From Shadow Profiles to Contact Tracing: Qualitative Research into Consent and Privacy

For many privacy scholars, consent is on life support, if not dead. In July 2020, we held six focus groups in Australia to test this claim by gauging attitudes to consent and privacy, with a spotlight on smartphones. These focus groups included discussion of four case studies: ‘shadow profiles’, eavesdropping by companies on smartphone users, non-consensual government surveillance of its citizens and contact tracing apps developed to combat COVID-19. Our participants expressed concerns about these practices and said they valued individual consent and saw it as a key element of privacy protection. However, they saw the limits of individual consent, saying that the law and the design of digital services also have key roles to play. Building on these findings, we argue for a blend of good law, good design and an appreciation that individual consent is still valued and must be fixed rather than discarded - ideally in ways that are also collective. In other words, consent is dead; long live consent.</jats:p

The Impact of Digital Platforms on News and Journalistic Content

The report was commissioned by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission as part of its Digital Platforms Inquiry. The inquiry has been described as a world-leading investigation into the effects of digital search engines, social media platforms and other digital content aggregation platforms on competition in media and advertising services markets. To assist the ACCC, the CMT was commissioned to research aspects concerning news and journalistic content. This included the function of journalism, effects of technology and how to consider quality and choice

More top-down than peer-to-peer: talking to Australians about their ideal news source

In Australia as in the United States, levels of trust in news media remain alarmingly low. In four qualitative workshops held in 2018 in Sydney and Tamworth, 34 participants discussed the ways they access news, their relationship with news media, and how trust might be rebuilt. We also tested the hypothesis that Australians want news sources that are more peer-to-peer and ‘like a friend’. Emphatically, participants said they don’t want news sources to be like a friend. Instead, they want accuracy, objectivity and service of the public interest. One interpretation is that our participants clearly distinguish between news sources (the ABC, News Corp, etc.) and digital platforms (Facebook, Google, etc.). Furthermore, it would appear they expect news sources and digital platforms to play different roles and follow different standards: the former should adhere to traditional journalistic values; whereas no clear picture emerged of the role and standards that participants think should apply to the latter

Net Privacy How we can be free in an age of surveillance

The priority for all of us at the moment is dealing with coronavirus. That’s our great challenge. As it happens, privacy is a big part of that. The key question is: how do we balance public health and personal privacy? That is, how should the government and health authorities be able to access personal data and health data, while still respecting individual privacy, which is an integral component of our freedom? For instance, should the government be able to track people’s location data to stop COVID-19’s spread? This isn’t the only way privacy has become highly relevant. Now that most of us are spending so much time at home, we’re increasingly living online. We’re working, socialising, shopping, entertaining ourselves through our smartphones, laptops and other connected devices. Just what data are Amazon’s Alexa, Facebook Live, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other digital platforms collecting? How are these platforms using it? Who are they sharing it with? And who else can access it? As we respond to this pandemic, this is the perfect time to address these questions. The first priority is to deal with the virus. As we do so, we need to ensure that we enact laws and other protections that get the balance right, during the pandemic, but also when life returns to normal. The aim of Net Privacy is to lay out a plan that can strike that balance. The books subtitle is, 'How we can be free in an age of surveillance'. It obviously refers to freedom from unwarranted intrusions on our privacy. But we also want to be free from pandemics. The book was written before COVID-19. Still, it recognises that privacy doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but must be weighed up against other rights and interests. One step in this direction, it proposes, is for Australia to adopt legal provisions in line with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation. Beyond this, the law ought to enact a series of privacy principles that get the balance right, for now, and for later. The requisite balancing act is the focus of the following extract, where I build on Kant’s ethics and his idea of cosmopolitanism to argue for a globally-aligned approach to protecting privacy

2020

The teachscreenshowed 13:13. The class after lunch was always the hardest. Win was tired, the children were lethargic, there was still so much to share