Author: Stefania

Stefania speaks at Falling Walls 2018 in Berlin

DATACTIVE PI Stefania Milan is in Berlin on November 8-9, as an invited speaker at the Falling Wall conference 2018. Falling Walls is an annual science event that coincides with the anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. The one-day scientific conference showcases the research work of international scientists from a wide range of fields. Stefania’s presentation will revolve around the theme of data empowerment. Check out the conference program, and the description. The event is streamed live.

Stefania will also attend the Falling Wall Circle, whose theme this year in “Human genius in the age of Artificial Intelligence”.

two more articles of the special issue “Big Data from the South” are online!

After the “teaser” by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias, two more articles of the Special Issue on “Big Data from the South” have now gone online! Happy reading!

This paper calls for an epistemic disobedience in privacy studies by decolonizing the approach to privacy. As technology companies expand their reach worldwide, the notion of privacy continues to be viewed through an ethnocentric lens. It disproportionately draws from empirical evidence on Western-based, white, and middle-class demographics. We need to break away from the market-driven neoliberal ideology and the Development paradigm long dictating media studies if we are to foster more inclusive privacy policies. This paper offers a set of propositions to de-naturalize and estrange data from demographic generalizations and cultural assumptions, namely, (1) predicting privacy harms through the history of social practice, (2) recalibrating the core-periphery as evolving and moving targets, and (3) de-exoticizing “natives” by situating privacy in ludic digital cultures. In essence, decolonizing privacy studies is as much an act of reimagining people and place as it is of dismantling essentialisms that are regurgitated through scholarship.

(Big) Data and the North-in-South: Australia’s Informational Imperialism and Digital Colonialism by Monique Mann and Angela Daly

Australia is a country firmly part of the Global North, yet geographically located in the Global South. This North-in-South divide plays out internally within Australia given its status as a British settler-colonial society which continues to perpetrate imperial and colonial practices vis-à-vis the Indigenous peoples and vis-à-vis Australia’s neighboring countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This article draws on and discusses five seminal examples forming a case study on Australia to examine big data practices through the lens of Southern Theory from a criminological perspective. We argue that Australia’s use of big data cements its status as a North-in-South environment where colonial domination is continued via modern technologies to effect enduring informational imperialism and digital colonialism. We conclude by outlining some promising ways in which data practices can be decolonized through Indigenous Data Sovereignty but acknowledge these are not currently the norm; so Australia’s digital colonialism/coloniality endures for the time being.

DATACTIVE Speaker Series: Can Data be Decolonized?, December 4

DATACTIVE is proud to announce a talk by Nick Couldry (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Ulises A. Mejias (State University of New York at Oswego) in the framework of the DATACTIVE Speaker Series and in occasion of the Big Data from the South workshop. The talk, entitled “Can Data be Decolonized? Data Relations and the Emerging Social Order of Capitalism”, will take place on December the 4th at 3pm, at the University Library (Potgieterzaal). Below you find the blurb.

Can Data be Decolonized? Data Relations and the Emerging Social Order of Capitalism
A talk by Nick Couldry (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Ulises A. Mejias (State University of New York at Oswego)

This talk (which draws on the author’s forthcoming book from Stanford University Press, The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating it for Capitalism) examines how contemporary practices of data extraction and processing replicate colonial modes of exploitation. Couldry and Mejias present the concept of “data colonialism” as a tool to analyze emerging forms of political control and economic dispossession. To that effect, their analysis engages the disciplines of critical political economy, sociology of media, and postcolonial science and technology studies to trace continuities from colonialism’s historic appropriation of territories and material resources to the datafication of everyday life today. While the modes, intensities, scales and contexts of dispossession have changed, the underlying function remains the same: to acquire resources from which economic value can be extracted. Just as historic colonialism paved the way for industrial capitalism, this phase of colonialism prepares the way for a new economic order. In this context, the authors analyze the ideologies and rationalities through which “data relations” (social relations conducted and organized via data processes) contribute to the capitalization of human life. Their findings hold important implications for how we study the internet, and how we may advocate for the decolonization of data in the future.

