing. Too few organizations and resources are available help them expand their cybersecurity capabilities.”

To compile their report, Brooks and his colleagues at CLTC undertook an extensive open-source review of more than 100 organizations supporting politically vulnerable organizations, and conducted more than 30 interviews with activists, threat researchers, and cybersecurity professionals. The report details the wide range of threats that politically vulnerable organizations face—from phishing emails, troll campaigns, and government-sanctioned censorship to sophisticated “zero-day” attacks—and it exposes the significant resource constraints that limit these organizations’ access to expertise and technology….(More)”.

Digital Switzerlands

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Kristen Eichensehr: “U.S. technology companies are increasingly standing as competing power centers that challenge the primacy of governments. This power brings with it the capacity to bolster or undermine governmental authority, as well as increasing public demands for the companies to protect users from governments. The companies’ power raises serious questions about how to understand their role. Scholars have proposed varying conceptions, suggesting that the companies should be understood as public utilities, information fiduciaries, surveillance intermediaries, or speech governors. This Article takes up another possibility, one suggested by the companies themselves: that they are “Digital Switzerlands.”

The companies’ claim to be Digital Switzerlands encompasses two ideas: that the companies are on par with, not subordinate to, the countries that try to regulate them, and that they are in some sense neutral. This Article critically evaluates the plausibility of these claims and explores how the companies differ from other powerful private parties. The Digital Switzerlands concept sheds light on why the companies have begun to resist both the U.S. and foreign governments, but it also means that the companies do not always counter governments. Understanding the relationship between companies, users, and governments as triangular, not purely hierarchical, reveals how alliances among them affect the companies’ behavior toward governments. But the companies’ efforts to maintain a posture of neutrality also carry a risk of passivity that may allow governmental attacks on users to go unchallenged.

Turning to the normative, the Article proposes several considerations for assessing the desirability of having companies be Digital Switzerlands. Does the rise of the companies as competing power centers benefit individual users? Does the companies’ lack of democratic attributes render them illegitimate powers? If the companies claim the benefits of the sovereign analogy, should they also be held to the public law values imposed on governments, and if so, how? And if there is value in the companies acting as Digital Switzerlands, how can this role be entrenched to prevent backsliding? The Article offers preliminary answers to these questions, with the knowledge that the answers may well evolve along with the companies’ self-conception….(More)”.

Blockchain is helping build a new Indian city, but it’s no cure for corruption

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Ananya Bhattacharya at Quartz: “Last year, Tharigopula Sambasiva Rao entered into a deal with the state government of Andhra Pradesh. He gave up six acres of his agricultural land in his village, Sakhamuru, in exchange for 7,250 square yards—6,000 square yards of residential plots and 1,250 square yards of commercial ones.

In February this year, the 50-year-old farmer got his plots registered at the sub-registrar’s office in Thullur town of Guntur district. He booked an appointment through a government-run app and turned up with his Aadhaar number, a unique identity provided by the government of India to every citizen. Rao’s land documents, complete with a map, certificate, and carrying a unique QR code, were prepared by officials and sent directly to the registration office, all done in just a couple of hours.

Kommineni Ramanjaneyulu, another farmer from around Thullur, exchanged 4.5 acres for 10 plots. The 83-year-old was wary of this new technology deployed to streamline the land registration process. However, he was relieved to see the documents for his new assets in his native language, Telugu. There was no information gap….

In theory, blockchain can store land documents in a tamper-proof, secure network, reducing human interventions and adding more transparency. Data is solidified and the transaction history of a property is fully trackable. This has the potential to reduce, if not entirely prevent, property fraud. But unlike in the case of bitcoin, the blockchain utilised by the government agency in charge of shaping Amaravati is private.

So, despite the promise on paper, local landowners and farmers remain convinced that there’s no escaping red tape and corruption yet….

The entire documentation process for this massive exercise is based on blockchain. The decentralised distributed ledger system—central to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether—can create foolproof digitised land registries of the residential and commercial plots allotted to farmers. It essentially serves as a book-keeping tool that can be accessed by all but is owned by none…

Having seen the government’s dirty tricks, most of the farmers gathered at Rayapudi aren’t buying the claim that the system is tamper-proof—especially at the stages before the information is moved to blockchain. After all, assignments and verifications are still being done by revenue officers on the ground.

