Noteworthy Information

[Simple] The Counterintuitive Way to be More Persuasive (Video: 10:19min)

Each of us is trying to convince somebody on something at times. Turns out that when choosing your arguments, less (high quality) is more.

Future generations deserve good ancestors. Will you be one?

The living, the dead and the unborn are all here with us: we must respect their interests and their world as much as our own.

Individuals Simple read

Open Letter on “confidential” dealings in Facebook case

Within hours of the new GDPR being applicable on 25 May 2018, the European non-profit organisation noyb.eu filed three complaints against the Facebook Group (including WhatsApp and Instagram). Since then, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has declared the contents of the extremely slow procedure “confidential” and asked noyb.eu not to discuss them in public.

In land of big data, China sets individual privacy rights

China's parliament is set to approve a new law enshrining individuals' right to privacy and protection of personal data.

A New Version Of Amazon’s “Press Release” Approach To Plan Customer-Centric Projects

The Future Press Release process helps teams envision what that end goal might look like, clearly define success in a customer-centric way and begin to consider some of the collaboration challenges they’ll need to overcome to be successful.

7 Slack privacy settings you should enable now

The communications platform that many have come to rely on for both work and staying in touch with friends is, like most things online, a potential privacy disaster waiting to happen. And while you may not have a choice in whether you use the tool, you do have the option to lock its privacy settings down to mitigate any fallout before it's too late.

The moment you realise the world has changed: re-thinking the EDPS Strategy

Covid-19 is a game changer. Thinking about the EDPS’ strategy for the next five years, we have to look again at our text.

Princeton-Leuven Longitudinal Corpus of Privacy Policies

We are releasing a reference dataset of over 1 million privacy policy snapshots from more than 100,000 websites, spanning over two decades.

Amazon: packages move lightning fast; CCPA electrons take months

Requested my personal data from Amazon under the California Consumer Privacy Act. The company that can get me toilet paper within 2 hours takes a month to send me a zip file?

Commerce in Data and the Dynamically Limited Alienability Rule

Commerce in some data is, and should be, limited by the law because some data embody values and interests (in particular, human dignity) that may be detrimentally affected by trade.

Zero trust architecture design principles

The design principles around peer DIDs and zero-knowledge proof verifiable credentials.

How to ’do’ data empowerment

The aim of this article series is to provide those who design, implement, evaluate or fund data for development initiatives with practical guidance on data empowerment.

I Needed the Discounts

Novelists, poets and artists imagine life in the age of surveillance.

EU court boost for activist in Facebook data transfer fight

EU regulators must make more effort to stop tech companies from transferring data to countries with weaker data-protection standards, an advisor to the European Union’s top court said Thursday. It’s the latest in a lengthy and complex legal case involving an Austrian privacy campaigner and Facebook.

Ten predictions for 2020

Our annual list of the trends, social movements and technological breakthroughs set to impact our lives over the next twelve months.

Why the Global South should nationalise its data

Big Tech corporations are extracting data from users across the world without paying for it. It is time to change that.

The Open Application Network

Solving the unintended consequences of platform economies. The OAN is a public infrastructure that creates a new design space for Open Applications.

Business & Government Intermediate read

Finland Leads The Way In The Secondary Use Of Health And Social Care Data (Podcast: 5:19min)

Medical data are considered particularly sensitive personal information. Laws and regulations in most countries, including the USA and throughout Europe, generally aim to restrict sharing such information with the target of building privacy walls around each person’s data. But making such health data available more broadly is key to improved medical care, research and the advance of health science. Finland is the first country known to have adopted an approach to allow third parties to access health data for the purposes of scientific research, drug and health technology development and knowledge-based management in social and health care.

Society 5.0: Japan’s plan to take civilization to the next level

You’ve heard of Web 2.0 and perhaps even the Web 3.0 that browser maker Opera loves talking about. But have you ever heard of Society 5.0, much less the previous versions that came before it?

Data Protection Laws of the World

Provides an overview of the key privacy and data protection laws and regulations across the globe.

Individuals Intermediate read

Surveillance is a systemic threat to human rights

There needs to be a radical transformation of Facebook and Google's surveillance business model as it poses a systemic threat to human rights.

The Open Application Network

Solving the unintended consequences of platform economies. The OAN is a public infrastructure that creates a new design space for Open Applications.

Business & Government Simple read

Quebec Will Force Uber to Share Your Trip Location Data

Privacy advocates are concerned that the new law can paint an unsettling picture of people's movements in Quebec.

A New Deal for Data

How to reinvent the internet’s broken data ecosystem and put users back in control.

Is privacy dead? Ask Google. (Podcast: 15:08min)

This week Google and the big Catholic health system Ascension inked a deal where all patient data in Ascension’s possession will be shared with The GOOG. This little data swap is called Project Nightingale. The song of this particular nightingale ain’t so sweet.

Policymaking must catch up with technology - before it's too late

World Economic Forum: As technology continues to permeate society, surviving the future depends on bringing technologists and policymakers together. Here's how we might achieve it.

We will find you: DNA search can home in on about 60% of white Americans

If you’re white, live in the United States, and a distant relative has uploaded their DNA to a public ancestry database, there’s a good chance an internet sleuth can identify you from a DNA sample you left somewhere.

Google to Buy Fitbit for $2.1 Billion

The deal represents an aggressive attempt by Google to bolster its lineup of hardware products.

