ICTlogy

Mireille Hildebrandt. Professor of Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) at Radboud University Nijmegen
Slaves of Big Data. Are we?

Big data says that n = all.

We are worshipping big data, believing in it, as if it was “Godspeech” that cannot be contested. But it is developed by governments, businesses and scientists.

Defining Big Data

Things one can do at a large scale that cannot be done at a smaller scale, Mayer-Schönberger & Cukier.

The non-trivial process of identifying valid, novel, potentially useful, and ultimately understandable patterns in data, Fayyad et al.

We assume that machines can learn. Despite this being true, the question is whether us (humans) can anticipate this learning and make it useful.

Normally, quantitative research means assuming a hypothesis, a test upon a representative sample, and trying to extrapolate the results of the sample on the general population. But big data, as the sample grows, uncertainty reduces. This has implied a movement towards ‘Datafication’, where everything needs to be recorded so that afterwards it can be treated. We translate the flux of life into data, tracking and recording all aspects of life.

Exploiting these data is no more about queries, but about data mining. And creating ‘data derivatives’ which are anticipations, present futures of the future present (Elena Esposito). And it is also about a certain “end of theory” (Chris Anderson) where a pragmatist approach makes us shift from causality (back) to correlation. We also move away from creating or defining concepts, which in turn shape the way we understand reality. We move from expertise to data science. Are we on the verge of data dictatorship? Is this the end of free will?

There are novel inequalities dues to new knowledge asymmetries between data subjects and data controllers.

What does it mean to skip the theory and to limit oneself to generating and testing hypotheses against ‘a’ population?

What does the opacity of computational techniques mean for the robustness of the outcomes?

Personal data management in the age of Big Data

Should we shift towards data minimisation? Towards blocking access to our data?

New personal data typology needed for data protection: volunteered data, behavioural data, inferred data.

The ones performing profiling after Big Data, for data protection to be a protected right, these agents should provide all kinds of information on how this profiling is being made, with especial attention to procedures and outcomes.

If we cannot have “privacy by design” we should have personal data management, context aware data management.

Personal data management: sufficient autonomy to develop one’s identity; dependent on the context of the transactions; enabling considerations of constraints relevant to personal preferences (Bus & Nguyen).

A rising problem: we will eventually be able to market data and make profits from it. Do we have any ethical approach towards the way these data were obtained? or how and when were they created?

Who are we in the era of Big Data?

Imperfection, ambiguity, opacity, disorder, and the opportunity to err, sin, to do the wrong thing: all of these are constitutive of human freedom, and any attempt to root them out will root out that freedom as well, Morozov.

So, where is the balance between techno-optimism and techno-pessimism?

Luhmann’s Double Contingency explains how there is a double contingency in behaviour and communications, as one can choose from different options how to act, but this action will have different ranges of reactions on third parties. Are we preserving this double contingency in the era of Big Data? Do big data machines anticipate us so much that we get over contingencies at all?

What if it is machines that anticipate us? What if we anticipate how machines anticipate us?

Caveats

• Datafication multiplies and reduces: N is not all, not at all.
• We create machines like us… do we increasingly are like machines?
• Monetisation as a means to reinstate double contingency. Total transparency by means of monetisation.

Can we move from overexposure to clair obscure? Can we build data buffers to avoid overflow?

Discussion

Chris Marsden: How can we make policy-makers take into account all these important issues? Hildebrandt: there are two big problems with Big Data (1) enthusiasm that Big Data will solve it all and (2) huge business opportunities of business around Big Data. There sure is a way to “tweak” business models so that privacy and business opportunities and innovations can actually coexist. Capitalism sure has ways to achieve a balance.

Hildebrandt: big data, monetisation, etc. will surely change the ones we are. The question being: should we be always the ones we are? Instead of privacy, we should maybe shift to concentrating on transparency, on knowing what things happen and why things happen. For instance, can we put more attention on what we need to solve and not in what solutions are available? That is also transparency.

Moderator: Miquel Peguera. Lecturer, School of Law and Political Science (UOC).

The Exceptions’ Sun Also Rises: When Fair Use Is the Solution.
Pedro Letai. Professor of IE Law School

There is a need to restore the legitimacy of copyright. But, of course, re-balancing its role before other rights. And we have to go back to the origins of copyright: incentivating creation.

