“data activism

We live in a time of data abundance, one in which data is not merely a commodity or a tool for surveillance, but also a metaphor of power. With the diffusion of ‘big data’, citizens increasingly engage in new social practices rooted in technology and data, which we term data activism. With data activism we indicate the broad range of socio-technical practices that take a critical approach to massive data collection. It emerges out of existing activism sub-cultures, such as the hacker and the open-source movements, but overcomes their elitist character to involve also ordinary users. It concerns both individuals and groups, and operates at different territorial levels, from local to transnational. It takes two forms. First, citizens increasingly resist by means of technical fixes the threats to civil and human rights that derive from corporate privacy intrusion and government surveillance (re-active data activism). Second, people take advantage of the possibilities for civic engagement, advocacy, and campaigning that big data offer (pro-active data activism). ‘Re-active’ and ‘pro-active’ identify two facets of the same phenomenon: both take information as a constitutive force in society capable to shape social reality [1], and are enabled (and constrained) by software. By increasingly involving average users, they are a signal of a change in perspective and attitude towards massive data collection emerging within the civil society realm.

[1] Braman, Sandra (2006). Change of State. Information, Policy and Power. MIT Press”

Funder: European Research Council

Website: https://data-activism.net/

Host institution (s): University of Amsterdam

“This working group addresses the governance, regulatory and technical standards aspects of future Internet design across all layers of the protocol stack, and on both technical and social/humanities aspects. In particular, it will shed light on the regulatory and governance mechanisms behind the development of Internet standards, and will allow lessons to be drawn from social scientific analysis to ensure the appropriateness of the standards as the Internet becomes more deeply embedded into the social fabric. The ultimate objective of this working group is therefore to coordinate existing activities, disseminate and collaborate in developing the research methodologies in new methods of regulation – including stakeholder dialogues and choices that affect the present and future Internets, considering the concerns (such as participation, democratic values, network growth and complexity, interoperability, security, privacy) from various stakeholders and design communities. Its outcomes include strong collaboration with SEA2 (Standardisation and Legislation Activities) on ICT standard-setting institutions, and outreach to social science researchers via long-established connections to the European (EuroCPR), United States (TPRC), and international (GIGANET, IAMCR, International Telecommunications Society) academic communities. The group’s partners draw on socio-legal studies (UESSEX, UiO), economics and game theory (WARW), and inter-disciplinary information studies drawing on socio-economic and political analysis (NEXA, IBBT, UoS, IMDEA, UPMC, UNIBO, Institute of Informatics and Telematics of CNR, MLS, LJU).”

Funder: EU-FP7

Website: http://www.internet-science.eu/groups/governance-regulation-and-standards

Host institution (s): University of Sussex, University of Ljubljana

“Since whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s revelations of 2013 we arguably live in a qualitatively and materially different techno-cultural period. Snowden revealed the surveillance activities of US and UK government signals intelligence agencies, catching unaware academic computer scientists, information specialists and privacy experts. Meanwhile, social media have normalized the practice of people watching each other by mediated means. Given this novel techno-cultural condition of increased, normalized and forced transparency, what are the academic responses?”

Funder: ESRC

Website: http://data-psst.bangor.ac.uk/index.php.en

Host institution (s): Bangor University

“Our technologies watch us. This ‘datification’ of our actions is employed by governments to monitor activities, and corporations to target and manipulate through ‘smart’ advertising.

Working in opposition to such technologies’ manufacture of the individual as ‘target’ or ‘consumer’, ‘Veillance’ is a web application artwork bringing to visibility the invisible territories of data surveillance, reformulating these as a moving typographic map of individual and collective audience experience. Referencing ‘cut up’ writing techniques and concrete poetry, the system (using techniques similarly employed by social networks and search engines) continually transforms audience information, which is gathered ethically. The result is a movement-filled structure made from intersecting real-time pathways of audio-visual narrative, with rhizomic threads being woven cartographically through modes of shared experience.

This moving ‘data-scape’ may be viewed from micro- and macroscopic perspectives. From a micro position, snapshots of the structure perform as individual, organic artworks in the sense that they may be manipulated, saved and shared, to generate further layers of interconnection and becoming.”

Funder: Arts Council of Wales

Website: http://www.fact.co.uk/projects/ronan-devlin-veillance-prototype.aspx

Host institution (s): Bangor University

“If the recent controversies of U.S governmental surveillance and implicated technology companies demonstrated anything, it is the need for proportionate, just and effective cyber security in digital governance that is committed to the common good.

