Workshop on Digital move Empowering families to move freely online: harnessing the full potential of the internet through genuine data portability
Families on the Move conference www.coface-eu.org/consumers/families-on-the-move
With the support of:
Reality check and State of play
The Internet has become an integral part of redirected instead of being stopped. Think the lives of families all across the world, yet about it as a spider web: if you need to go few reflect on its governance, a key aspect from one point to another in a spider web, to secure certain elementary freedoms like even if one thread of the spider web snaps, the freedom of movement. Moving freely there are many other possible routes you online doesn’t just mean being able to can take. consult any website you want, but also being able to consult them in similar With regards to the content/services side, conditions (the debate about “net we have seen a growing concentration in neutrality”) or being able to switch online the hands of a few companies: Google, services at any time which is what the Facebook and Amazon. This concentration workshops on “digital move” focused on. is detrimental for many reasons. For instance, a successful cyberattack on Just like any service, the Internet is prone to Amazon cloud services could take down centralization and lock in: huge parts of the Web (the web pages centralization as in the concentration would no longer be available). Another and control of a major part of its reason is the user experience: by reaching infrastructure and/or content in the near monopolistic positions, these giants hands of one or a few major players; can impose abusive access conditions and “lock in” meaning the difficulty of users unfair business models. The growing to switch services or online platforms. prevalence of online advertising on social networks or video sharing platforms and This phenomenon is not unique to the the increased exploitation and gathering of Internet and centralization and the “lock in” user data are directly linked to this effect have been seen in many other centralization process: by “locking in” the industries like the telephone operators user, you can exploit his/her data and make which in many countries functioned as him/her watch more targeted advertising, quasi monopolies and made it very difficult and not only for commercial reasons but to switch operator (you had to give up your also, increasingly, for political reasons phone number). during election campaigns. Centralization also enables easier censorship, be it from With regards to the Internet, we need to private actors or governments. distinguish the hardware/network (the cables and routers which link every While there is a natural tendency for individual’s computer together) from the centralization, certain decentralized content/services (the data and the online solutions, developed especially within the services). The hardware and networks were “Open Source” movement and community, designed, from the outset, in a have gradually emerged over the years. Too decentralized way and for very important often, however, these solutions are taken up reasons: to make sure that even if one part by the “geeks and nerds” community and of the network failed, the “traffic” would be never make it to the wider public.
2 Workshop on Digital Move – Families on the Move Conference HWC (Homebrew Website Club), share their knowledge for free, exemplified represented by Nicolas Collignon and via its most successful projet to date: the Ricardo Mendes is an example of a young Wikipedia encyclopedia. company which aims at bridging the gap The foundation builds their projects based between readily usable decentralized on a number of core values and a firm solutions from the “indie web” and ordinary belief in digital rights. Yet they also faced Internet users by hosting informal the same challenges as any other company gatherings to exchange expertise and on the Internet: how to deal with illegal knowledge about how these solutions work. content, harassment, censorship and so on. They also directly help NGOs, small businesses and other actors to make the To each challenge, its original response: switch to decentralized solutions which are often cheaper and more respectful of Illegal content is being taken down in privacy than commercial solutions. cooperation with law enforcement, when multiple jurisdictions apply, the In concrete terms, HWC proposes such strongest of the multiple laws applicable services as self-hosting which enables is taken as reference. Criminal content is anyone to directly host their not blocked but fully deleted. Such website/content without subscribing to a requests are rare however, given commercial online cloud service. Among Wikimedia’s core business. Illegal the self-hosting solutions, we find Cloudron, content is different. For instance, Yunohost, Nextcloud, Rocket.Chat, and regarding copyright infringement, there many more. is a discussion around each deletion to strike a balance between deletion for Examples of other decentralized service valid reasons and censorship. include Diaspora which is a decentralized social network and Signal which is a highly With regards to violence, nudity, or any secure and privacy respectful messaging other form of shocking content, service with end-to-end encryption. The use Wikimedia has decided to accept or of VPN (Virtual Private Network) is also delete it depending on whether it was listed as a privacy enhancing solution. treated “encyclopedically” or not; in essence, whether the content fulfils Finally, HWC explores various hardware some kind of educational purpose or is solutions for increased privacy and irrelevant to the subject being explored. autonomy such as the “Internet Cube” which enables self-hosting and VPN in one Inaccurate or low quality content is hardware, or Nextcloud box which also dealt with by strengthening the allows you to host your content directly community participating inside from your living room. Wikipedia and reinforcing the skills of HWC organizes monthly meetups in the contributors, but also in providing a Brussels open to anyone. space for editing and discussing the Wikimedia, represented by Dimitar content and cultivate values of Dimitrov, on the other hand, is an example cooperation, deliberation and of an online service provider whose mission democracy by allowing users to vote was to enable every single human being to
3 Workshop on Digital Move – Families on the Move Conference and have a say on the contents of During the discussion, many issues were Wikipedia. raised and some ideas proposed:
