Privacy Advocates Research Articles

Artificial intelligence misuse and concern for information privacy: New construct validation and future directions

AbstractTo address various business challenges, organisations are increasingly employing artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse vast amounts of data. One application involves consolidating diverse user data into unified profiles, aggregating consumer behaviours to accurately tailor marketing efforts. Although AI provides more convenience to consumers and more efficient and profitable marketing for organisations, the act of aggregating data into behavioural profiles for use in machine learning algorithms introduces significant privacy implications for users, including unforeseeable personal disclosure, outcomes biased against marginalised population groups and organisations' inability to fully remove data from AI systems on consumer request. Although these implementations of AI are rapidly altering the way consumers perceive information privacy, researchers have thus far lacked an accurate method for measuring consumers' privacy concerns related to AI. In this study, we aim to (1) validate a scale for measuring privacy concerns related to AI misuse (PC‐AIM) and (2) examine the effects that PC‐AIM has on nomologically related constructs under the APCO framework. We provide evidence demonstrating the validity of our newly developed scale. We also find that PC‐AIM significantly increases risk beliefs and personal privacy advocacy behaviour, while decreasing trusting beliefs. Trusting beliefs and risk beliefs do not significantly affect behaviour, which differs from prior privacy findings. We further discuss the implications of our work on both research and practice.

Beyond the Onion Routing: Unmasking Illicit Activities on the Dark Web

This comprehensive study delves into the complexities of the Dark Web, a concealed segment of the internet that remains invisible to standard search engines and is accessible only through specialized tools like The Onion Router (TOR), which ensures user anonymity. While the Dark Web is celebrated for its capacity to safeguard privacy and foster free expression, it concurrently serves as a sanctuary for illegal endeavours, encompassing drug trafficking, unauthorized arms trading, and a spectrum of cybercrime. The primary objective of this research is to scrutinize the efficacy of onion routing, the foundational technology behind the Dark Web, in preserving user anonymity amidst escalating efforts by law enforcement agencies to dismantle illegal activities. This paper adopts a rigorous approach that melds an exhaustive review of pertinent literature with empirical investigations to pinpoint the intrinsic vulnerabilities within the onion routing framework. Furthermore, the study introduces innovative methodologies aimed at bolstering the detection and neutralization of illicit transactions and communications on the Dark Web. These proposed methods seek to establish a delicate balance between upholding the Dark Web's legitimate functions—such as protecting privacy and enabling free speech—and curtailing its misuse for criminal activities. The paper culminates in a discussion of the broader implications of these findings for policymakers, law enforcement officials, and privacy advocates. It provides a set of recommendations for future research and policy formulation in this intricate and ever-evolving domain, to navigate the challenges posed by the Dark Web while preserving its essential values.

INTERPLAY OF GLOBAL TECHNOLOGICAL DYNAMICS AND LOCAL REALITIES: DIGITAL HEALTHCARE TRANSFORMATION IN TURKEY

Various trends have driven the digital transformation of health: Developments in digital technologies, pressures for cause reduction in healthcare and increasing demand and expenditures from aging populations. In parallel, Turkey is actively engaged in a great transformative journey with its Health Transformation Program (HTP) since 2003, embracing the age of digitalization in healthcare. This study explores the interplay among historical discourse, political influences, technological advancements which shaped the centralization of Turkey's health system. Specifically, it delves into how Turkey's healthcare system has undergone centralization under the aegis of digital transformation. Amidst this transition, a compelling question arises: How has the positive perception of digital health innovations by both the public and authoritative health institutions converged with the challenges posed by low health and digital literacy levels? This article uses the concept of biomedicalization to encompass the multisited and multidirectional health transformation processes in Turkey. By cultivating a technology-friendly environment, the nation is nurturing (bio)digital citizens through the process of biomedicalization. Drawing on a historical narrative of Turkey's digital health transformation, the article posits that the phenomenon of biomedicalization in the country, molded by intricate multidimensional factors at both micro and macro levels, compels policymakers, privacy advocates, and lawmakers to devise effective and sustainable regulations concerning data utilization, protection, and privacy. By investigating these dynamics, the research provides insights into how a country like Turkey navigates the multifaceted aspects of digital health implementation, shedding light on the potential strategies and mechanisms that enable the successful adoption of digital technologies in healthcare despite existing limitations. This contribution to the broader discourse on digital transformation enriches our understanding of the intricacies involved in leveraging technology to enhance healthcare systems, especially in contexts where there are literacy levels might pose.

