Webinar: Making sense of a COVID-19 world: applying collective intelligence to big data (3rd of June)

[alberto]

OK, let’s see:

@alberto

Result 1: there is cause to worry, but also leverage for defense

There are several good reasons to be on our guard.

• Policy makers tend to overestimate the effectiveness of technology-based surveillance vis-a-vis the pandemic. People spoke of pervasive solutionism (in the sense of Evgeny Mozorov – “a little magic dust can fix any problem”).
• Digital surveillance companies are treating COVID-19 as a business opportunity. Some of these have dubious track records on the respect of human rights online. In the words of one participant:

In the last week, it’s been reported that around a dozen governments are using Palantir software and that the company is in talks with several more. They include agencies in Austria, Canada, Greece and Spain, the US, and the UK.

• The public is scared, so willing to accept almost anything.

Look for “solutionist” language (solution, effective, efficient, real-time, scalable etc.). See if it trends (but do we have a counterfactual?); see if it co-occurs with epidemics language (COVID, Coronavirus, pandemic) and tech solutions thereto (contact tracing app), especially linked to surveillance companies (Palantir, others?). See if the sentiment is positive. If none of these occur, the hypothesis is not supported.

@alberto

Result 2. Contact tracing apps are ineffective against COVID-19, but may help in the next pandemic

[…] Among failure modes, people cited:

• Data governance issues: possible breaches, difficulty to anonymize the data, and so on. More on this below.
• Lock-in effects: for these app to work, they need 50-60% of the population to take them on. It’s a “winner-take-it-all” service. There is potential for companies to lock authorities into long term contracts, invoke all kinds of confidentiality to protect their business models, and so on. This situation could prevent better solutions from emerging.
• Loss of confidence: if the authorities roll out an app, and it does not deliver, the public may lose confidence in any app. This could happen as new cases rise again after lockdown is loosened, as is happening currently across Asia. This might burn an opportunity to help contain the next pandemic at an early stage.

Repeat the game: identify a batch of words related to anonymity (anonymize, breach, locational) and another linked to the possible issues identified by the Surveillance Pandemic focus group (takeup, adoption, lock-in, credibility, confidence), then look at occurrence, co-occurrence and sentiment.

You get the idea. We can do the same with results 3 on immunity passports and 4 on locational data.