Data, Technology & Climate Change
The 4000 page landmark @IPCC report demonstrates how human activity is changing the climate in unprecedented ways. Technology helps monitor, measure, analyse, & record climate change precisely, yet also contributes to the vast energy consumption damaging our planet.
Whether sending emails or watching Netflix, the analysis & storage of data comes at great energy cost. The processing necessary to train a “large algorithm”, for instance, can require energy equivalent to nearly 5x the lifecycle emissions of a car.
Pegasus: NSO Group’s Insidious Spyware
Pegasus is advanced spyware that was first discovered in August 2016, developed by NSO Group based in Israel, and sold to various clients around the world. It is marketed by NSO Group as a “world-leading cyber intelligence solution that enables law enforcement and intelligence agencies to remotely and covertly extract valuable intelligence from virtually any mobile device”.
Reading Challenge. Week 6: Why Democracy Needs Privacy by Carissa Veliz
Privacy is a concept, a value, and a right that is hugely important but its meaning and significance is fraught and widely contested. As we share more and more of our personal information and data for the benefits of public safety, personal conveniences, and connectivity, we need to, now more than ever, ask ourselves: what does privacy mean and why does it matter?
Privacy is a concept, a value, and a right that is hugely important but its meaning and significance is fraught and widely contested. As we share more and more of our personal information and data for the benefits of public safety, personal conveniences, and connectivity, we need to, now more than ever, ask ourselves: what does privacy mean and why does it matter?
Reading Challenge. Week 5: On Liberty Chapter 1 & 2 by John Stuart Mill
In his seminal work ‘On Liberty’, English philosopher John Stuart Mill, explores the nature and limits of the power that society can legitimately exercise over the individual. Mill maintains that freedom of expression and thought are fundamental to individual liberty and sovereignty and, therefore, to the wellbeing of society.
In his seminal work ‘On Liberty’, English philosopher John Stuart Mill, explores the nature and limits of the power that society can legitimately exercise over the individual. Mill maintains that freedom of expression and thought are fundamental to individual liberty and sovereignty and, therefore, to the wellbeing of society. He believes these freedoms offer safeguards against all forms of tyranny — from tyranny of authoritarian despots to the tyranny of the majority.
Reading Challenge. Week 4: Privacy without Monopoly: Data Protection and Interoperability by Bennett Cyphers & Cory Doctorow
“Increased interoperability—and decreased corporate power—opens policy space for real privacy remedies, ones that treat technology users as citizens with rights, not merely as consumers who can make purchase-decisions.”
Does the internet have to be ‘five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of text from the other four?’
Reading Challenge. Week 3: On the Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
In her famous and important work, the Origins of Totalitarianism, the German-born American political theorist and philosopher, Hannah Arendt, explores the foundation and evolution of totalitarianism in the 20th century through an analysis of two major totalitarian political movements, Nazism and Stalinism.
Reading Challenge. Week 2: Plato’s Republic
Plato’s Republic explores the question: Is it always better to be just than unjust? To answer this question the book takes on the form of a dialogue between Socrates and various members of the public who question the motivation behind just actions. They discuss what makes a good and thereby a just city and ask how we can define justice as a virtue of human being.
Reading Challenge. Week 1 Computing Machinery and Intelligence by Alan Turing
The questions that the field of data ethics poses, though complex and difficult, often prove very familiar philosophically. This is extremely fortunate as it means that the rich intellectual histories and traditions of our world’s many cultures, literatures, philosophies, as well as its science are available to aid us.
WEDF2021 Video Release: The Ethics & Future of Data & Technology
Technological mastery without ethical restraint lies at the root of all forms of tyranny
In Conversation with Dr. Natalie Banner: Creating Trustworthiness and Transparency in Health Data
Health data provides an incredibly valuable source of information for researchers, health professionals and those looking to improve public health services. The use and sharing of this data can enable early detection of diseases through diagnosis, the development of new treatments as well as improved standards of health and wellbeing across the population. This being said, health data, in comparison to many other forms of data, can often be extremely sensitive in nature. It is therefore crucial that we have robust ethical policies and regulatory standards in place to protect people's privacy and to uphold patient confidentiality. The implications of the lack of this kind of ethical infrastructure can be very serious and profoundly damaging to people’s relationship with public health services.
As we find ourselves well over a year into the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, maintaining strong relationships between health services and the public has become an increasingly urgent concern. Developing principled ethical guidelines which support transparency and trust around the uses of our health data will be critical in tackling this public health emergency.