Tag Archives: data brokers

What’s new in research: full-access papers on machine learning with personal data, the ethics of Big Data as a public good

Today pdpecho inaugurates a weekly post curating research articles/papers/studies or dissertations in the field of data protection and privacy, that are available under an open access regime and that were recently published.

This week there are three recommended pieces for your weekend read. The first article, published by researchers from Queen Mary University of London and Cambridge University, provides an analysis of the impact of using machine learning to conduct profiling of individuals in the context of the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

The second article is the view of a researcher specialised in International Development, from the University of Amsterdam, on the new trend in humanitarian work to consider data as a public good, regardless of whether it is personal or not.

The last paper is a draft authored by a law student at Yale (published on SSRN), which explores an interesting phenomenon: how data brokers have begun to sell data products to individual consumers interested in tracking the activities of love interests, professional contacts, and other people of interest. The paper underlines that the US privacy law system lacks protection for individuals whose data are sold in this scenario and proposes a solution.

1) Machine Learning with Personal Data (by Dimitra Kamarinou, Christopher Millard, Jatinder Singh)

“This paper provides an analysis of the impact of using machine learning to conduct profiling of individuals in the context of the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

We look at what profiling means and at the right that data subjects have not to be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produce legal effects concerning them or significantly affect them. We also look at data subjects’ right to be informed about the existence of automated decision-making, including profiling, and their right to receive meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences of such processing.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of relevant data protection rights and obligations to machine learning, including implications for the development and deployment of machine learning systems and the ways in which personal data are collected and used. In particular, we consider what compliance with the first data protection principle of lawful, fair, and transparent processing means in the context of using machine learning for profiling purposes. We ask whether automated processing utilising machine learning, including for profiling purposes, might in fact offer benefits and not merely present challenges in relation to fair and lawful processing.”

The paper was published as “Queen Mary School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 247/2016″.

“International development and humanitarian organizations are increasingly calling for digital data to be treated as a public good because of its value in supplementing scarce national statistics and informing interventions, including in emergencies. In response to this claim, a ‘responsible data’ movement has evolved to discuss guidelines and frameworks that will establish ethical principles for data sharing. However, this movement is not gaining traction with those who hold the highest-value data, particularly mobile network operators who are proving reluctant to make data collected in low- and middle-income countries accessible through intermediaries.

This paper evaluates how the argument for ‘data as a public good’ fits with the corporate reality of big data, exploring existing models for data sharing. I draw on the idea of corporate data as an ecosystem involving often conflicting rights, duties and claims, in comparison to the utilitarian claim that data’s humanitarian value makes it imperative to share them. I assess the power dynamics implied by the idea of data as a public good, and how differing incentives lead actors to adopt particular ethical positions with regard to the use of data.”

This article is part of the themed issue ‘The ethical impact of data science’ in “Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society A”.

3) What Happens When an Acquaintance Buys Your Data?: A New Privacy Harm in the Age of Data Brokers (by Theodore Rostow)

Privacy scholarship to date has failed to consider a new development in the commercial privacy landscape. Data brokers have begun to sell data products to individual consumers interested in tracking the activities of love interests, professional contacts, and other people of interest. This practice creates an avenue for a new type of privacy harm — “insider control” — which privacy scholarship has yet to recognize.

U.S. privacy laws fail to protect consumers from the possibility of insider control. Apart from two noteworthy frameworks that might offer paths forward, none of the viable reforms offered by privacy scholars would meaningfully limit consumers’ vulnerability. This Note proposes changes to existing privacy doctrines in order to reduce consumers’ exposure to this new harm.”

This paper was published as a draft on SSRN. According to SSRN, the final version will be published in the 34th volume of the Yale Journal on Regulation.

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FTC gets serious about Data Brokers

*** FTC to study data broker industry’s collection and use of consumer data

Commission Issues Nine Orders for Information to Analyze Industry’s Privacy Practices

The Federal Trade Commission issued orders requiring nine data brokerage companies to provide the agency with information about how they collect and use data about consumers.  The agency will use the information to study privacy practices in the data broker industry.

Data brokers are companies that collect personal information about consumers from a variety of public and non-public sources and resell the information to other companies.  In many ways, these data flows benefit consumers and the economy; for example, having this information about consumers enables companies to prevent fraud.  Data brokers also provide data to enable their customers to better market their products and services.

The nine data brokers receiving orders from the FTC are:  1) Acxiom, 2) Corelogic, 3) Datalogix, 4) eBureau, 5) ID Analytics, 6) Intelius, 7) Peekyou, 8) Rapleaf, and 9) Recorded Future.  The FTC is seeking details about:

  • the nature and sources of the consumer information the data brokers collect;
  • how they use, maintain, and disseminate the information; and
  • the extent to which the data brokers allow consumers to access and correct their information or to opt out of having their personal information sold.

Read the whole story HERE.

US Data Sellers, under investigation

New York Times informs today that eight members of Congress have opened a sweeping investigation into data brokers — companies that collect, collate, analyze and sell billions of details annually about consumers’ offline, online and mobile activities for marketing and other purposes.

Several congressmen sent letters to big data brokers.

In the letters, the legislators requested extensive information about how the companies amass, refine, sell and share consumer data.

Data brokers often collect details about people’s financial, retail and recreational activities to help clients like airlines, automakers, banks, credit card issuers and retailers retain their best customers and woo new ones.

The letter’s recipients included marketing services firms like Acxiom and Epsilon; consumer reporting agencies like Experian and Equifax, which have separate credit reporting and consumer analytics divisions; Fair Isaac, now known as FICO, the credit scoring services company; and Intelius, a company that offers reverse phone look-up and background check services. The letter gave the companies three weeks to respond.

The letter asked each company to provide a list of all of its sources of data; a list of the specific kinds of consumer information, including ethnic, race or religious data, it collects; descriptions of the data collection methods used, like tracking of social network or mobile phone activity; explanations about each product and service the company has marketed to third parties since January 2009, and the type of data used in such products and services; details about whether any of the products or services are federally regulated; explanations about the security measures used to protect consumer data; as well as descriptions of the opt-out, data access, correction and deletion options the company offers consumers.

Read the whole story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/technology/congress-opens-inquiry-into-data-brokers.html?_r=1