Page 218 - Proceedings of the 2017 ITU Kaleidoscope

Session 1: Towards a universal, shared and integrated data ecosystem for the benefit of all
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S1.1 Invited paper: Legal challenges for data-driven society
Liu Duo (President, China Academy of Information and Communication Technology (CAICT))

A legal system should bring to society expectations of stability, and should balance rights and
obligations. But the emergence of revolutionary new technologies can change and even break the
current order and balance. Big data applied to the everyday life of people is such a technology;
it is deemed to create a brand new social paradigm bringing about entirely different perspectives
in people’s observations of the world. This poses a challenge to the existing legal system, such
as how to balance the utilization of big data and the security of data resources, and the
exploitation of the data available and the protection of personal privacy. Other challenges
concern how to determine the ownership of data, and how to determine the rights and obligations
in exchange of data.

This paper mainly discusses the changes that big data is bringing to society and the legal
challenges that the data-driven society will be confronted with. It puts forward suggestions
regarding the development and security of big data industry, protection of personal privacy
through the establishment of commercial rules for big data and through international coordination
mediated by international organizations.

S1.2 Open data & digital identity: Lessons for Aadhaar
Vinod Kotwal (Ministry of Communications and IT, India); Smriti Parsheera (National Institute
of Public Finance and Policy, India); Amba Kak (Mozilla Foundation, India)

Aadhaar, the largest biometric identification system in the world, has been lauded for its promise
to bring efficiencies to government service delivery, and the stimulus to private sector
innovation. However, its claims have been contested, and criticised for excesses in terms of
potential threats to privacy on account of the vulnerabilities of biometric data, mandatory linkage
with numerous schemes and the possibility of mass surveillance through linked databases. Even
as the debate continues, every day, large volumes of data are being generated through the use of
Aadhaar-enabled authentication and eKYC systems, both by government as well as private
entities. There has been relatively less exploration of the resulting 'open data' potential of
Aadhaar and the manner in which it can contribute to research, policymaking as well as
strengthening accountability of the Aadhaar authority (UIDAI) itself. The challenge is to find
ways to nudge UIDAI and all users of Aadhaar towards greater sharing of data, in privacy-
protecting ways that do not create risks for Aadhaar-number holders. At this stage, we lean
towards aggregate statistics as a means to open data while following the strictest standards of
privacy.

1 Papers marked with an “*” were nominated for the three best paper awards.

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