These incentives have limits and exceptions: private copying, incidental use, academic use, quotation, parody, etc. But these limits should not be harming the legitimate activities of rights holders.

The problem is that users (user generated content), search engines, etc. are doing cutting edge uses that are not appropriately contemplated by the Law.

So, the norm should be a little bit more open so not to harm neither the creation of authors nor the creation by non-professionals, the diffusion of the creation of the former or just emerging industries based in digital content.

3d Printing, the Internet and Patent Law – A History Repeating?
Marc Mimler. Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute, Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS), Queen Mary University of London

3D printing was initially thought for rapid prototyping. 3D would normally begin with a designer drawing the blueprints of the object to be printed, but scanners have evolved enough to be able to scan 3D objects, map them and then be able to replicate them on 3D printers.

Some advantages: reversing offshoring low-cost labour economic activities, reducing the environmental impact by reducing transportation of goods, empowerment for the end user that can now print their own designs, etc.

On the other side, 3D printing can imply direct patent infringement (creating replicas and counterfeit). But also indirect patent infringement, as virtually anyone can create those replicas.

There are some differences though: how the invention is put into effect, how the patented product is produced (as sometimes the process is part of the patent, or sometimes it is just the process what is the object of the patent), etc.

3D printing means that is not only copyright that has to be rethought in a new digital realm, but also patent law.

Intellectual Privacy: A Fortress for the Individual User?
Irina Baraliuc.Research Group on Law, Science, Technology & Society (LSTS), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), doctoral researcher

There is a public debate on fundamental rights in the digital context, which has ensued a judicial activity on the balancing of fundamental rights.

Julie E. Cohen defines intellectual privacy as the breathing space of intellectual activity: informational privacy, spacial privacy. Neil M. Richards speaks of ability do develop ideas without any interference: freedom of thought and believe, spatial privacy, freedom of intellectual exploration, confidentiality.

These concepts are very related with privacy, data protection, freedom of thought, freedom of expression… and copyright.

Concerning privacy and data protection, there are some points to be made: how the lack of copyright in the private space can affect creationor intellectual privacy; how DRM can affect it too, etc.

Surveillance can affect freedom of thought and thus creation, intellectual activity and intellectual privacy.

We have the build a copyright-concerned private space online, taking into account intellectual “privacy” or “freedom”, “self-determination” or “autonomy”.

Discussion

Pedro Letai: more that having a comprehensive approach, what we should be thinking about is that there is a change of paradigm (from “everything closed” to “everything open” by default). And maybe regulations should be made according to the later paradigm, and thinking more on diffusion of one’s work, rather than (only) providing incentives to creation (of new works).

Wrap-up: internet freedom for global development – making progress?

Moderator: Emily Taylor, Consultant, Non-executive Director Oxford Information Labs Ltd, Member of Multistakeholder Advisory Group at UN Internet Governance Forum.

Panelists: Gunilla Carlsson, Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation; Yoani Sanchez, Journalist, Generation Y; Sang-yirl Nam, Research Fellow at the Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI); Andrew Wyckoff, Director, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry at the OECD; Carlos Affonso Souza, Vice-Coordinator, Center for Technology and Society (CTS/FGV); Sylvie Coudray, Chief of Section of Freedom of Expression, UNESCO.

Internet freedom means physical access to infrastructures, but also access to content without any political bias or censorship and, at last, the freedom to publish content or opinions without any fear of harassment or personal harm.

The “Internet without the Internet” is about using USB keys to find and share all that it is not legal to be found and read and shared. Just like people are used in Cuba to look for illegal food in the black market, so do people look for illegal information on the Internet.

But what are the limits of freedom on the Internet?

Freedom is also having the skills to be able to operate the Internet.

Freedom is not being above the law, being free from the law. So, you are free not against the law, but because of the law.

ICTs give freedom to people through empowerment, providing tools to manage their own lives, to innovate, to leapfrog the stage of development they are in.

Freedom of the Net should be approached from a Human Rights point of view, which are “above” specific laws, sometimes disrespectful to Human Rights.

Multi-stakeholder initiatives are great for creating debate and a state of opinion, but at the end, it is elected representatives the ones that have the responsibility to make a decision and to make this decision happen in the real world. On the other hand, citizens can engage now much more through ICTs, so we should include them, not only as organized civil society, but as individuals, in decision-making processes.