Stefania at the AoIR 2018 conference, Montreal

DATACTIVE PI Stefania Milan has taken part in the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, in Montreal (Canada), October 10-13. This year’s conference theme was “Transnational materialities”. Among others, she presented a work in progress, co-authored with Miren Gutierrez (Universidad de Deusto), on the social consequences of engagement with data and data infrastructure. On October 14th, she has taken part in the academic Festschrift to celebrate the career of Prof. Marc Raboy. The event, entitled Networking Global Communication in and Beyond the Age of Social Media, took place at McGill University.

NEW article out: “Everyday acts of authoritarianism in the liberal West”, International Journal of Communication

DATACTIVE is happy to announce the publication of the article “Through a Glass, Darkly”: Everyday Acts of Authoritarianism in the Liberal West, co-Arne Hintz (Data Justice Lab, Cardiff University) and Stefania Milan, in the International Journal of Communication. The essay is part of a Special Section on “Authoritarian Practices in the Digital Age”, edited by Marlies Glasius and Marcus Michaelsen, University of Amsterdam. The Special Section brings together nine papers that extend our understanding of the relationship between contemporary forms of authoritarianism and digital communication technologies. The contributions investigate Internet control and censorship, surveillance, and disinformation, presenting insights from China, Russia and Central Asia, Iran, Pakistan, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Western Europe. The articles are available in open-access. The abstract of Through a Glass, Darkly is below.

“Through a Glass, Darkly”: Everyday Acts of Authoritarianism in the Liberal West

Institutional practices undermining citizen agency and infringing on individual freedoms are typically associated with authoritarian countries. However, they are also proliferating in Western democracies. This article redefines data-based surveillance as a “Western” authoritarian and illiberal practice in the digital realm, resulting from state–industry collaboration and alienated from accountability mechanisms. Straddling critical data studies and surveillance studies, the article explores these dynamics of surveillance in the West by focusing on two dimensions: the institutionalization of governmental practices in law and the societal normalization of surveillance in popular cultural practices. It thus investigates the renegotiation of the boundaries of state power along two axes—top down and bottom up. It connects the notions of “authoritarian and illiberal practices” and “surveillance cultures,” asking how the former are produced, negotiated, and legitimized and reviewing their consequences for citizens and civil society. Based on empirical data from two projects exploring the interplay between citizenship and surveillance, the article argues that acts of authoritarianism in the West are institutionalized at the intersection of top-down governmental practices and bottom-up popular reactions.

Keywords: authoritarian practices, surveillance, surveillance cultures, liberal democracy, Internet freedoms

Why we won’t be at APC 2018

In October 2018, the Amsterdam Privacy Conference (APC) will be back at the University of Amsterdam. Two DATACTIVE project team members, Stefania (Principal Investigator), and Becky (PhD candidate), enthusiastically supported the conference as coordinators of the ‘Digital Society and Surveillance’ theme. The Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University submitted a panel proposal, which was successfully included. Regretfully, neither will take part in the conference: DATACTIVE and the Data Justice Lab have decided to withdraw over the participation of the US-based software company Palantir as one of the APC’s Platinum Sponsors.

Our decision to withdraw stems from an active refusal to legitimize companies accused of enabling human rights abuses, and a concern with the lack of transparency surrounding sponsorship.

Palantir is a company specializing in big data analytics, which develops technologies for the military, law enforcement and border control. The deployment of Palantir’s technologies has raised wide-spread concern among civil liberties and human rights advocates. Reporting shows that, in the United States, Palantir has played an important role in enabling the efforts of the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to identify, detain, and deport undocumented immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. This has resulted in the indefinite detention of thousands of children who have been separated from their parents. This indefensible policy has come under strong criticism from the United Nations and prompted an alliance of technology workers and affected communities, to call – so far, unsuccessfully – for Palantir to cancel its contracts with ICE.

We feel that providing Palantir with a platform, as a sponsor of a prominent academic conference on privacy, significantly undermines efforts to resist the deployment of military-grade surveillance against migrants and marginalized communities already affected by abusive policing. 

Because we have organized conferences ourselves, we believe transparency in sponsorship agreements is key. While we praise the APC organizing committee forcommitting to full transparency, we were not informed of sponsorship agreements until the very last minute. The APC Sponsors page, in addition, was only populated after the participant registration deadline. As conference coordinators and prospective participants, we feel that we were not given the chance to make an informed choice about our contribution.