That the Andhra Pradesh government is using a private blockchain complicates things further. The public can view information but not directly monitor whether any illicit changes have been made to their records. They have to go through the usual red tape to get those answers. The system may not be susceptible to hacking, but authorities could deliberately enter wrong information or refuse to reveal instances of fraud even if they are logged. This is the farmers’ biggest concern.

“The tampering cannot be stopped. If you give the right people a lot of bribe, they will go in and change the record,” said Seshagiri Rao. Nearly $700 million is paid in bribes across land registrars in India, an Andhra Pradesh government official estimated last year, and even probes into these matters are often flawed….(More)”.

How Mobile Network Operators Can Help Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals Profitably

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “Today, the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) released its second paper in a series focused on the promise of data for development (D4D). The paper, Leveraging Data for Development to Achieve Your Triple Bottom Line: Mobile Network Operators with Advanced Data for Good Capabilities See Stronger Impact to Profits, People and the Planet, will be presented at GSMA’s Mobile 360 Africa in Kigali.

“The mobile industry has already taken a driving seat in helping reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and this research reinforces the role mobile network operators in lower-income economies can play to leverage their network data for development and build a new data business safely and securely,” said Kate Wilson, CEO of the Digital Impact Alliance. “Mobile network operators (MNOs) hold unique data on customers’ locations and behaviors that can help development efforts. They have been reluctant to share data because there are inherent business risks and to do so has been expensive and time consuming.  DIAL’s research illustrates a path forward for MNOs on which data is useful to achieve the SDGs and why acting now is critical to building a long-term data business.”

DIAL worked with Altai Consulting on both primary and secondary research to inform this latest paper.  Primary research included one-on-one in-depth interviews with more than 50 executives across the data for development value chain, including government officials, civil society leaders, mobile network operators and other private sector representatives from both developed and emerging markets. These interviews help inform how operators can best tap into the shared value creation opportunities data for development provides.

Key findings from the in-depth interviews include:

  • There are several critical barriers that have prevented scaled use of mobile data for social good – including 1) unclear market opportunities, 2) not enough collaboration among MNOs, governments and non-profit stakeholders and 3) regulatory and privacy concerns;
  • While it may be an ideal time for MNOs to increase their involvement in D4D efforts given the unique data they have that can inform development, market shifts suggest the window of opportunity to implement large-scale D4D initiatives will likely not remain open for much longer;
  • Mobile Network Operators with advanced data for good capabilities will have the most success in establishing sustainable D4D efforts; and as a result, achieving triple bottom line mandates; and
  • Mobile Network Operators should focus on providing value-added insights and services rather than raw data and drive pricing and product innovation to meet the sector’s needs.

“Private sector data availability to drive public sector decision-making is a critical enabler for meeting SDG targets,” said Syed Raza, Senior Director of the Data for Development Team at the Digital Impact Alliance.  “Our data for development paper series aims to elevate the efforts of our industry colleagues with the information, insights and tools they need to help drive ethical innovation in this space….(More)”.

Does E-government reduce corruption? Evidence from a heterogeneous panel data model

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Devid Kumar Basyal et al: “The purpose of this paper is to revisit the relationship between E-government and corruption using global panel data from 176 countries covering the period from 2003 to 2014, considering other potential determinants, such as economic prosperity (gross domestic product per capita [GDPPC]), price stability (inflation), good governance (political stability and government effectiveness) and press freedom (civil liberties and political rights) indicators. Hence, the main rationale of this study is to reexamine the conventional wisdom as to the relationship between E-government and corruption using panel data independent of any preexisting notions. …

No statistical evidence was found for the idea that E-government has a positive impact on corruption reduction following a rigorous test of the proposition. However, strong evidence was found for the positive impact of a country’s government effectiveness, political stability and economic status. There also appears to be some evidence for the effect of GDPPC and civil liberties. There is no evidence to prove that inflation and political rights have any corruption reducing the effect…

The findings of the study demonstrate that E-government is less significant for reducing corruption compared to other factors. Hence, policymakers should further focus on other potential areas such as socio-economic factors, good governance, culture and transparency to combat corruption in addition to improving digital government…(More)”.