Exploring Privacy-Preserving Methods via Perturbation Data Mining Employing Diverse Noise Strategies

Knowledge discovery from data, commonly referred to as data mining. it involves the extraction of significant information, which may be previously unknown, concealed, or relevant, from extensive data sets or databases through the utilization of statistical methodologies. With the introduction of enhanced hardware technologies, there has been a proliferation in the storage and recording of personal data pertaining to individuals. Sophisticated organizations employ data mining algorithms to uncover hidden patterns or insights within data. Data mining techniques find application in diverse fields such as marketing, medical diagnosis, forecasting system, and national security. However, in scenarios where data privacy is paramount, mining certain types of data without violating the privacy of data owners presents a formidable challenge, sparking growing concerns among privacy advocates. To address these concerns, it is imperative to advance data mining procedures that are complex to individual privacy considerations. Perturbation of data plays a pivotal role in Privacy-Preserving Data Mining (PPDM). Additive data safeguard data privacy. In contrast, multiplicative data perturbation involves a series of transformations, including rotation, translation, and the addition of noise components to the perturbed data copy.

Privacy and anti-surveillance advocacy: the role/challenge of issue salience

PurposeThe proliferation of surveillance-enhancing laws, policies and technologies across African countries deepens the risk of privacy rights breaches, as well as the risks of adverse profiling and social sorting. There is a heightened need for dedicated advocacy and activism to consistently demand accountability and transparency from African states, governments and their allies regarding surveillance. The purpose of this paper is to understand the issue frames that accompany anti-surveillance and privacy advocacy in Ghana and the related implications.Design/methodology/approachUsing a qualitative and interpretivist approach, the author focuses on three different surveillance-oriented incidents/programs in Ghana and analyzes the frames underpinning the related advocacy and narratives of various non-state actors.FindingsPrivacy and anti-surveillance advocacy in Ghana tends to be less framed in the context of privacy rights and is more driven by concerns about corruption and value for money. Such pecuniary emphasis is rational per issue salience calculations as it elevates principles of economic probity, transparency and accountability and pursues a high public shock value and resonance.Practical implicationsEconomics-centered critiques of surveillance could be counterproductive as they create a low bar for surveillance promoters and sustains a culture of permissible statist intrusions into citizens’ lives once economic virtues are satisfied.Originality/valueWhile anti-surveillance and privacy advocacy is budding across African countries, little is known about its nature, frames and modus compared to such advocacy in European and North American settings. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is likely the first paper or one of the first dedicated fully to anti-surveillance and advocacy in Africa.

Linking Personality and Trust in Intelligent Virtual Assistants

Throughout the last years, Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs), such as Alexa and Siri, have increasingly gained in popularity. Yet, privacy advocates raise great concerns regarding the amount and type of data these systems collect and consequently process. Among many other things, it is technology trust which seems to be of high significance here, particularly when it comes to the adoption of IVAs, for they usually provide little transparency as to how they function and use personal and potentially sensitive data. While technology trust is influenced by many different socio-technical parameters, this article focuses on human personality and its connection to respective trust perceptions, which in turn may further impact the actual adoption of IVA products. To this end, we report on the results of an online survey (n=367). Findings show that on a scale from 0 to 100%, people trust IVAs 51.59% on average. Furthermore, the data point to a significant positive correlation between people’s propensity to trust in general technology and their trust in IVAs. Yet, they also show that those who exhibit a higher propensity to trust in technology tend to also have a higher affinity for technology interaction and are consequently more likely to adopt IVAs.

