Big data in the balance
Channel: Science & Development Network
Date: 2018-11-23

This past summer, the EU launched an initiative to track migration in real time using big data ‒ the masses of machine-readable data each one of us leaves behind every time we use an electronic device. 

“The language around this is that it will help refugees,” says Linnet Taylor, a professor and researcher working on data justice. Yet, there’s also a threat.

“Being able to distinguish whether people are Ghanaian, Pakistani or Syrian, for instance, is likely to work against Ghanaians and Pakistanis who may have a perfectly valid claim to asylum, but will be shut out in a world of big data,” says Taylor, hinting at the continent’s migration crisis unfolding in recent years. 

The refugee crisis is now one of the biggest worries in rights-based discussions about big data, according to Alexa Koenig, executive director of the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in the United States. 

Koenig, who is part of the Bellagio Science for Development residency taking place throughout November, says the concern is about the potential of such data to endanger or violate privacy. “There’s a lot of thinking going on, looking into how we make sure that the big data that is being collected around vulnerable groups like refugees are being used to help them, as opposed to potentially being used against them.”