Privacy concerns ground police work

Investigative genealogy helped police catch serial killers And rapists. Now cases are going unsolved.
Investigative genealogy has been celebrated as one of the biggest crime-fighting breakthroughs in decades, but privacy concerns have all but ground its use to a halt.
Be sure to read also the discussion on Slack here

Can contracts use pictures instead of words?

Operations management: Visuals and plain language make an adversarial process more constructive

What Would Facebook Regulation Look Like?

The federal government seems increasingly likely to take action on platform giants such as Facebook and Google. Antitrust intervention has emerged as the likely focal point of such efforts.

My Data vs Data About Me

Reframing ‘my data’ to ‘data about me’ is a really helpful way to move beyond the simplistic, dualistic and dangerous notion of personal data as a monetisable resource towards a recognition of the inseparable nature of data and self. Another perspective provides this tweet that we are more impacted by other people’s data than we are by data about us. And Viivi recommended this article that explains the difference between market participation and right-based pariticpation.

Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

Rick Osterloh suggests house guests have the right to know smart speakers are in use before entering.

Digital Wellbeing

Researching the needs of our audience to understand their values in an on-demand, personalised and fully connected world.

Digital Dystopia: How Algorithms Punish the Poor

The Guardian has spent the past three months investigating how billions are being poured into AI innovations that are explosively recasting how low-income people interact with the state. Together, our reporters in the US, Britain, India and Australia have explored what amounts to the birth of the digital welfare state.

Empowering Students to Question Their Data Privacy

In higher education, we must work not only toward providing better security around student data but also toward educating students about the need to critically evaluate how their data is used and how to participate in shaping data privacy practices and policies.

Big Data from the South(s): Beyond Data Universalism

This article introduces the tenets of a theory of datafication of and in the Souths. It calls for a de-Westernization of critical data studies, in view of promoting a reparation to the cognitive injustice that fails to recognize non-mainstream ways of knowing the world through data.

Silicon Valley and the state gird for war

The battle lines of an American regulatory assault on technology companies are being drawn.

Biggest Leak of Personal Data in Russian Banking

Russia’s biggest lender, Sberbank, is investigating a potential leak of its customers’ personal data, the bank said on Thursday, as the Kommersant newspaper reported that the leak may be the biggest ever in the history of Russian banking.

How Menstruation Apps Are Sharing Your Data

A shocking report about period tracker apps. Not only for ladies.

2019 Privacy Tech Vendor Report

The privacy tech vendor market continues to mature as more organizations around the world adopt products and services that help automate and streamline necessary functions for the privacy office and enterprise as a whole.

App attempts a rare trick in China: Online Privacy

In a country where privacy protections are considered weak and anything-goes data collection has become the norm, Chinese tech entrepreneur Yang Geng stands out. His service, LeakZero, helps people surf the web anonymously, protect passwords and send encrypted messages. By design, he can’t find out the names of the app’s users or even know how many there are. It doesn’t have a so-called ‘back door.’

‘Social Credit’ May Come to America

The Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece that it no longer seems paranoid to worry about surveillance and facial recognition. And also several scores related services are active in Japan.

The rise of MyData in Japan

On May 15, 2019, MyData Japan conference was held in Tokyo, co-organized by Open Knowledge Japan and MyData Japan.

Deconstructing Google’s excuses on tracking protection

It is disappointing—but regrettably unsurprising—that the Chrome team is cloaking Google’s business priorities in disingenuous technical arguments.

Towards the Uberisation of Legal Practice

Uber and Airbnb signify new ways of working and doing business by facilitating direct access to providers through new digitalised platforms. The gig economy is also beginning to percolate into legal practice through what is colloquially known as NewLaw.

Experiment: How private is your personal information?

A coffee shop makes an experiment where they get free coffee by liking their Facebook page. Then, show them how much data they gather within a few minutes just with a like.

Individuals Simple read

PwC will have to work to rebuild trust after shock GDPR fine

The corporate world has gotten a shock of its recently when the data protection enforcement body of Greece has imposed a fine under Article 83 of the GDPR amounting to 150.000 EUR on PricewaterhouseCoopers.


Questions Asked

Is selling personal data like smoking?

A great discussion triggered by this statement: Like smoking, selling personal data generated by one should be allowed if the individual so wants and it should be taxed to high heaven to discourage people from doing so.

Business & Government Intermediate read

European Data Protection Board: Request for Comments

The European Data Protection Board welcomes comments on the Guidelines 4/2019 on Article 25 Data Protection by Design and by Default.

Share consent with another company?

Does anyone know whether if there's an easy way to share consent, or rather show that the user provided consent, to another company in a safe and reliable way? There are already a few answers in the Slack discussion.

Job opportunity for Finnish speakers in Barcelona

I’m writing from Ipsos Spain, in Barcelona, we’re a market research company and now we’re running a big project in which we need native people from Finland. The project consists in watching Youtube adverts and then classify them according to variables related to the brand, and other creative elements like music, colors, framing of shots, and so on. We need natives because we have ads from Finland that need to be coded.

Looking for a standardised way to categorise services

Has anyone needed to add categories for a list of services? (Ie. Finance/Banking, Retail, Transportation, etc.) Trying to see if there's a standardised way to categorise services - if you have any pointers let me know.

@pknowles responded with pointing to the Global Industry Classification Standard.