Sponsorship concerns are not a new issue: the very same controversy, around the involvement of this very same company (as well as others), emerged during the 2015 edition of APC. Though we acknowledge the complexity of corporate sponsorship, we note that other prominent tech policy conferences, such as Computers, Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) conference, have recently stopped accepting sponsorship from Palantir. We thus believe this is a good moment for a larger discussion about how conferences should be organized in the future.

Academia—and especially publicly-funded universities—need to consider their role in efforts to neutralize or undermine human rights concerns. Such considerations are particularly pertinent in the context of what has been described as the increased neoliberalization of higher education, in which there is significant pressure to attract and pursue funding from different sources. As academics and as citizens, we will increasingly be asked to make choices of this kind. Hence, we believe it is time to set down a clear set of principles for sponsorship going forward.

 

Amsterdam and Cardiff, 19 September 2018

Stefania Milan and Becky Kazansky (DATACTIVE) & Lina Dencik, Arne Hintz, Joanna Redden, Fieke Jansen (Data Justice Lab)

Welcome to DATACTIVE’s spinoff ALEX! An interview with fbtrex Lead Developer Claudio Agosti

by Tu Quynh Hoang and Stefania Milan

DATACTIVE is proud to announce that its spin-off ALEX project has been awarded a Proof of Concept grant of the European Research Council. ALEX, which stands in for “ALgorithms Exposed (ALEX). Investigating Automated Personalization and Filtering for Research and Activism”, aims at unmasking the functioning of personalization algorithms on social media platforms, initially taking Facebook as a test case. ALEX marks the engagement of DATACTIVE with “data activism in practice”—that is to say, turning data into a point of intervention in society.

To mark the occasion, we publish an interview with Claudio Agosti, DATACTIVE Research Associate and Lead Developer of facebook.tracking.exposed browser extension (fbtrex), whose open-source code is at the core of the ALEX project. Claudio was interviewed by DATACTIVE Principal Investigator Stefania Milan at the Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia, Spain, in relation to a project on content regulation on/by platforms.

Claudio (also known as vecna) is a self-taught technician in digital security. With the internet gradually becoming a central agent in the political debate, he moved from the corporate security services to the defence of human rights in the digital sphere. Currently, he is exploring the influence of algorithms on society. Claudio is the coordinator of the free software projects behind https://tracking.exposed and a Founding Member and Vice-President of the Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights. 

Stefania: Is the spread of fake news predominantly a technical or social problem?

Claudio: It is a social problem in the sense that the lack of critical judgment in individuals creates the conditions for fake news or misinformation to spread. However, through technology, the dissemination of misinformation is much faster and can scale up. The problem we are facing now is that when the costs of spreading content drop, the possibilities for an individual to deliver a successful information operation (or infops, I feel this term is more accurate than propaganda) is higher. However, it isn’t true that people lack critical judgment in absolute terms. At a personal level, one can only be an knowledgeable on a limited range of subjects, but the information we receive is very diverse and, most of the time, outside of our domain of expertise. As social media users and information consumers, we should have a way to validate that information. I wonder what if we would know how to validate on our own? This does not exist in mainstream news media either. It is possible, for example, on Wikipedia, but anywhere else, the way that information is spread implies that information is true on its own. A news report, a blog post or a status update on social media do not contain any information that helps validation. All in all, I think fake news is simultaneously a technical and a political problem, because those who create and spread information have responsibility towards user expectations, and this shape also the users’ vulnerability to infops.

Stefania: As a developer, what is your main goal with the facebook.tracking.exposed browser extension?

Claudio: At the moment we haven’t had the tools to assess responsibility with respect to infops. If we say that fake news is a social problem because people are gullible, we put responsibility on users/readers. But it’s also a problem of those publishing the information, who allow themselves to publish incorrect information because they will be hardly held accountable. According to some observers, social media platforms such as Facebook are to be blamed for the spread of misinformation. We have three actors: the user/the reader, the publisher, and the platform. With facebook.tracking.exposed, I’m trying to collect actual data that allows us to reflect on where the responsibilities are. For example, sometimes Facebook is thought to be responsible but in fact it is the responsibility of the content publisher. And sometimes the publishers are to be blamed, but are not legally responsible. We want to collect actual data that can help investigate these assumptions. We do so from an external, neutral position.

