I was on CNBC to talk about the latest hearing in the US Congress
News: book
Exciting news! My co-author Nele and I wrote a book about the relationship between data, AI, identity and global (in)justice.
DatenGerechtigkeit (German) Hardcover - 23 Oct 2018
Issuing the fine showed that the ICO was “willing to use its teeth”, said Frederike Kaltheuner at campaign group Privacy International.
“The industry is quite murky,” she told the BBC, pointing out that consumers may - for example - see statements such as “data may be shared for marketing purposes” in all sorts of places but not realise the extent of how their personal information could be used.
“I think the ICO was quite clear in their analysis… You have to be very clear and transparent about what you do with data,” she said.
“The key question we always ask ourselves is: Who is building this technology and for what purposes?” says Privacy International’s Frederike Kaltheuner. “Is it used to help us - or to judge, assess and control us?”
But whatever the size of the penalty, Frederike Kaltheuner of Privacy International tells the programme, the watchdog’s action sends a signal about what is acceptable behaviour.
“Facebook failed to comply with a basic principle of data protection law, which is transparency: to be very clear and transparent about what they are doing with people’s data,” she says.
She explains how the report highlights wider concerns about a variety of organisations, from the credit reference agency Experian to the parenting blog Emma’s Diary, which is accused by the regulator of handing over the data of a million people to the UK’s Labour Party.
“This is not consent. The idea that you sign up to a parenting blog and the data ends up with a political party is completely bizarre,” she says. “Anyone who cares about democracy should be really worried about what’s happening to their data at the moment.”
“Ubiquitous facial recognition will lead to mass street-level surveillance that will disproportionately harm people who already face daily discrimination. Civil society & others must continue to fight”
ROM is a brand new German magazine and I got invited to do an interview on the future of tech and privacy
The always brilliant Joanne McNeil wrote a beautiful piece about the failures of surveillance tech and I got to contribute some quotes:
Surveillance is “Orwellian when accurate, Kafkaesque when inaccurate,” Privacy International’s Frederike Kaltheuner told me. These systems are probabilistic, and “by definition, get things wrong sometimes,“ Kaltheuner elaborated. “There is no 100 percent. Definitely not when it comes to subjective things.”
My latest piece for Politico Europe: “As recent scandals have illustrated so vividly, privacy is also about the autonomy, dignity, and self-determination of people – and it’s a necessary precondition for democracy.”
Happy GDPR day everyone! I was on BBC news last Friday to explain what it all means:
“Step back for a moment - we’ve just come out the other end of a massive scandal where Facebook was revealed to exploit people’s data in totally unexpected ways. GDPR is a tool that helps to protect people from exactly this widespread corporate data exploitation.”
“GDPR was heavily lobbied and still, the final regulation is a net positive for data privacy. Overall GDPR gives consumers stronger rights, around the world, and US companies are now required to keep up.”
Nice shout out to our AI Report by the Outline:
“Sure it’s not exactly a beach read, but it’s about as close as a group of experts can get when writing about complicated technology with the potential to have profound effects on our lives. Definitely pull it out on the subway or during your next existential crisis; the future will thank you.”
Ravi Naik, Paul-Olivier Dehaye and I discussed Cambridge Analytica at re:publica in Berlin.
“It’s not clear if what happened is illegal, but a more interesting question is if it’s not, then why not?”
Earlier this week I was on BBC Global Business News to talk about the Mark Zuckerberg hearings”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09yrymc/bbc-business-live-11042018