Finally, with respect to harassment, While technical solutions to social Wikimedia adopts a “zero tolerance” problems may not be the panacea, they policy making it clear that harassment is have proven to be effective when being not and will not be tolerated, thereby well designed. The (technical) rules opting for “social” solutions rather than which govern the editing and technical solutions such as censorship. contribution process of Wikipedia have yielded stability and good overall Joe McNamee from EDRi (European quality of the content. As decentralized Digital Rights) gave examples of cases solutions are being rolled out, it is key where censorship or other technically driven to determine how to address problems solutions to solve human behavior online of harassment or criminal content given resulted in creating side effects which were that many such solutions do not have a sometimes worse than the problem meant “central authority” to contact regarding to be solved: liability or take-down, especially given that very often, being uncensorable and In Belgium, the censorship of fully anonymous is part of their newsgroups for music by the music underlying code. Some balance needs industry was used by users to create a to be struck between technical list of the best places to get music since solutions/rules embedded in newsgroups were not censored equally decentralized services and social by all Internet providers. solutions (education, fighting stereotypes, social and emotional The no longer existing Dutch social learning, values, critical thinking, network Hives created a system which resilience…). was meant to tackle cyberbullying and harassment based on user reporting. If Decentralized solutions can enhance the social network received 10 reports democracy via their participatory nature, from different IPs, it blocked the embedded in their code. content/person. This system was used by teenagers to bully others by There is an inherent tendency for grouping together to block a person. networks to centralize themselves in a self-reinforcing way. Everyone uses The issue of censorship is also treated Whatsapp and Facebook because selectively in many parts of the world. In the everybody else uses Whatsapp and United States for instance, depending on Facebook. To ensure that which organisation you are, “freedom of decentralization becomes a norm forces speech” can apply or not. For instance, us to identify the root causes of Wikileaks has been a victim of attempted centralization and address them directly censorship via paralegal means: by in the design of decentralized solutions. persuading companies like Cloud hosting or financial services to stop providing their In order to fully realize the potential services to Wikileaks. that decentralized solutions present
4 Workshop on Digital Move – Families on the Move Conference such as self-hosting or alternatives to networks) would not store your data social networks and other platforms, on their own servers, but the data two elements are essential: would be stored via a decentralized service chosen by the user and users - Achieve interoperability between the would give an authorization to various decentralized solutions in services to access parts of that data. order to minimize the likelihood of a This comes with many advantages: “lock in” effect. There are many users would not need to “reupload” examples of decentralized services multiple times a similar content which are interoperable such as across multiple services (for email. Regardless of which email instance, a video or a picture) and provider you choose, you can send this might clearly help in breaking emails to all the others, and you can the “lock in” effect of current online also export/import emails from one services. email client to another with relative ease. Decoupling the data layer and the services layer comes with many - In the future, in the spirit of data prerequisites: harmonizing to some minimization, we may need to move extent how data generated is stored towards a “decoupling” of the data (using standard database language layer from the services layer. Some like SQL or JSON), ensuring strong decentralized solutions already protection for user generated data propose such a service like the and the uses that services can make “Freedom Box” which aims at of the data (preventing users to be centralizing a users’ data and pressured by services to give access hosting it directly on a home server. to all their data, with the risk that it A decoupling of the data layer from will be used against them: the services layer would mean that creditworthiness, health insurance, the services you use (email, social political marketing…).
5 Workshop on Digital Move – Families on the Move Conference Actions and next steps
Decentralized solutions are growing, there people, openness (to new ideas and open is no doubt about it. But what is happening source), bottom up (leverage people’s at the policy level? These developments creativity) and decentralization. have not gone under the radar and at the EU level, both the European Commission Examples of CAPS projects include: and the European Parliament have started moving, in a more or less direct way, to D-Cent: a tool for democratic participation facilitate a healthy transition to and citizen empowerment, used among decentralized technologies. other things to propose and draft policies in a collaborative way, decide and vote Fabrizio Sestini from the DG CNECT Next electronically, and encouraging people to Generation Internet Unit gave a participate with a blockchain reward presentation on programmes funded by the scheme (small payments of the freecoin European Commission on the future of the cryptocurrency). Internet, with a specific focus on democratic values. The Internet’s future can head into Decoce project: using new technologies to many directions: dominated by a handful of give people more control over how they corporations focusing on their commercial store, manage and use their personal data interest, managed by Internet users generated online using blockchain themselves via open source, decentralized technology to create “open data commons”. platforms and various technical solutions, or some form of balance between the two. CAPTOR: allows to crowdmap data about air pollution from cheap sensors by a Financing decentralized projects which put massive amount of users. Even if they are focus on user participation and democracy less accurate than a very expensive makes sense from the perspective of the government agency sensors, the mass use general interest, given the risks that a compensates and is just as effective, concentration of power in the hands of a yielding many benefits in terms of health handful of companies present: privacy risks, and information about air pollution. stifling of innovation, barriers to entry, commercial exploitation of users… DG CNECT has also launched a consultation on the Next Generation Internet, the result The CAPS projects (Collective Awareness is available online, and is working on a Platforms for Sustainability and Social Digital Social Innovation Manifesto to set Innovation) is one of the FP7 research priorities and ensure the positive impact of projects funded by the EU Commission, digital social innovation initiatives in developing technical solutions to promote Europe. open democracy, collaborative consumption or Internet Science. The core It is clear that decentralized technologies values associated with these digital social carry much potential, but in order to fully innovation initiatives are: participation of harness them, they need to reach scale. But