Stefania: Based on your studies of the spread of information on social media during the recent elections in Argentina and Italy, can you tell us what the role of platforms is, and of Facebook in particular?

Claudio: In the analyses we did in Argentina and Italy, we realized that there are two accountable actors: the publisher and the platform. Some of the publishers are actually spamming users’ timelines as they are producing too many posts per day. I find it hard to believe that they are producing quality content in that way. They just aim at occupying users’ timelines to exploit some of their seconds of attention. In my opinion, this is to be considered spam. What we also found is that Facebook’s algorithms are completely arbitrary in deciding what a user is or is not going to see. It’s frightening when we consider that a person that displays some kind of deviant behavior such as reading and sharing only fascist or racist content will keep being exposed to even less diverse content. From our investigations of social media content during two heated election campaigns, we have the evidence that if a person expresses populist or fascist behavior, the platform is designed to show her less diverse information in comparison to other users, and that can only reinforce her position. We can also argue that the information experience of that person is of lower quality, assuming that maximum information exposure is always to be preferred.  

Stefania: So what can users do to fix this problem? 

Claudio: I think users should be empowered to run their own algorithms and they should have better tools at their disposal to select the sources of their information diets. This has to become also a task of information publishers. Although everybody on social media is both a publisher and a consumer, people who do publishing as their daily jobs are ever more responsible. For example, they should create much more metadata to go along with information so to permit the system to better filter and categorize content. Users, on the other hand, should have these tools in hand. When we don’t have that set of metadata and thus the possibility to define our own algorithm, we have to rely on Facebook’s algorithms. But Facebook’s algorithms are implicitly promoting Facebook’s agenda and its capitalist imperative of maximizing users’ attention and engagement. For users to have the possibility of defining their own algorithms, we should first of all create the need and the interest to do so by showing how much of the algorithm is the platform’s agenda and how it can really influence our perception of reality. That is what I’m doing now: collecting evidence about this problems and trying to explain it to a broader audience, raising awareness amongst social media users. 

Stefania: Do you think we should involve the government in the process? From your perspective of software developer, do you think we need more regulation?

Claudio: Regulation is really key because it’s important to keep corporations in check. But I’m afraid that, among others, there is a misunderstanding in making regulations which seem to have direct benefits on people’s life, but for example might end up limiting some of the key features of open source software and its distribution. Therefore I’m quite skeptical. I have to say that high level regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation do not try to regulate the technology but rather its effects and in particular data usage. They are quite abstract and distant from the technology itself. If the regulators want to tell the company what to do and what not to do, I’m afraid that in the democratic competition of the technical field the probability of making mistakes is higher. On the other hand, if we just regulate users/consumers production explicitly, we would end up reinforcing the goals of the data corporations even more. So far, regulations have in fact been exploited by the biggest fish in the market. In this game we can distinguish three political entities: users, companies, and governments. In retrospect, we see that there have been cases where companies have helped citizens against governments and, in some other case, governments have helped citizen against companies. I hope we can aggregate users and civil society organizations around our project, because that’s the political entity that is in utmost need to be somehow guided or supported.

Stefania: So the solution is ultimately in users?

Claudio: The problem is complex thus the solution can’t be found in one of the three entities only. With ALEX we will have the opportunity to re-use our data with policies we determine, and therefore try to produce features which can, at least, offer a new social imaginary.

First of all, we aim at promoting diversity. Fbtrex will provide users with tools for comparing their social media timelines to those of others users, based on mutual sharing agreements which puts the users—rather than the company—on the driver seat. The goal is to involve and compare a diverse group of users and their timelines across the globe. In so doing, we empower users to understand what is hidden from them on a given topic. Targeted communication and user defined grouping, as implemented on most social media, lead to fragmentation of knowledge. Filtered interactions confirming a user’s position have been complicit in this fragmentation. Our approach doesn’t intend to solve this technocratic subterfuges with other technological fixes, but to let the user explore the diversity.