Video nadzor i veštačka inteligencija - uticaj na pravo na privatnost i prava intelektualne svojine

The protection of individual privacy is increasingly questioned in the context of today's high-tech video surveillance by using superior technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (smart cameras and video surveillance systems, biometrics and facial recognition) which is capable of analyzing a huge amount of data, identifying links between that data and de-anonymizing them. Technology is synonymous with evolution. Yet, the advantages of using new technology are combined with great risks. The use of video cameras for surveillance raises important privacy issues. Biometric remote identification can only be performed under certain safeguards, in the context of a justified interest and with respect for the principle of proportionality. In recent years, facial recognition technology has become increasingly widespread, and highly controversial, as it is omnipresent (at airport check-in lines, police departments, pharmacies, etc.). While it may add a sense of security and comfort for businesses implementing it, such technology has been widely criticized by privacy advocates, especially for its built-in racial bias and potential for abusive use. "Real-time" biometric identification of individuals in public-accessible spaces for law enforcement purposes is seen as highly intrusive on the rights and freedoms of the individuals concerned, but it also evokes a sense of constant surveillance and indirectly discourages the exercise of freedom of assembly and other fundamental rights. Another important issue is the use of video surveillance in a context where it can cause problems in terms of intellectual property. The unauthorized use of recordings may affect confidential business operations. Trade secrets and confidential information are often an essential part of a company's intellectual property portfolio. Thus, companies have to take extra steps to ensure that images captured by cameras are stored securely and accessible only to authorized personnel. Cameras can capture images of artistic works, performances, exhibitions, and uncontrolled access can lead to infringement of copyright and related rights. As captured videos can be uploaded to platforms, such use of intellectual property can lead to copyright infringement, especially when the video entails the use of copyrighted material without the owner's permission, which constitutes an infringement of intellectual property rights.

Schools engaged in doom-monitoring students' online interactions and content creation: an analysis of dominant media discourses.

Growing public concern about the safety and security of schools has led many schools and school districts within the United States to hire private companies to monitor students' online interactions and the content they create, including on social media. The use of such technologies supposedly increases schools' awareness of what students are doing online and, thus, helps to identify and prevent potential issues such as mental health problems, cyberbullying, or self-harm that might otherwise go unnoticed. However, there is currently no evidence to support that social media surveillance or content monitoring is able to effectively address these public health and safety issues. Thus, our study explores how the different voices present in the discourse - students, school officials, privacy advocates, and service providers' representatives - justify or condemn the surveillance of student-produced online content in publicly available news media articles. We adopt a critical discursive psychology approach to study news articles, which were published in international media in the last 3 years (2019N=53; 2020N=56; 2021N=77), reporting on the use of digital surveillance technologies targeting student-produced content. Three dominant interpretive repertoires emerged from the analyzed news media articles: 'silenced students, expert adults', 'a solution in search of a problem', and 'the normalization of surveillance for a good cause'. Our findings show that, under the auspices of protecting children, schools are actively engaged in 'doom-monitoring', which is the indiscriminate and inaccurate surveillance of people in anticipation of the next bad thing. The opinions and views of adults, including school officials, vendors, and civil liberties advocates, dominate over the voices of students.

Trial by File Formats: Exploring Public Defenders' Challenges Working with Novel Surveillance Data

In the United States, public defenders (lawyers assigned to people accused of crimes who cannot afford a private attorney) serve as an essential bulwark against wrongful arrest and incarceration for low-income and marginalized people. Public defenders have long been overworked and under-resourced. However, these issues have been compounded by increases in the volume and complexity of data in modern criminal cases. We explore the technology needs of public defenders through a series of semi-structured interviews with public defenders and those who work with them. We find that public defenders' ability to reason about novel surveillance data is woefully inadequate not only due to a lack of resources and knowledge, but also due to the structure of the criminal justice system, which gives prosecutors and police (in partnership with private companies) more control over the type of information used in criminal cases than defense attorneys. We find that public defenders may be able to create fairer situations for their clients with better tools for data interpretation and access. Therefore, we call on technologists to attend to the needs of public defenders and the people they represent when designing systems that collect data about people. Our findings illuminate constraints that technologists and privacy advocates should consider as they pursue solutions. In particular, our work complicates notions of individual privacy as the only value in protecting users' rights, and demonstrates the importance of data interpretation alongside data visibility. As data sources become more complex, control over the data cannot be separated from access to the experts and technology to make sense of that data. The growing surveillance data ecosystem may systematically oppress not only those who are most closely observed, but groups of people whose communities and advocates have been deprived of the storytelling power over their information.