‘The Common Good: Ethics and Rights in Cyber Security’ (ERCS) project seeks to understand where the balance lies between security and ethics in digital governance. In order to achieve this, the project utilises the concept of the common good, and assesses whether or not it will prosper under digital governance and in the face of cyber security. The conception of the common good is a challenge to the claim that all goods are private or individual goods, and that all collective goods are reducible to an aggregate of private goods. A central them of a common good approach is, therefore, that it is more than the sum of its parts and that to contribute to the common good is at the same time to develop and enhance individual capacities and goods, rather than to detract from or weaken them. With that principle in mind, commitment to developing a common good would typically requires promotion of human dignity, peace, social development, participation and solidarity.”

Funder: ESRC

Website: http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/project/30E6CEAC-520F-49ED-91C5-91E34E93465C

Host institution (s): University of Hull

“This project analyses the global public discourse initiated by the so called NSA-Snowden leaks (unfolding since June 2013). By looking at how journalists and other public stakeholders (states, corporations, politicians, civic activists) in different parts of the world reacted to the case, the project will map how this debate redefines key concepts of democratic governance and legitimation such as privacy, citizenship, trust, free speech and trust in the rapidly changing digital environment.”

Funder: Helsingin Sanomat Foundation

Website: http://nordicom.statsbiblioteket.dk/ncom/en/projects/the-nsa-files-surveillance-leaks-and-the-new-landscape-of-legitimacy(8a2b1eb6-171a-43b6-99ad-70f6d25de114).html

Host institution (s): University of Tampere

“The objective of the PANORAMIX project is the development of a multipurpose infrastructure for privacy-preserving communications based on “”mix-networks”” (mix-nets) and its integration into high-value applications that can be exploited by European businesses. Mix-nets protect not only the content of communications from third parties, but also obscure the exact identity of the senders or receivers of messages, through the use of cryptographic relays. Mix-nets are absolutely necessary for implementing strong privacy-preserving systems and protocols. This project directly aims to realize, integrate and demonstrate the use of a European infrastructure for mix-nets in the context of three diverse high-value applications that have clear, measurable, realistic, and achievable objectives. Our objectives are as follows. (Objective 1): Building a Mix-Net Infrastructure for Europe, by creating a European mix-network open-source codebase and infrastructure, (Objective 2): apply our infrastructure to private electronic voting protocols, where anonymity is necessary to guarantee ballot secrecy, and verifiability is needed for holding fair, transparent and trustworthy elections; (Objective 3): apply our infrastructure to privacy-aware cloud data-handling, in the context of privacy-friendly surveying, statistics and big data gathering protocols, where protecting the identity of the surveyed users is necessary to elicit truthful answers and incentivize participation; (Objective 4): apply our infrastructure to privacy-preserving messaging, where two or more users may communicate privately without third parties being able to track what is said or who-is-talking-to-whom. PANORAMIX facilitates a genuine collaboration between academia, civil society and industry bringing together a team of researchers from academia with a proven track record on privacy technologies and industry in domains where privacy technologies can have a very high impact.”

Funder: Horizon 2020

Website: http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/194872_en.html

Host institution (s): Ethniko Kai Kapodistriako Panepistimio Athinon (Greece), University College London, Tartu Ulikool (Estonia), KU Leuven, Greek Research & Technology Network, SAP SE, Greenhost (Netherlands), Viking Co (Belgium)

“The HEAT project will develop advanced cryptographic technologies to process sensitive information in ecrypted form, without needing to compromise on the privacy and security of the citizens and organizations that provide the input data.

The core technology is based on homomorphic cryptography, which allows to perform computations on encrypted information without decrypting it. The main goal of HEAT is to produce a step change in the efficiency and applicability of this technology.”

Funder: Horizon 2020

Website: https://heat-project.eu/index.html

Host institution (s):  KU Leuven, University of Bristol, University of Luxemburg, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, CrypoExperts (France), Semiconductors (Belgium), Thales UK

“ECRYPT-NET is a research network of six universities and two companies, as well as 7 associated companies, that intends to develop advanced cryptographic techniques for the Internet of Things and the Cloud and to create efficient and secure implementations of those techniques on a broad range of platforms.”

Funder: Horizon 2020

Website: http://www.ecrypt.eu.org/net/

“ECRYPT-CSA is a Coordination & Support Action sponsored by the European Union’s H2020 programme. The project consists of four academic and one industrial partner.

The goal of this CSA is to strengthen European excellence in the area of cryptology and to build on the Network of Excellence ECRYPT and ECRYPT II to achieve a durable integration and structuring of the European cryptography community, involving academia, industry, law enforcement and defence agencies.”

Funder: Horizon 2020

Website: http://www.ecrypt.eu.org/csa/