In fact, the fragmentation of information and individuals produced by social media has made it even more difficult for users to relate to problems far removed from their reality. How do you understand the problems of migrants, for example, if you have never been away from home yourself, and you don’t spend time in their company? To counter this effect, thanks to the funding of the European Research Council, we will work on an advanced functionality which will… turn the so-called filter bubbles against themselves, sort to speak. 

Secondly, we want to support delegation and fact-checking, enabling third-party researchers to play a role in the process. The data mined by fbtrex will be anonymized and provided to selected third-party researchers, either individuals or collectives. These will be enabled to contextualize the findings, combine it with other data and complement it with data obtained through other social science research methods such as focus groups. But, thanks to the innovative data reuse protocols we will devise, in any given moment users, as data producers, will have a say as to whether and how they want to volunteer their data. We will also work to create trusted relationships and networks with researchers and users.

In conclusion, if users want to really be free, they have to be empowered to be able to exercise their freedom. This means: they have to own their own data, run their algorithms, and understand the political implications behind technological decision-making. To resort to a metaphor, this is exactly the difference between dictatorship and democracy: you can believe or accept that someone will do things for your own good like in a dictatorship, or you can decide to assume your share of responsibility, taking things in your hands and trying to do what is best for you while respecting others—which is exactly what democracy teaches us.

***

ALEX is a joint effort by Claudio Agosti, Davide Beraldo, Jeroen de Vos and Stefania Milan.

See more: the news in Dutch, the press release by the ERC, our project featured in the highlights of the call

Stay tuned for details.

The new website https://algorithms.exposed will go live soon!

 

Stefania at AlgoSov Summit in Copenhagen, 8 September

On the 8th of September Stefania will give a talk at the Algorithmic Sovereignty Summit in Copenhagen, in the framework of the TechFestival, a festival “to find human answers to the big questions of technology”.

The Summit in an initiative of Jaromil Rojo from Dyne.org, who also sits in the DATACTIVE’s Ethics Advisory Board. The summit kickstarts the European Observatory on Algorithmic Sovereignty.

[BigDataSur] My experience in training women on digital safety

by Cecilia Maundu

I remember it was September 2015 when I was invited for a two-day workshop on digital safety by the Association of Media Women in Kenya. At first I was very curious because I had not heard much about digital security. The two-day workshop was an eye opener. After the workshop I found myself hungry for more information on this issue.

Naturally, I went online to find more information. I must say I was shocked at the statistics I came across on the number of women who have been abused online, and continue to suffer. Women were being subjected to sexist attacks. They were attacked because of their identity as women, not because of their opinions. I asked myself what can I do? I am well aware that I am just a drop in the ocean, but any little change I can bring will help in some way. That was a light bulb moment for me.

It was in that moment that I knew I wanted to be a digital safety trainer. I wanted to learn how to train people, especially women, on how to stay safe online. The internet is the vehicle of the future. This future is now, and we cannot afford for women to be left behind.

Online violence eventually pushes victims to stay offline. It is censorship hidden behind the veil of freedom of expression.

After this realization, I embarked on the quest to become a digital safety trainer. As fate would have it, my mentor Grace Githaiga came across the SafeSister fellowship opportunity and sent it to me. I applied and got into the program. The training was taking place in Ngaruga lodge, Uganda. The venue of the training was beyond serene. The calm lake waters next to the hotel signified how we want the internet to be for women: a calm place and a safe space where women can express themselves freely without fear of being victimized, or their voices being invalidated.

On arrival we were met by one of the facilitators, Helen, who gave us a warm welcome. The training was conducted by five facilitators, all of whom were women.

The training was student friendly. The topics were broken down in a way that allows everyone to understand what was being discussed. Each facilitator had her own way and style of delivering the different topics, from using charts to power point presentations. I must say they did an exceptional job. I got to learn more about online gender violence and how deeply rooted it is in our society, and hence the importance of digital security trainings.

Being a trainer is not only about having digital safety skills, it also requires you to be an all rounded person. While giving training you are bound to meet different types of people with different personalities, and it is your duty to make them feel comfortable and make sure the environment around them is safe. It is in this safe space that they will be able to talk and express their fears and desires, and, most importantly, they will be willing to learn. As a digital security trainer, you should first know more about your participants and how much they know about digital security. This will enable you to package your material according to their learning needs.

