Tag Archives: privacy

Words of the SDGs: Intersectionality

UN Headquarters, New York

Foreword

The High Level Political Forum is an overwhelming experience, with enough events taking place at the same time to make planning your day full of hard choices. But in addition to the number of events, getting to grips with the words, the vocabulary used in discussions can be a further barrier.

While it is easy enough to criticise such words simply as jargon, a key lesson of IFLA’s International Advocacy Programme has been if we want to convince experts and decision-makers of our message, we need to use this language.

Therefore, a number of our blogs during HLPF 2018 will focus on key words used in the SDGs, in order to explain how they are used, and what they mean for libraries. The goal – to help libraries feel ownership of these words, and use them in their own work.

Introduction

The idea of intersectionality is not unique the SDGs, but is particularly relevant in this context. It is the idea that while academic – and often policy – debate focuses on specific themes, at the level of individuals and communities, these themes come together.

Indeed, the crossing of different issues can have a variety of different outcomes, sometimes to make things worse, sometimes better. Sometimes a lack of progress in one area simply cancels out progress in another.

Intersectionality

Intersectionality in the UN Context

The concept of intersectionality is indeed at the heart of the 2030 Agenda. The Sustainable Development Goals are not just indivisible, but interconnected. Indeed, next year’s Global Report on Sustainable Development will focus on these linkages. By recognising these relationships, it becomes easier for governments and others to plan actions that will have a positive impact for individuals.

The importance of intersectionality – getting the right combination of measures to make a difference – has come up in a number of side events at the High Level Political Forum.

Intersectionality and Smart Cities

A first – a side event organised by the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning and the Committee on NGOs – focused on inspiring examples of smart city initiatives from Korea, Mexico and the Philippines. Each of these had focused not just on ‘hard’ technology, but including people. The city of Suwon in particular had developed adapted opportunities for people of all ages to learn and be informed, provide necessary spaces, and change mindsets.

The key common trend across the examples – making use of libraries. Because as institutions focused on finding the best solutions in individuals, they can help not only with providing materials, but also comfort and motivation for learning. In the Philippines and Korea in particular, there had been strong investment in libraries, with the results already paying off.

Intersectionality, ICTs and Development

The second side event, organised by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), brought together people focusing on how ICTs can support development. Here too, it was clear that there are a number of factors and trends at play in determining whether the Internet realises its potential, from physical connections to local content, from the financial to the psychological.

A major drive on public internet access could be undone by a failure to protect privacy, while changes to regulation to favour market solutions will have less effect if there is no work to develop skills and confidence online.

Here too, libraries stand at the point of intersection, offering not only Internet access, but also the support and training to make this meaningful.

 

For all of its apparently technical nature, the idea of intersectionality is at the heart of what libraries and librarians are doing when they look to support users in accessing information. As institutions which, by their nature, cross disciplines and information sources in order to focus on what works, libraries can take ownership of this word – and concept – in their own work.

Responding to Cambridge Analytica – The Role of Libraries

Recent stories about the activities – the misdeeds – of Cambridge Analytica have provided an illustration of the power of information.

It is true that digital technologies and techniques allowing the ‘mining’ of data have opened up unprecedented opportunities to gain understanding of our environment, and ourselves. Just as it has turbo-charged scientific research, it has also benefited market research, thanks to new possibilities to collect and use information.

It is a further reminder that technology is usually neutral in and of itself – it is what we do with it that defines whether its impact is positive or negative. We need mature approaches. Libraries, given their long experience in working with information and helping users make it work for them, have a lot to contribute.

Sadly, it has also provided an excuse to bring out old and lazy arguments implying that we should turn back the clock on technological change, or at least stop it,  regardless of the costs to innovation and progress.

In the case of an event at the European Parliament this week, Cambridge Analytica was brought out as a reason to make text and data mining activities conditional on using publisher APIs and subject to additional payments. The argument goes that text and data mining is dangerous, and so should remain under the control or supervision of rightholders, even where a user already has access.

However, this position is both paternalistic and regressive.

Paternalistic in that it presumes that rightholders should be able to supervise what analysis users are carrying out legally. And regressive in that it makes the ability to undertake research dependent on the ability to pay additional fees, over and above the initial costs of access.

Cambridge Analytica, in the present case, seems to have benefitted from data collection rules that were both loosely drafted and loosely applied. But with a business model based on the collection and use of data, and provision of services for wealthy clients, the company would be first in line to make the necessary additional payments under the model proposed in the European Parliament event. In this, they would be joined by other major ICT or pharmaceutical companies with the bank balances to support this. And in the case of Cambridge Analytica, the primary beneficiary of any additional payments would likely have been Facebook.