Developing Privacy Extensions: Is it Advocacy through the Web Browser?

In 2015, Edward Snowden recommended that ordinary citizens use adblocking software and an encryption-oriented privacy extension for their web browser to protect against surveillance. This paper critically explores how the development of privacy extension software for web browsers can be situated in relation to privacy advocacy. Privacy advocates are individuals who act on behalf of the citizenry to speak to governments and corporations about how our data are collected and processed. While the Snowden revelations began in 2013 and the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in 2018, privacy extensions remain underexplored in the literature on privacy advocacy. This paper shares findings from ethnographically informed interviews conducted with thirty developers and other knowledgeable experts who created twenty-six named privacy extensions. The privacy extensions explored included anti-tracking, hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPS), and privacy policy and password-related functionalities. Although privacy extensions are an imperfect set of tools to protect privacy, we argue that production of this software demonstrates an array of privacy advocacy strategies. Privacy extensions can be scaffolded upon previous resistance moves to surveillance by individuals, while also sometimes intersecting with traditional and expanded notions of collective action in the digital age.

Learning Better for the Next Thing: Online Proctoring Services and Privacy Advocacy Outside the Library

In the fall of 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions found themselves with more time to consider how to best use and refine educational technology that had been urgently implemented or expanded during the spring and summer. Despite taking this additional time, it often felt as though the desire to provide normalcy—amongst abnormal conditions—took precedence over privacy protections. Examples such as promoting classroom engagement by requiring students to have their cameras on during synchronous online instruction illustrate this attempt to bridge normality within remote services. Another example of this tendency is online proctoring, in which the need to ensure academic integrity is used to justify the implementation of software that leverages surveillance and harmful technology.
 I am employed at an institution that supports online proctoring as a method of instruction and has a contract with an online proctoring service, ProctorU. When I first learned this information, I felt a call to action. Just as a sense of urgency helped guide the implementation of online proctoring services, my own urgency guided my attempts at dismantling its use. Through this article, I will explain online and remote proctoring, the harms it poses to students, and why librarians should care about it. Furthermore, I'll outline my own efforts to eliminate proctoring software on my campus, how they fell short, and how we can envision better methods of dismantling surveillance.

The Labor of Digital Privacy Advocacy in an Era of Big Tech

This article explores the labor of contemporary digital privacy advocates and their myriad efforts to protect and preserve public interests during the era of Big Tech companies. It is based on qualitative interviews with professional staff, lawyers, and policy analysts at multiple major advocacy organizations in Washington, DC. We have employed a grounded theory approach to address four labor-related themes that consistently emerged across our interviews: coalition building, agenda formulation, the art of navigating public- and private-sector relationships, and balancing a domestic and global policy landscape. In the current policy landscape, there is an intensifying degree of advocacy–industry coordination taking place, in part because of US regulatory roll-backs under the Trump administration and a gridlocked Congress. As a result, advocacy organization staff members often rely on companies for information to do their assessment and agenda-setting work. They also apply pressure to these companies and force them to think about how their technologies and operations impact users and publics around the world; they mount legal challenges to various media and tech initiatives to ensure public interests are protected; and some end up working with or for these companies in ways that may impart and integrate the values of advocacy organizations within profit-driven organizations. This article explores the multiple dimensions of advocacy labor which itself is often excluded from media policy and industry analysis.