Being a trainer requires you to read a lot on digital security, because this keeps you updated and allows you, therefore, to relay accurate information to your trainees. As a trainer, it is also necessary to understand the concept of hands on training because it gives the participants the opportunity to put into practice what they have learnt. For example, when you are teaching about privacy status on Facebook, you don’t just talk about it, your should rather ask the participants to open their Facebook accounts – that is if they have any – and go through the instructions step by step with them till they are able to achieve the task. As a trainer there is also the possibility of meeting a participant who does not give the opportunity to the rest of the group to express their views, as they want to be the one to talk throughout. However, the trainer needs to take charge and make sure that each participant is given an equal opportunity to talk.

Before the training we had each been given a topic to make a presentation on, and mine was to do with encryption; VeraCrypt to be more specific. At first it sounded Greek to me, but then I resorted to my friend Google to get more details (this begs the question of: how was life before the internet?). By the time I was leaving Kenya for Uganda I had mastered VeraCrypt. We kept discussing our topics with the rest of the group to a point where they started calling me Vera. My presentation went so well to my surprise. The week went by so fast. By the time we realized it, it was over and it was time to go back home and start implementing what we had learnt.

We continued receiving very informative material online from the trainers. In September 2017 they opened up a pool of funding where we could apply to fund a training in our different home countries. I got the funding, and chose to hold the training at Multimedia University where I lecture part time. The reason behind my choice was that this was home for upcoming young media women, and we needed to train them on how to stay safe online, especially since media women in Kenya form the majority of victims of gender based violence. They needed to know what awaits them out there and the mechanisms they needed to have to protect themselves from the attacks. The training was a success, and the young ladies walked away happy and strong.

The second, and last, part of SafeSister (I am barely holding my tears here, because the end did come) took place in Uganda at the end of March 2018. It was such a nice reunion, meeting the other participants and our trainers after a year. This time the training was more relaxed. We were each given a chance to talk about the trainings we conducted, the challenges we encountered, the lessons learnt and what we would have done differently. For me the challenge I encountered was time management. The trainers had prepared quite informative materials, hence the time ran over, add to it a 3o minutes delayed start.

This was my first training, and one take home for me as a digital safety trainer was that not all participants will be enthusiastic about the training, but one shouldn’t be discouraged or feel like they are not doing enough. The trainer just needs to make sure that no participant is left out. The trainer should not just throw questions at the participants, or just ask for their opinion on different issues regarding digital safety. As time progresses, they gradually get enthusiastic and start feeling more at ease.

One thing I have learnt since I became a digital security trainer is that people are quite ignorant on digital security matters. People go to cybercafés and forget to sign out of their email accounts, or use the same password for more than a single account, and  then they ask you ‘’why would someone want to hack into my account or abuse me and I am not famous?” However, such questions should not discourage you, on the contrary, they should motivate you to give more trainings, because people don’t know how vulnerable they are by being online while their accounts and data are not protected. Also as a trainer, when you can, and when the need arises, give as much free trainings as you can, since not everyone can afford to pay you. It is through these trainings that you continue to sharpen your skills and become an excellent trainer.

After the training we were each awarded a certificate. It felt so good to know that I am now a certified digital security trainer; nothing can beat that feeling.  As they say, all good things must come to an end. Long live Internews, long live DefendDefenders Asante Sana. I will forever be grateful.

 

Cecilia Mwende Maundu is a broadcast journalist in Kenya, a digital security trainer and consultant with a focus on teaching women how to stay safe online. She is also a user experience (UX) trainer, collecting user information feedback and sharing it with developers.

Stefania keynotes at ‘The Digital Self’ workshop, Kings’ College London, July 6

On July 6, Stefania will deliver a keynote at the workshop ‘The Digital Self’, organized by the Departments of Digital Humanities and of Culture, Media & Creative Industries of Kings’ College, London. This workshop focuses on how digital technology influences our daily lives, its impacts on the ways culture is re-shaped, and as a result how our identities as workers, consumers and media and cultural producers are changing. Stefania’s keynote is entitled ‘Identity and data infrastructure’. Read more.