Such a step would exclude smaller firms and university spin-offs, as well as data journalists and individuals. A good result in the short term for publishing companies (and Facebook), but highly negative for innovation and progress.

A mature response to the issues raised by Cambridge Analytica would include the following:

  1. Privacy rules must be respected. This applies as much in the use of social media platforms as in publishing platforms where the collection of data about who and how is reading works is an increasingly central piece of business models in the sector.
  2. Users must be able to take conscious and reasoned decisions about what information they want to share. This requires education about how the Internet works, not just in school but also throughout life.
  3. Clear permission for anyone with legitimate access to data (respecting privacy laws, and with payment where appropriate) to carry out text and data mining, in order both to advance research, and permit the sort of data journalism that has allowed other recent scandals to be revealed.

Libraries have a role in all of these. In negotiating contracts with service suppliers, they can be attentive to privacy implications, and ensure maximum protection of users’ data. Libraries are already active in many places in teaching users about the operation of the Internet, and how to keep personal information safe. And they are currently arguing, in Europe and elsewhere, for a simple exception to copyright for text and data mining that will allow new ideas and innovations to rise up.

Read IFLA’s statement on privacy in the library environment,  and its position on text and data mining in the draft Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. You can follow what IFLA and its partners are doing on the EU reforms here.

Data Privacy Day: Call the Information Specialists!

Libraries are specialised in preserving, storing and giving access to information. They have long understood its power to drive research, creativity, and development. And they have done so since long before terms such as knowledge management, evidence-based policy-making, or anything ‘smart’ were invented.

 

It is this understanding that also makes libraries powerful contributors to efforts to promote data privacy.

 

A New Frontier Between the Public and Private… or none at all?

Thanks to the way the Internet works, it’s not just famous people, or significant events, that are the subject of data collection, but everyone. The servers of governments and Internet businesses contain libraries of information about normal citizens and their behaviour online. Libraries and library suppliers too can risk doing this, although fortunately there are now effective alternatives available that eliminate or minimise collection of data.

 

Meanwhile, social media has blurred the line between the private and the public, without many of us fully understanding the implications of publishing information about our families or political views to the world. In other cases, the implications are all too clear, for example in the case of phenomena such as revenge porn or witch-hunts against individuals.

 

This poses a significant question as to how the right to live without arbitrary attacks on privacy (Article 12 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights) can be defended.

 

Laws Are Not Enough

The law does of course have a role. Data protection legislation has the potential to cut back on speculative data collection by companies. In Europe at least, firms and others will have to be clear about what information they are gathering, and how it will be used. Citizens will have the possibility to ask to see what data is held, and for it to be deleted.

 

However, it is not clear how many will actually make use of these rights, or read the necessary small print. Moreover, governments will still be able to claim that national security – for right or for wrong – justifies attacks on privacy. The most effective response is to empower the individual, giving them the knowledge and tools necessary to look after themselves.

 

Information Specialists and Empowered Individuals

Thanks to their expertise – but also their trusted role in the community – libraries can play a powerful role. In line with the IFLA Statement on Privacy in the Library Environment (2015), library cryptoparties have taken place the UK, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Sweden, the US, Canada, and Germany, to name just a few.

 

These explore everything from specific tools, such as ToR routers or anti-tracking software, to simpler behavioural changes which can reduce or manage risks. While much of the discourse around cryptoparties focuses on government surveillance, good data hygiene is just as applicable in dealing with unwanted attention from businesses, hackers, or even members of personal networks.

 

Indeed, data privacy is a vital part of broader digital literacy – the ability to get the best out of the opportunities that digital technologies offer. When a user cannot be confident about what is happening with their data, this is not possible. Libraries can make the difference.

Remembering and Forgetting: Finding the Right Balance

Freedom of access to information depends heavily on privacy. People will not feel comfortable in seeking and obtaining the information they need if they are under surveillance.

However, free access and privacy – both of which are human rights recognised in the 1948 Universal Declaration – can also enter into conflict, for example when information concerns an individual’s private life. Search engines, by making discoverable information that would otherwise have lain undiscovered, have both helped make the Internet what it is, and accentuated this tension.

Access, Expression and Privacy: IFLA’s Approach to the Right to be Forgotten

Navigating the conflict between the right of people both to access knowledge, and to remove that which unfairly prejudices them, represents an ongoing challenge for libraries, as well as for courts, governments, and private companies.

