Page 111 - ITU Journal - ICT Discoveries - Volume 1, No. 2, December 2018 - Second special issue on Data for Good

ITU JOURNAL: ICT Discoveries, Vol. 1(2), December 2018

Architectures such as personal data stores [41] concentrations and emerging power asymmetries
enable users to monitor and administer personal that many blockchain technologies witnessed in the
information and metadata, and thus offer ways to recent past. For example, a very small number of
implement dynamic consent mechanisms. In mining pools dominate the majority of the bitcoin
addition, trustee and delegation systems can act as network. More generally, even technologies
data agents or brokers, i.e. mediate between data intended as decentralized and disruptive can be
subjects and processors. Such agents would dominated by a small number of players.
effectively take on a representative or proxy role
and thus extend the reach of individual consent as The question of which technologies and designs
described above. The behavior of the data agent is increase or constrain data sovereignty deserves
based on predefined rules on how to handle and ongoing critical and multidisciplinary reflection. It
administer data, including storage duration, might turn out that existing approaches, if applied
deletion, exchanges, and anonymization. These wisely, already go a long way towards capturing and
rules are set by the individual herself or by other enforcing dynamic consent. Further research is
representative bodies such as consumer protection needed to compare longstanding and novel tools,
agencies. The data agent also supervises and the benefits they offer, and the trade-offs they
records exchanges of data, and facilitates rollbacks involve relative to different use cases.
if necessary [42]. The system requires auditing
procedures to monitor and ensure its proper In light of the foregoing, we suggest that a paradigm
functioning and accordance with the interests of the shift is necessary. Traditional approaches like
data subject it shall represent. Once a user-friendly consent forms and data-sharing agreements tend to
interface is in place, data agents promise to reduce be input-oriented: they set constraints at the
complexity and effort by serving as reliable and beginning of data gathering and processing. What
convenient instruments for individuals to handle seems called for in view of big data and its de- and
their data. Such systems avoid unreasonable re-contextualization that obscures future use is
technical burdens and cumbersome decision output-orientation [10]: making sure that the
making on each and every instance of a potential act freedom, claims, preferences, and values of data
of data sharing. sovereigns are respected when the downstream
effects of data-intensive ICT affect their lives.
Blockchain technology offers further innovative
avenues for controlling and channeling data flows. 7. OUTLOOK
Administration is decentralized, peer-to-peer, and
hard to manipulate due to cryptographic backward We have proposed the notion of data sovereignty as
links between blocks. Data added to the blockchain a normative guiding principle for ICT development
can encode metadata such as origin, quality, and the and frameworks. Responsible and ethically sound
extent of consent to processing [4,5], resulting in informational governance guards individual
immutable audit logs reflecting an individual’s privacy, but also goes beyond establishing
preferences. The technology could thus in principle informational friction. The concept of data
be used towards enhancing controllability and data sovereignty encompasses entitlements of the
sovereignty. For example, there are proposals to individual to connect and share information with
equip patients with cryptographic keys to their others. It thus demands not merely constrainable
health records in the blockchain, and thereby but controllable data flows. Once implemented, data
empower them to full control (e.g., through a sovereignty honors individual autonomous
smartphone app) over who can access what kind of decision making while being mindful of legitimate
data over which period of time [43]. business interests and incentives for responsible
innovation. We highlighted a range of measures in
Despite the justified enthusiasm for blockchains, law and governance more broadly conceived that
they also poses challenges. As Primavera De Filippi can advance this process: explorations of data
[44] explains, blockchain technology has its roots in ownership notions, aiming at data literacy in
emancipatory and even somewhat subversive education, encouraging transparency about data
movements that intended to use cryptographic processing activities, and introducing dynamic
technologies for the sake of individual freedom and consent models, as well as representative and proxy
data protection, particularly against governments. systems that channel data flows in accordance with
These liberating intentions contrast with market individual preferences.

© International Telecommunication Union, 2018 89