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Welcome to our new responsible data newsletter, Mission: Responsible - a set of curated links on responsible data from different sectors. Content is drawn from links shared on the Responsible Data mailing list, community happenings, and whatever we see happening on the #ResponsibleData hashtag on Twitter. Got stuff to share for the next installment? Get in touch.
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Give us your personal data, in exchange for international aid
Here’s a stunning example of how personal privacy and personal data can be totally abused and misunderstood. An Israeli organisation proposes giving food packages to people living in poverty, in exchange for their personal data: quoted in this article from September 2015, the organisation’s founder says:
“The aid will be distributed by workers in the field, who will be given devices to record information about what the children and community members are eating, what diseases they have and what drugs they are taking, etc… This is information that will prove useful to governments, pharmaceutical companies, medical groups, food companies, and many others.”
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Big data + the Ebola crisis
Sean McDonald shared last week his paper “Ebola: a big data disaster”, written as part of the new CIS Papers series (we look forward to seeing more!). It spurred such a lot of discussion that several people organised a responsible data community call to discuss more of the report’s important issues. The video recording from the call can be seen here, Willow Brugh writes more about her takeaways from the call on the Responsible Data blog, and Linnet Taylor wrote a response piece, too; there seems to be a lot of interest in this topic, and a great need for responsible data practices when it comes to emergency health situations, so stay tuned for more.
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Responsible Data Reflection Stories
In case you missed them, the engine room just released a set of 9 case studies on just some of the challenges faced when using data in advocacy and journalism. They’re all available to read and download here - and please, copy, remix, and reuse them to your liking.
My personal favourite is probably Story 1: I had the pleasure of sitting down with Anita Massacane of Fundación Huesped when I was in Buenos Aires last summer, where she explained to me the huge number of responsible data challenges she faces in her work to help HIV/AIDS patients receive better care. I like that it doesn’t outline a case where there have been new or particularly “innovative” technologies at play, but rather the everyday challenges in a fairly difficult context.
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Aid organisations + CIA-funded software = ….
IRIN News just published a fabulous long read on the growing trend of international aid organisations using software from Palantir, a software and database management provider with heavy links to the CIA. Needless to say, this is extremely worrying, but somewhat understandable: database management is difficult, and it fits right into a branch of Palantir’s work that they’ve named “Philanthropy Engineering”. Note: a clue to Palantir’s philosophy lies in their name: a “palantir”, as used in Lord of the Rings, means “One that Sees from Afar.” Message understood: they’re not that down with this privacy thing.
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India’s billion-people database
It’s not long since the Indian digital rights community won a huge battle for net neutrality, but they’ve (maybe) got another fight on their hands: India's parliament just passed legislation that gives federal agencies access to the Aadhaar database scheme, the world's biggest biometric database. This, of course, is done “in the interests of national security” - but, who, or what, are the main threats at play? From an outsider's perspective, opinions seem to be pretty varied, though concerns about the Aadhaar scheme are not new - researchers and activists have been raising alarm bells for years. For more, see this piece by Malavika Jayaram from last year and this recent analysis of the Aadhar Bill by CIS India, or follow Sunil Abraham, who has been tweeting up a storm about it.
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Food for thought:
Tara Robertson writes on the digitisation of a lesbian porn zine which ran from 1984-2004. On one hand, having digitised archives of the magazine would hugely help increase its reach; on the other, though, the people who appear in that zine had no idea that their sexualised images might spread so widely, back when they agreed to appear in them. When is digitisation and open access actually a bad thing? Following up on this topic, April Hathcock writes more on how Creative Commons requires consent.
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Community updates:
- The International Data Responsibility Conference was held at the beginning of February, in The Hague - check out links and wrap-up posts on their blog.
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How can Responsible Data be compatible with open data? - an upcoming event from Tech Salon DC, taking place on April 5th, with some great responsible data practitioners - Amy O’Donnell, Oxfam GB, Linda Raftree, Kurante, Rob Baker, World Bank, and Sean McDonald, FrontlineSMS. We look forward to seeing the write up, and for those who can make it in person, RSVP here.
- Understanding patterns of mass violence with data and statistics - HRDAG’s Patrick Ball is talking at Data&Society on March 24th as part of their Databites series, also livestreamed. (For more on this theme, check out Reflection Story #7, written with contributions from HRDAG colleagues)
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If you’re attending the upcoming RightsCon in San Francisco, come and join us for the next Responsible Data Forum on Human Rights Documentation, happening on March 29. Registration is now open, and it will feed into our ongoing work on technology, data and human rights documentation - which we’re writing about weekly in our Research Diary. Want more to read in the meantime? Astha Rajvanshi writes in the Columbia Journalism Review on the perils of including too much information in human rights reporting.
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...and if you can’t attend in those events in person, but you’re interested in the topic: never fear! We’ll be holding a community call on data + tech in human rights documentation, on April 6th. Want to share a human rights project or responsible data concerns on the call? Let us know.
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That’s all for now - we hope you liked this first edition! Feedback, suggestions or links for the next newsletter are very much welcomed.
- Zara & the engine room
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