IFLA’s Statement on the Right to be Forgotten offers some background, and sets out our approach. It underlines the interest of library users in being able to access as complete a version of the historical record as possible. It also cites the rights of information producers, who risk in preventing legally published speech from being delisted (and so effectively disappear).

Yet it also acknowledges that some information can be ‘unfairly damaging to an individual’s reputation or security where it is untrue, where it is available illegitimately or illegally, where it is too personally sensitive or where it is prejudicially no longer relevant, among other possibilities’.

As with any potential tension between fundamental rights, there are few easy answers. In its statement, IFLA stressed the need for judgements to be made on a transparent, case-by-case basis. It rejected both blanket refusals, and blanket acceptance of requests for delisting. In a subsequent open letter, it also underlined that such judgements would inevitably reflect local cultural preferences that would not be shared elsewhere. To this end, IFLA wanted against universal application of decisions.

Affirm or Upend: the Choice before the European Court

Two cases currently before the Court of Justice of the European Union could, however, have serious implications for the way right to be forgotten decisions are taken, and applied.

A first concerns an appeal made by four individuals against the decision of the French data protection authority not to uphold their request to have information about them delisted. The information in question concerned criminal proceedings and political beliefs, with the claimants arguing that any story containing personal information should be removed from search results on request. Such a position risks doing major damage to the freedom of the press, as well as transparency and accountability in public life.

A second opposes the same French data protection authority and Google, with the former arguing that right to be forgotten decisions should be applied globally, not just in the country where they are made. This case, the subject of IFLA’s open letter, risks seeing national courts effectively deciding what Internet users can view in other countries, regardless of the approach judges might take elsewhere.

The Need to Defend Balance

If it rejects these two cases, the Court will reaffirm the importance of taking a sensitive and thought-through approach to balancing human rights. It will also do a favour to information users and producers, as well as their own colleagues around the world.

This is not to say that the current set up is ideal – governments and regulators have doubtless been too ready to leave the task of responding to right to be forgotten requests to private companies, and transparency could be improved further. However, we can only progress on this front if the importance of finding balance is defended.

IFLA goes RightsCon!

This week Access Now’s RightsCon takes place in Brussels. IFLA is participating for the first time and does so by hosting a roundtable session on Friday 31 March 9am on digital privacy in the library:

Privacy for Everyone: Using Libraries to Promote Digital Privacy

The session will be chaired by FAIFE committee chair Martyn Wade and has an impressive line-up of speakers ready to share experiences and content that will help libraries promote and ensure digital privacy for all, inside and outside the library:

  • Damien Belvèze, Université de Rennes 1, who will talk about the why, how and what of arranging cryptoparties in libraries.
  • Seeta Peña Gangadharan, London School of Economics, who will present the Data Privacy Project which taught NYC library staff how information travels and is shared online.
  • Peter Krantz, National Library of Sweden, who will talk about the privacy checklist they’ve made for librarians to help them make sure their library is a digital privacy friendly environment for users.
  • Diego Naranjo, European Digital Rights (EDRi), who will present their Digital Defenders booklet for young people between 10-14 years and let us know the story behind it.
  • Melissa Romaine, Mozilla Foundation, who will talk about digital literacy projects Mozilla have run in collaboration with libraries.

I could write pages and pages (not that the A4 format applies to a blog) on libraries and privacy, but I think it’s a fact widely known that libraries historically have been defenders of their patrons’ privacy, e.g. by refusing to share records of materials checked out by the individual, providing a safe space for browsing information, and meeting other people.

It’s harder to apply this protection in a digital environment where personal data is both political and economic currency, and interlinked systems makes it harder to control where and how information is shared. The digital has done wonders for record keeping and accessibility, but at the same time it has compromised those values traditionally held in high regard by librarians (and championed especially by the IFLA FAIFE committee).

The technical development may seem to be too fast for librarians to keep up with, as it also brings so many other challenges: teaching people how to use a computer; how to lend an e-book; how to apply critical thinking; how to search in a database… basically, most librarians have full hands when it comes to catering the needs of a lifelong learning community trying to keep up with the latest digital goods and tools. Is there room for digital privacy?

Yes, there is! And in this session I hope people will find inspiration for new ways for digital rights advocates to collaborate with libraries to teach the average library visitor about encryption, cache, cookies, and webcams, whether it is through cascade training of librarians or co-hosting cryptoparties at the local library. Privacy is so important, we can leave no one behind.