When we speak about “responsible” citizens, what it sometimes happen is that totalitarian governments want “responsible” citizens that will only read and say what is “responsible”. And what happens is that once people reach the content that is on the Internet, they become critical and will read and say whatever they want, despite it is considered “responsible” by their totalitarian governments.

More information

• The session at Storify.

Transforming international development through ICTs

Moderator: Bertrand de La Chapelle, Program Director at the International Diplomatic Academy, Member of the Board of Directors at ICANN.

Panelists: Marlon Parker, Founder RLabs; Robert Kirkpatrick, Director of the UN Global Pulse; Juliana Rotich, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Ushahidi; Usha Venkatachallam, Founder & CEO, Appropriate IT; Laura Walker Hudson, CEO, Social Impact Lab Foundation, the Makers of FrontlineSMS.

We are witnessing a paradigm shift in international development through the use of ICTs.

Then we talk about ICT4D, it is not more about infrastructures, but about applications. How are these new technological platforms allowing development cooperation to do things?

Ushahidi allowed, with very low cost, to raise awareness on political issues but also on crisis response, environment monitoring, etc. The technology is only an small part of the whole project, where training and human interaction are the most important part of all.

Global Pulse is about collecting information in real time and to use it for decision-making. Before, it was about letting information flow and feed development projects; now it is about seeing the patterns that people leave in the data that are automatically generated and try to infer policies after that. There is a powerful field in passively generated data. The UN has a lot of maps on almost everything, but they are missing one thing: people. With passively generated data, you can put people on the maps and in real time.

FrontlineSMS lets you manage SMSs virtually with any device, which makes of it a universal tool that can be used by anyone. The choice of platform is usually very political and has different impacts. Being platform neutral is crucial in development not to exclude anyone.

Reconstructed Living Labs (RLabs) put the tools in the hands of the citizens for they to use them for their own purposes, without a third party directing a specific usage of a given tool. And if a community is created around the lab, the more advanced ones will hep the least advanced users.

Appropriate IT does not teach programming, but how to learn (by yourself) how to develop software. Training is about giving tools and giving voices.

The inclusion of ICTs or technologies in general change the social tissue of the community that appropriates them. They will change the relationships of power, they will change how socialization happens… so, we have to be very careful on these bottom-up approaches because, as legitimate and well intended as they may be, they can also cause social harm that will only be visible in the medium or long term, but not in the short term.

One thing about Scale is horizontal scaling, that Is what FrontlineSMS is doing: trying to get nearer communities or clusters where almost everything learnt in one place can be replicated easily.

Social franchises are a way to quickly replicate methodologies or specific applications of technology. It also creates a sort of meta-comunity, a community of communities doing similar things with similar tools. Indeed, this meta-community has high returns of scale, as everything that is developed by the meta-community can be applied in the local communities.

But how too coordinate the whole sector of innovation for development? How to avoid the “pioneers’ curse”, where the pioneer always remains a pioneer walking in their own? Pioneer projects should try to open gates for others coming behind, to make connections between communities and projects.

When speaking about open data and opening data from big carriers, the approach is not that carriers should be opening their data for free (which actually is at a positive cost), but to think about what “business model” will invite the carrier to open their data because they will benefit (and/or profit) from it, and which you can build upon your development project.

Data driven development is a paradigm shift from ICT for development approach. Enabling platforms, generative. Big data, visualization, build on top.

Sustainability and scaling through horizontal scaling. Investment in tools providers, to generalize the technological layers.

Strong emphasis on cooperation, on sharing data: data analysis, dissemination, visualization, decision-making. Sandboxing as sharing what you do with data, in the open.

A free and open internet for global inclusive growth

Moderator: Rebecca Mackinnon, Senior Fellow, New America Foundation, Author.

Panelists: Tim Unwin, Secretary General, Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation; Anne Jellema, CEO, World Wide Web Foundation; Anna-Karin Hatt, Swedish Minister for Information Technology and Energy; Parminder Singh, Executive Director, IT for Change; Grace Githaiga, Associate, Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet).