The Evolving Ecosystem of COVID-19 Contact Tracing Applications

Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, there has been significant interest in the use of digital contact tracing as a means of stopping chains of viral transmission, provoking alarm from privacy advocates. Concerning the ethics of this technology, recent studies have predominantly focused on (1) the formation of guidelines for ethical contact tracing, (2) the analysis of specific implementations, or (3) the review of a select number of contact tracing applications and their relevant privacy or ethical implications. In this study, we provide a comprehensive survey of the evolving ecosystem of COVID-19 tracing applications, examining 152 such applications and assessing the extent to which they comply with existing guidelines for ethical contact tracing. The assessed criteria cover areas including data collection and storage, transparency and consent, and whether the implementation is open source. We find that although many apps released early in the pandemic fell short of best practices, apps released more recently, following the publication of the Apple/Google exposure notification protocol, have tended to align more closely with ethical contact tracing principles. This data set is publicly available at https://www.benjaminlevy.ca/covid-apps <https://www.benjaminlevy.ca/covid-apps> and may be updated as the pandemic continues.

Dark Patterns, Privacy and the LGPD

This article deals with the topic of dark patterns in personal data collection (DPPDC), arguing that they are still under the radar of lawmakers and privacy advocates, and that data protection laws such as the Brazilian Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD) do not offer enough protection against it. The article presents the general concept of dark patterns, followed by a legal analysis of DPPDC, highlighting that their prevalence is made possible by the outdated decision making model tacitly endorsed by data protection laws. To illustrate this argument, I examine the recently enacted LGPD, which emphasizes data subjects’ autonomy without offering additional protection against malicious actors’ commonly used techniques. Turning to the legal text, I inquire whether DPPDC can be deemed legal or not given the LGPD’s current provisions regarding lawfulness of data processing. Lastly, after identifying the legal gaps that enable DPPDC to flourish, I argue that data protection law needs a paradigm change, so that data subjects can be guaranteed a fair decision making process and adequate levels of protection of their privacy. Dark Patterns, Data Protection, Brazil, Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Fairness, Privacy

Debates About EdTech in a Time of Pandemics Should Include Youth’s Voices

The EdTech debate continues to gather attention among academia, digital rights and privacy advocates, and the general public. While much ink is spilled by EdTech critics, with best interest for students facing a datafied and platformised education at heart, youth’s voice is rarely present. Much is written about what EdTech means for education processes and what they might do to students or for them than is said in their own words. With the pandemic having kept children and youth at a computer distance from each other and society for over a year, what has been happening in their lives during this time should be heard – in their own words. This article follows on two emergencies gripping education globally as highlighted during the 2020 United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF), emphasised by two IGF youth representatives. On one hand, the pandemic crisis has exacerbated digital inequalities worldwide; on the other, the ‘overdigitisation’ of education has increased the risks of dataveillance and privacy loss. These two extremes intersect in their techno-deterministic drive, which risks side-lining students’ perspectives. To counter this risk, this paper brings these youths’ perspectives and reflections over the dichotomy of ‘none’ versus ‘too much’ EdTech and what ‘works’ and does not in their learning in a time of pandemic.

TollsOnly Please—Homomorphic Encryption for Toll Transponder Privacy in Internet of Vehicles

Cities have circumvented privacy norms and deployed sensors to track vehicles via toll transponders (like E-Zpass tags). The ethical problems regarding these practices have been highlighted by various privacy advocacy groups. The industry, however, has yet to implement a standard privacy protection regime to protect users’ data. Furthermore, existing risk management models do not adequately address user-controlled data-sharing requirements. In this article, we consider the challenges of protecting private data in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) and mobile edge networks. Specifically, we present a privacy risk reduction model for electronic toll transponder data. We seek to preserve driver privacy while contributing to intelligent transportation infrastructure congestion automation schemes. We thus propose TollsOnly, a fully homomorphic encryption protocol. TollsOnly is expected to be a postquantum privacy preservation scheme. It enables users to share specific data with smart cities via blockchain technology. TollsOnly protects driver privacy in compliance with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act.

Playing Fair in the Privacy Sandbox: Competition, Privacy and Interoperability Standards

Google’s Privacy Sandbox proposals to change the Chrome browser in ways that are likely to further advantage them over other publishers and advertising platforms has attracted the attention of competition regulators, the online advertising industry, and critics of their platform power. At the same time, the Privacy Sandbox appears to answer a call from data protection regulators, privacy advocates and users for ‘privacy by design,’ moving in lockstep with its industry peers. How, then, should this behaviour be evaluated for abuse? I argue that there are several hurdles to considering the most controversial Privacy Sandbox proposal – blocking third-party cookies – as an abuse of market power. Furthermore, I propose that, because web browsers are an architecturally regulated market, competition regulators should distinguish unilateral behaviour by examining it in the context of other browsers’ behaviours, along with signals regarding consensus from the relevant standards bodies.

