A Human-centric Perspective on Digital Consenting: The Case of GAFAM

According to different legal frameworks such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an end-user's consent constitutes one of the well-known legal bases for personal data processing. However, research has indicated that the majority of end-users have difficulty in understanding what they are consenting to in the digital world. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that marginalized people are confronted with even more difficulties when dealing with their own digital privacy. In this research, we use an enactivist perspective from cognitive science to develop a basic human-centric framework for digital consenting. We argue that the action of consenting is a sociocognitive action and includes cognitive, collective, and contextual aspects. Based on the developed theoretical framework, we present our qualitative evaluation of the consent-obtaining mechanisms implemented and used by the five big tech companies, i.e. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft (GAFAM). The evaluation shows that these companies have failed in their efforts to empower end-users by considering the human-centric aspects of the action of consenting. We use this approach to argue that their consent-obtaining mechanisms violate principles of fairness, accountability and transparency. We then suggest that our approach may raise doubts about the lawfulness of the obtained consent—particularly considering the basic requirements of lawful consent within the legal framework of the GDPR

Privacy In The Smart Grid: An Information Flow Analysis

Project Final Report prepared for CIEE and California Energy Commissio

Big data for monitoring educational systems

This report considers “how advances in big data are likely to transform the context and methodology of monitoring educational systems within a long-term perspective (10-30 years) and impact the evidence based policy development in the sector”, big data are “large amounts of different types of data produced with high velocity from a high number of various types of sources.” Five independent experts were commissioned by Ecorys, responding to themes of: students' privacy, educational equity and efficiency, student tracking, assessment and skills. The experts were asked to consider the “macro perspective on governance on educational systems at all levels from primary, secondary education and tertiary – the latter covering all aspects of tertiary from further, to higher, and to VET”, prioritising primary and secondary levels of education

Application of Big Data to Support Evidence-Based Public Health Policy Decision-Making for Hearing

Ideally, public health policies are formulated from scientific data; however, policy-specific data are often unavailable. Big data can generate ecologically-valid, high-quality scientific evidence, and therefore has the potential to change how public health policies are formulated. Here, we discuss the use of big data for developing evidence-based hearing health policies, using data collected and analyzed with a research prototype of a data repository known as EVOTION (EVidence-based management of hearing impairments: public health pOlicy-making based on fusing big data analytics and simulaTION), to illustrate our points. Data in the repository consist of audiometric clinical data, prospective real-world data collected from hearing aids and an app, and responses to questionnaires collected for research purposes. To date, we have used the platform and a synthetic dataset to model the estimated risk of noise-induced hearing loss and have shown novel evidence of ways in which external factors influence hearing aid usage patterns. We contend that this research prototype data repository illustrates the value of using big data for policy-making by providing high-quality evidence that could be used to formulate and evaluate the impact of hearing health care policies

Localization to Enhance Security and Services in Wi-Fi Networks under Privacy Constraints

Developments of seamless mobile services are faced with two broad challenges, systems security and user privacy - access to wireless systems is highly insecure due to the lack of physical boundaries and, secondly, location based services (LBS) could be used to extract highly sensitive user information. In this paper, we describe our work on developing systems which exploit location information to enhance security and services under privacy constraints. We describe two complimentary methods which we have developed to track node location information within production University Campus Networks comprising of large numbers of users. The location data is used to enhance security and services. Specifically, we describe a method for creating geographic firewalls which allows us to restrict and enhance services to individual users within a specific containment area regardless of physical association. We also report our work on LBS development to provide visualization of spatio-temporal node distribution under privacy considerations

The Concept of Neighbourhood in Contemporary Residential Environments: An Investigation of Occupants' Perception

The dwelling occupant satisfaction is related to the efficiency of the combination of numerous factors stemming from the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the various components of the residential environment. Those components exist at a whole scale ranging from an interior space within the housing unit to the whole urban environment. This study aimed to explore the immediate social and physical environment around the dwelling unit, which is often referred to as “neighbourhood”. In addition to the physical space that the concept reminds, the term neighbourhood is also used to describe a socially distinguished area depending on residents’ perception. In the traditional sense, this physical space is outlined with virtual boundaries that are traced differently in the minds of each individual according to the life style and type of social interaction and the type of use of the physical environment. The perceptions of residents’ in relation with this neighbourhood area are also affected with both physical and social characteristics of the concerned environment. This paper aimed to investigate the situation of the neighbourhood concept in contemporary urban residential environments by making use of the data obtained from two distinct independent housing researches conducted in Turkey. The analysis and evaluation of the findings together with an overview of the literature reflecting the traditional and contemporary neighbourhood concepts in Turkish residential environments, reveals that changes are about to occur in the definition, creation and experiencing of the neighbourhood issue. The evaluation of the literature, manifestos and approaches of most housing institutions and policy builders in the contemporary world expose a rather increasing interest to the issue of neighbourhood as the concept constitutes an important component of residential satisfaction. The findings of this study indicate that the neighbourhood feeling in contemporary urban environments is now less dependent on the sharing of common close physical residential environment due to housing initiatives driven by liberal / random land use options, financial viability and profitability. The benefits expected of the use of the close physical environment is disregarded due to possibilities obtained with increasing mobility and transportation facilities. The remote activities and life styles of dwelling occupants become the basic factors that shape the social environment. The segregation of the close social environment from the close physical environment is a major source for residential environment dissatisfaction. A conclusion drawn from the findings is that the physical properties of the close built environment may act as sources of dissatisfaction if the residents’ perception of neighbourhood notion is disregarded during residential environment design. Hints to increase dwelling occupants’ satisfaction from the residential environment lies in redefining the neighbourhood concept through creating adequate, functioning, distinct, value added common spaces that ease admittance and social interaction. However, those spaces shall be a part of the urban tissue. The long-term effects of physical segregation, clustering of the residential environments, creating of sprawl type settlements shall be re-evaluated

Privacy CURE: Consent Comprehension Made Easy

Although the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) defines several potential legal bases for personal data processing, in many cases data controllers, even when they are located outside the European Union (EU), will need to obtain consent from EU citizens for the processing of their personal data. Unfortunately, existing approaches for obtaining consent, such as pages of text followed by an agreement/disagreement mechanism, are neither specific nor informed. In order to address this challenge, we introduce our Consent reqUest useR intErface (CURE) prototype, which is based on the GDPR requirements and the interpretation of those requirements by the Article 29 Working Party (i.e., the predecessor of the European Data Protection Board). The CURE prototype provides transparency regarding personal data processing, more control via a customization, and, based on the results of our usability evaluation, improves user comprehension with respect to what data subjects actually consent to. Although the CURE prototype is based on the GDPR requirements, it could potentially be used in other jurisdictions also