Resources

This article examines the potential for bias and discrimination in automated algorithmic decision-making. As a group of commentators recently asserted, “[t]he accountability mechanisms and legal standards that govern such decision processes have not kept pace with technology.” Yet this article rejects an approach that depicts every algorithmic process as a “black box” that is inevitably plagued by bias and potential injustice.

Washington, DC – Today, the Future of Privacy Forum announced the winners of the 8th Annual Privacy Papers for Policymakers Award. The PPPM Award recognizes leading privacy scholarship that is relevant to policymakers in the U.S. Congress, at U.S. federal agencies, and for data protection authorities abroad. The winners of the 2017 PPPM Award are:

Jules Polonetsky, CEO, Future of Privacy Forum, Omer Tene, Senior Fellow, Future of Privacy Forum, and Daniel Goroff, Vice President and Program Director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation authored a paper titled Privacy Protective Research: Facilitating Ethically Responsible Access to Administrative Data. This paper will be featured in an upcoming edition of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

The Friends of Europe recently released a discussion paper, ‘Policy choices for a digital age – taking a whole economy, whole society approach’ at the closing plenary of the European Commission co-organised Net Futures 2017 conference in Brussels.

Future of Privacy Forum is pleased to announce it has published the inaugural issue of the Privacy Scholarship Reporter. This regular newsletter will highlight recent privacy research and is published by the Privacy Research and Data Responsibility Network (RCN), an FPF initiative supported by the National Science Foundation.

Eloise Gratton of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP and Jules Polonetsky have published, “Droit À L’Oubli: Canadian Perspective on the Global ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Debate” (forthcoming in the Colorado Technology Law Journal). This paper explores whether importing a RTBF would be legal in Canada.

Searching for effective methods and frameworks of de-identification often looks like chasing the Golden Goose of privacy law. For each answer that claims to unlock the question of anonymisation, there seems to be a counter-answer that declares anonymisation dead. In an attempt to de-mystify this race and un-tangle de-identification in practical ways, the Future of Privacy Forum and the Brussels Privacy Hub joined forces to organize the Brussels Symposium on De-identification – “Identifiability: Policy and Practical Solutions for Anonymisation and Pseudonymisation”.

Last week, FPF brought together a panel of technology, legal, regulatory, and business voices to discuss “The Law and Science of De-Identification” at the 10th annual Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection conference.

The Facebook study was the product of a symposium sponsored by W&L Law and theFuture of Privacy Forum (FPF), a DC-based think tank that promotes responsible data privacy policies. The topic of the symposium, as the Facebook paper suggests, was ethical review processes for big data research, with an emphasis on the ethical challenges of internal corporate research by companies that are able to harvest massive amounts of digital data. The event was also supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

Today, the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) and the Ohio State University’s Program on Data and Governance are holding a discussion of ethics, privacy and practical research reviews in corporate settings. This timely event, which follows the White House’s call to develop strong data ethics frameworks, convened corporate and academic leaders to discuss how to integrate ethical and privacy considerations into innovative data projects and research.