A Provocation on Privacy & Ethics in Blockchain-Based Systems: An Invitation

Abstract

Privacy is a quality relating to human data that is typically governed by legal principles or guidelines for how private entities should conduct in relation to user data. The idea in blockchain systems is that privacy principles can be established and enforced data through software code, to provide stronger guarantees and accountability to people about how their data is managed. In late-2020, the ‘Privacy & Ethics’ sub-committee of the Cybersecurity Working Group for the National Blockchain Roadmap met multiple times to discuss the privacy and ethics concerns of blockchain systems. Areas of interest to the sub-committee included framing privacy and ethics in relation to blockchain, identifying relevant principles in Australia to these areas, the cybersecurity implications of different types of blockchain architectures, and links to case-study examples of best practice approaches to privacy at an individual and infrastructural level. The following briefing paper provides a synthesis of our findings and directions moving forward, as a contribution to the Cybersecurity Working Group Report, including approaching privacy and ethics in different blockchain-based architectures, and opportunities, limitations, and recommendations for enhancing privacy and ethics approaches in blockchains. This synthesis is designed to capture the privacy and ethics opportunities and concerns regarding distributed ledger technologies, offer further understanding on these topics, and invite further contribution.