Mission Responsible #16

Welcome to the new issue of the Mission Responsible newsletter! For this issue, we spoke to Georgia Bullen, Executive Director of Simply Secure.

Almost a year ago, Simply Secure and The New Design Congress published The Limits to Digital Consent. The report focused on understanding whether data collection for underrepresented communities can be done ethically and if a digital consent mechanism is the best tool for doing so. During our chat, Georgia shared her thoughts on the report’s findings as well as insights from her own journey working with tech policy, design and data.

Design practices, power imbalances and the risks associated with data

Georgia’s work is rooted in understanding how people think about and respond to technology. Her experience in UX design, open data practices and transparency, in addition to her engagement in the global open internet fight, have informed her approach to working with tech and data: “While I still am optimistic about what could be done [with data], I am also a lot more aware that we need to think about constraints, risks and misuse.”

At Simply Secure, Georgia helps practitioners think about these constraints and facilitates technology design that centers and protects vulnerable populations. The organisation offers design support to practitioners and conducts qualitative research shedding light on the relationship between people and technology.

Thinking about “informed consent” and people-centric data collection

Together with The New Design Congress, Simply Secure published 'The Limits to Digital Consent', a report exploring fundamental flaws behind digital consent, and asking platform designers and policy makers to take them into account. Other than outlining the key shortcomings of digital consent, this research also juxtaposes them with stories from activists working with underrepresented communities in the UK and the US.

Here’s a summary of The Limits to Digital Consent’s six main findings:

#1 The consent model for tech is outdated. The lack of broader protections allows digital consent to act as a mechanism that widens societal power imbalances. Consent models are usually designed as one size fits all solutions, which don’t account for the self-assessment of individual safety, which is complex and contextually regionalized.
#2 "Local first" storage isn’t inherently safer for people or communities. The local-first approach to data storage recently gained popularity as an ethical way to solve some of the issues relating to the collection and storage of personal data. The report challenges this proposition, since it places all the risks related to data extraction on the individuals. Instead of instilling users with agency, this approach could result in harm, especially in the case of vulnerable groups of people subjected to harassment or prejudice.
#3 Data creation can be silencing. The accelerating rate and scope of data collection, combined with increased public awareness about the dangers posed by such datasets produce a chilling effect on those who wish to speak up. This silencing effect is more significant in the case of marginalised communities who are more likely to not use certain tools or platforms because of associated risks.
#4 Everyone – not just members of underrepresented communities – are at risk. With cybercrime on the rise, the risks of data creation and collection generate vulnerability for almost everyone: public institutions, companies and individuals. The unknown unknowns relating to the development of future technologies make the digital consent contract impossible to honour and trust.
#5 Ethical platform designers must consider themselves as potentially "bad actors." Within the current socio-technological framework, unintended harms are a real threat. For any designer, it is virtually impossible to ensure that the tools they build will remain ethical over time. Agile, humble, participatory design might be one answer to this issue.
#6 Participants are overwhelmed by both the potential for harm and the indifference of decision-makers. The research brought out the sentiments of caution, scepticism and fear underlying users’ approach to technology. This is an important feeling to engage with as we rethink our current digital consent mechanisms.

For more details on the shortcomings of digital consent, you can read the full report (it is pretty compact!). You are welcome to learn more about Simply Secure’s work from their website and if you would like to follow what Georgia is currently up to, you can find her on Twitter.

Community updates

Georgia Bullen recommends:

Amy Sample Ward’s and Afua Bruce’s, The Tech That Comes Next: How Changemakers, Philanthropists, and Technologists Can Build an Equitable World – this book, Georgia told me, is really pushing the narrative norms explaining how by changing the way we work we can change the future.
Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy – radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live in.

Responsible Data resources and updates from our allies and partners:

Data Justice, fresh from the Data Justice Lab, an entire book exploring different dimensions of data from the social justice perspective.
Where data sets and abortion rights intersect, a blog post by Kevin Xu from Interconnected.
Electronic Frontier Foundation Call for Limiting Mandatory Cooperation and Safeguarding Human Rights raised during the talks about the proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty.
An open letter from Access Now, Privacy International, NYU researchers, and other civil society organisations calling the World Bank to cease supporting unchecked digital ID systems.
Open Data Institute has started designing a framework for responsible data stewardship for data institutions. You can read more about the project and contribute here.

That’s it for today. Get in touch with us at hello@responsibledata.io if there is anything you’d like to see featured in this newsletter in the future or if you have any questions for us.

Have a great month ahead,

The Engine Room.

This month’s issue of Mission Responsible was crafted by Alicja, Responsible Data Community Manager.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 2022, The Engine Room.

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