Rejecting Test Surveillance in Higher Education

The rise of remote proctoring software during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates the dangers of surveillance-enabled pedagogy built on the belief that students can’t be trusted. These services, which deploy a range of identification protocols, computer and internet access limitations, and human or automated observation of students as they take tests remotely, are marketed as necessary to prevent cheating. But the success of these services in their stated goal is ill- supported at best and discredited at worst, particularly given their highly over- inclusive criteria for “suspicious” behavior. Meanwhile, the harms they inflict on students are clear: severe anxiety among test-takers, concerning data collection and use practices, and discriminatory flagging of students of color and students with disabilities have provoked widespread outcry from students, professors, privacy advocates, policymakers, and sometimes universities themselves. To make matters worse, the privacy and civil rights laws most relevant to the use of these services are generally inadequate to protect students from the harms they inflict.Colleges and universities routinely face difficult decisions that require reconciling conflicting interests, but whether to use remote proctoring software isn’t one of them. Remote proctoring software is not pedagogically beneficial, institutionally necessary, or remotely unavoidable, and its use further entrenches inequities in higher education that schools should be devoted to rooting out. Colleges and universities should abandon remote proctoring software, and apply the lessons from this failed experiment to their other existing or potential future uses of surveillance technologies and automated decision-making systems that threaten students’ privacy, access to important life opportunities, and intellectual freedom.

Market-oriented corporate digital responsibility to manage data vulnerability in online banking

PurposeThis conceptual paper explores gaps in bank privacy protection practices and advocates for banks to integrate market-oriented (MO) approaches in their corporate digital responsibility (CDR) initiatives to minimize consumer data vulnerability.Design/methodology/approachTo apply MO in CDR, this study recommends adoption of a behavior change framework comprising of the co-creation, build and engage (CBE) model and proposes the creation of consumer segments based on generational cohort and tailoring strategies through motivation, opportunity and ability (MOA) model to manage vulnerability.FindingsThe study specifies that managing consumer data vulnerability requires a unique strategy different from conventional service delivery. A holistic approach is recommended by integrating corporate digital responsibility as a pivotal element of organizational strategy and by positioning vulnerable customers as a critical stakeholder.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the research in corporate social responsibility (CSR), privacy and data vulnerability in the banking sector in two prominent ways: first, the study demonstrates the importance of MO as a premise to develop a novel version of CDR called market-oriented digital responsibility (MODR). The study considers MODR as a strategy to reposition vulnerable consumers as a key stakeholder, and, second, the study proposes an innovative set of consumer segments based on data vulnerability and introduces a data vulnerability growth model (DVGM) connecting vulnerability with age.

Targeting and Privacy in Mobile Advertising

Mobile in-app advertising is now the dominant form of digital advertising. Although these ads have excellent user-tracking properties, they have raised concerns among privacy advocates. This has resulted in an ongoing debate on the value of different types of targeting information, the incentives of ad networks to engage in behavioral targeting, and the role of regulation. To answer these questions, we propose a unified modeling framework that consists of two components—a machine learning framework for targeting and an analytical auction model for examining market outcomes under counterfactual targeting regimes. We apply our framework to large-scale data from the leading in-app ad network of an Asian country. We find that an efficient targeting policy based on our machine learning framework improves the average click-through rate by 66.80% over the current system. These gains mainly stem from behavioral information compared with contextual information. Theoretical and empirical counterfactuals show that although total surplus grows with more granular targeting, the ad network’s revenues are nonmonotonic; that is, the most efficient targeting does not maximize ad network revenues. Rather, it is maximized when the ad network does not allow advertisers to engage in behavioral targeting. Our results suggest that ad networks may have economic incentives to preserve users’ privacy without external regulation.