Workshop on Digital Move – Families on the Move Conference 6 how can this happen when most of our data Certain provisions in the GDPR carry are in the hands of a handful of companies, interesting possibilities: for instance, in the most notably the GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Article 29 Working Party document on data Facebook, Apple and Microsoft)? This portability, it is stated that companies situation has been called the “lock in” effect, should put in place an automated export and european policy makers, in an attempt process of data via an API for any new data to solve this issue, have adopted the GDPR generated by the user since they last (General Data Protection Regulation) which requested for their data portability in order includes a provision on data portability and to avoid having to export all the data all will apply fully from the 25th of May 2018. over again. This could mean, from a technical perspective, that users could Gloria González Fuster from the Vrije consult their data from one service via Universiteit Brussel discussed the possible another service, for instance, consulting implications of the right to data portability, your Facebook posts via Diaspora, in real and whether it might help Internet users to time. Of course, since this goes against the move their data from one online service to interests of online service providers, this another. possibility will likely never be realized.
The right to data portability has emerged as With regards to decentralized technologies, a willingness to emulate similar “lock in” these pose a serious challenge to data effects in other areas like the telecoms, portability. If they are truly decentralized banking sector or energy sector, to have the and there is no “authority” to turn to, then right to switch providers in an easy way (for the possibility to get a copy of your data instance, being able to keep your mobile has to be hard coded in the decentralized phone number). technology at conception or it will not be possible. By giving users the right to get a copy of their data, it was deemed that users would Also, although unrelated to the “lock in” be able to take that data to another online effect, data portability only concerns data service provider. However, there are many provided by the data subject (the user). It caveats. First, it is unclear whether the does not cover “infered data”, that is, data “copy” users receive will be easy to upload which is generated by combining two or to another service. Even though there is a more pieces of data from the user. For provision specifying that the data has to be instance, a credit score which is derived in a “machine readable format”, it is still from data collected from the user is not unclear in which concrete format this data covered under data portability. This is will be and how easy it will be to import. problematic since such data is very valuable Second, getting a copy of the data is only for companies yet users cannot have access one part of the issue of the “lock in” effect. to it. Even if users manage to transfer a copy of their data to another service, they may still In the end, there is no way to know exactly find that none of their contacts are on the how the right to data portability will affect new service they are using, which defies the users, whether it will solve the “lock in” purpose of switching services. effect or not, until an individual makes use of this right. A similar process was done by
7 Workshop on Digital Move – Families on the Move Conference Max Schrems in his legal battles against services layer as mentioned above, and Facebook. Given the caveats listed above, it strengthen the regulation which restricts may take a new law to solve the “lock in” the purposes of data processing (for effect. Among the ideas put forward: instance, limiting the way data can be agreeing on a standard/interoperable way processed for advertising, political of organizing the data (for instance, in marketing, creditworthiness or health risk standard database formats like SQL or assessments). JSON), separating the data layer from the
Conclusion
Decentralized technologies are here to stay At the same time, they raise a number of and take multiple forms already, ranging ethical and moral questions which will need from blockchain technology for virtual to be resolved in the near future by policy currencies or smart contracts, participatory makers such as the issue of liability, how to tools for strengthening democracy, tackle criminal content or how to deal with messaging services, social networks, cloud harassment. Engaging the dialogue service and data hosting. between the promoters and developers of such technologies and civil society is of Whether or not such solutions will go utmost importance in order to work mainstream or not is anyone’s guess, but in together to promote a better Internet, not an increasingly cash-strapped society with just from a technical perspective, but also growing concerns about privacy, security from an ethical and moral one. The Internet and censorship, these decentralized is the embodiement of a common good, technologies have a definite competitive and it needs to be managed as such, in the edge. spirit of the general interest for the benefit of all.
More information, contact: Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer, Martin Schmalzried : [email protected]
COFACE Families Europe - Rue de Londres 17, 1050 Brussels Tel: +322 511 41 79 Email: [email protected] Website: www.coface-eu.org Subscribe to our monthly newsletter http://tinyurl.com/cofacenws
With the support from the European Union Programme for Employment and Social Innovation "EaSI" (2014-2020). The information contained in this document does not necessarily reflect the official position of the European Commission.
8 Workshop on Digital Move – Families on the Move Conference