Data infrastructure literacy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jonathan Gray, Carolin Gerlitz and Liliana Bounegru at Big Data & Society: “A recent report from the UN makes the case for “global data literacy” in order to realise the opportunities afforded by the “data revolution”. Here and in many other contexts, data literacy is characterised in terms of a combination of numerical, statistical and technical capacities. In this article, we argue for an expansion of the concept to include not just competencies in reading and working with datasets but also the ability to account for, intervene around and participate in the wider socio-technical infrastructures through which data is created, stored and analysed – which we call “data infrastructure literacy”. We illustrate this notion with examples of “inventive data practice” from previous and ongoing research on open data, online platforms, data journalism and data activism. Drawing on these perspectives, we argue that data literacy initiatives might cultivate sensibilities not only for data science but also for data sociology, data politics as well as wider public engagement with digital data infrastructures. The proposed notion of data infrastructure literacy is intended to make space for collective inquiry, experimentation, imagination and intervention around data in educational programmes and beyond, including how data infrastructures can be challenged, contested, reshaped and repurposed to align with interests and publics other than those originally intended….(More)”

SMS texts on corruption help Ugandan voters hold elected councillors accountable at the polls

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Mark T. Buntaine, Ryan Jablonski, Daniel L. Nielson, and Paula M. Pickering: “Many politicians manipulate information to prevent voters from holding them accountable; however, mobile text messages may make it easier for nongovernmental organizations to credibly share information on official corruption that is difficult for politicians to counter directly.

We test the potential for texts on budget management to improve democratic accountability by conducting a large (n = 16,083) randomized controlled trial during the 2016 Ugandan district elections. In cooperation with a local partner, we compiled, simplified, and text-messaged official information on irregularities in local government budgets.

Verified recipients of messages that described more irregularities than expected reported voting for incumbent councillors 6% less often; verified recipients of messages conveying fewer irregularities than expected reported voting for incumbent councillors 5% more often. The messages had no observable effect on votes for incumbent council chairs, potentially due to voters’ greater reliance on other sources of information for higher profile elections.

These mixed results suggest that text messages on budget corruption help voters hold some politicians accountable in settings where elections are not free and fair….(More)”

Prizes are a powerful spur to innovation and breakthroughs

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

John Thornhill in the Financial Times: “…All too often today we leave research and innovation in the hands of the so-called professionals, often with disappointing results. Winning a prize often matters less than the stimulus it provides for innovators in neighbouring fields In recent years, there has been an explosion in the number of professional scientists. Unesco estimates that there were 7.8m full-time researchers in 2013.

The number of scientific journals has also increased, making it difficult even for specialists to remain on top of all the latest advances in their field. In spite of this explosion of knowledge and research spending, there has been a striking lack of breakthrough innovations, as economists such as Robert Gordon and Tyler Cowen have noted.

Maybe this is because all the low-hanging technological fruit has been eaten. Or perhaps it is because our research and development methodology has gone awry.

Geoff Mulgan, chief executive of Nesta, is one of those who is trying to revive the concept of prizes as a means of encouraging innovation. His public foundation runs the Challenge Prize Centre, offering awards of up to £10m for innovation in the fields of energy and the environment, healthcare, and community wellbeing. “Setting a specific target, opening up to anyone to meet it, and providing a financial reward if they succeed is the opposite of how most R&D is done,” Mr Mulgan says. “We should all focus more on outcomes than inputs.”…
But these prizes are far from being a panacea. Indeed, they can sometimes lead to perverse results, encouraging innovators to fixate on just one, original goal while ignoring serendipitous surprises along the way. Many innovations are the happy byproduct of research rather than its primary outcome. An academic paper on the effectiveness of innovation prizes concluded that they could be a useful addition to the armoury but were no substitute for other proven forms of research and development. The authors also warned that if prizes were poorly designed, managed, and awarded they could prove “ineffective or even harmful”.

That makes it essential to design competitions in careful and precise detail. It also helps if there are periodic payouts along the way to encourage the most promising ideas. Many companies have embraced the concept of open innovation and increasingly look to collaborate with outside partners to develop fresh ideas, sometimes by means of corporate prizes….(More)”.