It’s not just the pipes, it’s what we deliver; it’s not just the Internet, it’s what we use it for and how we use it. How can we commit to the goal that the more marginalized, the more in risk of exclusion, can benefit from the tremendous potential of the Internet, mobile phones and mobile broadband. The market will deliver for many many people, but it won’t deliver for them all.

There’s a lot of innovation but the quality of broadband is a challenge. There’s also diversity in use of technologies.

Lots of innovations in the South are being captured by companies in the North, where they have more power to make them grow and establish a market power. More protection for South innovators should be a priority.

How can governments put focus on what technology can do? Transparency, open data, e-government or e-democracy are good ways to.

How can developing countries have a say in the global Internet Governance issues? Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach should be taken into consideration to broaden the importance and potential of the Internet, out of just economic issues and more into human issues. And this will change the way we approach Internet Governance. First of all internet is a public good. It’s not a choice between market and public.

Universality and accessibility of the net goes hand in hand.

Is Facebook Zero a good or a bad thing? Is it good because it provides access to the Internet at zero cost for the user? Or is it a bad thing because it de facto reduces the Internet to Facebook? There is another danger that the free as in free beer Internet is the commercial one, and the free as in freedom of speech Internet is expensive and will be killed, just like some Internet is killing community radio. People not only want to communicate with their peers through social networking sites, but there also is hunger for information.

Affordability has to be addressed urgently in many places in the world. Until prices do not come down — while keeping up quality — e-inclusion will be but a nice word. And this goes by designing a better regulation that breaks monopolies, or at least monopolistic practices — in some areas, monopolies are natural monopolies, so it makes no sense to include competition, though this lack of competition, of course, should not go against the citizens.

We have not to use rights and rights advocacy to avoid our own responsibilities, responsibilities that are shared between governments but also citizens.

If choosing in between the fast and easy to shadow internet, better to have slow,but secure.

My personal take on these issues: ICTs for accessing agricultural market information or to stop food speculation? ICTs for e-health apps or to stop medicines speculation and health system corruption? ICTs to reduce the cost of judicial procedures or to avoid governments tampering on justice? ICTs to make polling easier or to promote direct, deliberative and participative democracy? Grassroots approaches are OK, but we have to focus also on changing the whole system.

Unconference. Cyberactvism: Caught between love and hate?

Moderator: Vilhelm Konnander.

In Egypt: have treats on digital activists increased after the Arab Spring? Threats have increased, but also has the number of users of social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook). And not only are there more users, but they are active users that look for and share information and news. The bad thing is that now the government is also on Twitter or Facebook and can monitor and track who said what, when and to whom.

In Ethiopia: all media are owned by the government. So, social networking sites are the only place where the citizens can get some information not controlled by the government. The problem is now that the government aims at controlling the Internet too. All the websites that are critical with the government are automatically blocked. The government also uses spyware to monitor their citizens.

In Iran: before 2009, bloggers got arrested, there was some censorship and blocking. After 2009, people began to use Twitter and Facebook and share photos and videos. So, now the Internet is a target to be controlled. The government is working now for a national/halal/Islamic Internet by replacing third parties’ solutions by their own (their own Twitter, their own Facebook, etc.).

In Russia: Russia is very afraid of revolutions (Georgia, Ukraine, etc.) so it wants to control the Internet to avoid further revolutions. Just like in times of the Soviet Union, “dissidents” are targeted, identified (online and offline) to “deactivate” them.

We have not to misunderstand freedom of expression and the freedom to risk your like by speaking out. There might be freedom of expression and not “freedom after expression”.

Is it possible to get funding for cyberactivism? From abroad? Is it a good thing or is it harmful?

In Ethiopia is very difficult to get funding from outside, but it is very much needed: for reaching out, for expanding one’s networks, to scale up training and skills of volunteers/bloggers, etc.

A problem that most activists face in Egypt — and elsewhere — is that as they are not constituted and registered as a formal ONG, it is very difficult to (a) get funding and, in case they got it, (b) manage money the “appropriate” way, as a normal institution would (with accounting books, budgets, and so on).

Should we encourage some actions, or some donations… or does that put people in danger? Or will that hamper or worsen the relationships between governments and NGOs and make development cooperation more difficult because of bad diplomatic relationships?

For any major change to happen, steps have to be taken slow but taken sure.