Privacy Talk with Victoria Lemieux, Associate Professor at British Columbia University“What Does Need Future Democratic Data Society?״
By: Blockchain Project Research Study
Tags: Privacy, Covid 19, Blockchain, Digital, Data

This interview is talking about blockchain and public transparency at new trend of privacy-driven data economy.

Kohei is having great time discussing with international data protection and blockchain expert Victoria Lemieux.

This interview outline:

What is the future information management?

What is the better analysis for democratic society?

Message to the Listeners

Kohei: Good sounds, and very great and also the privacy concerns is still one of the topics, like to take out enough people to use in our apps because the in Japan is also we have a launch the apps almost six millions people to download it, but the problem is that we need to go active, to be a connected each other to take an assign the signals to send it to the health authority, which is the requirements need to take in enough foreign cities to privacy the utilities to achieve the personal goals so this is a very important.

And the next question is about in the under the COVID-19 to any voluntary or civic activity in Canada, to work for like any engineer team has been associated to walk for the public services the governments that have brought any technology. Is there any good case there in Canada in this situation?

Vicki: Now I I’m aware of a project. There have been projects and at McGill and projects that UofT（University of Toronto) I think.

I think the one at UofT（University of Toronto）was even focusing on a self-sovereign approach. At The University of British Columbia, where I’m based, which is what I know best we had, we have an annual what we call Blockathon for Social Good. So every year we decide, you know, about well how can we contribute to the public good, to the development of blockchain technology. And so this year of course it was natural to focus on COVID-19.

And so, we had a design and hackathon for blockchain technology. And so we focused on Covid-19 use cases so students came up with designs for

supply chain management of PPE, personal protective equipment, and some did payments for people who have lost their jobs or have not been able to find work, you know, because of COVID-19 because they’ve had to stay home from their jobs.

A lot of people have been affected so we have this payment so students came up with a way to issue those payments effectively. And I don’t think anybody did contact tracing but they did do sort of like back to work certificates as well, so the students came up with really great designs. It’s really been up to the students to take those designs forward into products like the COVID Credential Initiative.

or other you know projects and I’m not sure that the students have really decided that they’re going to do that. I think they just maybe decided that they would not necessarily feel like they would want to take it forward.

But I’m sure that if they might see an initiative that they wanted to join and they could contribute their ideas to, they know about CCI and they’ve been encouraged to participate, so I have to leave it up to the students you know because they’re self sovereign so they can decide what they want to do and we are here as faculty to support them if they want to take it further.

There are universities doing lots of different things around this and it’s, you know, my students, particularly are working on the project that we’ve built which is the personal health wallet which could be used.

It could be used for some of the COVID-19 related use cases we haven’t necessarily designed it with that in mind, but it could be used for that and we may involve ourselves in some of these projects that are going on to support those efforts.

We’ll wait and see what happens there, as I said, there’s nothing within the province of British Columbia, there’s no app right now. So, you know, see what the government decides to do there, you know,

・What is the future information management?

Kohei: Sounds very good. Thank you. So let’s move on to the last questions, this part is, it’s a your own expertise. The future information management is a key part of like a governance Yes. So, I think they you know it’s in Toronto has been like suspended the project in the Google which is a very city project.

I think it’s very important to make data transparencies also accountabilities, It’s a kind of the responsible for the users who provides a data subject in the cases so what kind of the information transparency, and also to public service provisions, is a requirement from the opinion in general?

Vicki: Hmm, yeah so it’s an interesting paradox in a way that to have privacy we also need transparency. And this came out in the Covid-19 witness seminar we ran as well.

So, in order for people to be able to trust that their information that they might share through these apps is really, maintaining their privacy, they need transparency about how the apps actually work, where the data is going to be stored and for how long and how it’s going to be used and processed.

You know, all of the protections that will be around the data will need to know that and understand it because without that transparency, they’re not going to trust.

I’m going to trust that they can really share their data without, you know some maybe private information that could endanger them or embarrass them getting out or without the government maybe, creating some great record store that they would use to invade the privacy of their citizens or somehow you know maybe control what their citizens are able to say, or discuss in public.

And that’s always a concern in a democracy we want to maintain our freedoms, our freedom to speak and say, you know, talk about the issues that are important and hold our governments accountable.

But if they have information that they could threaten us with, you know, then that’s obviously would not allow us to have that freedom, civil liberties. So, transparency is necessary for all those reasons so people can trust the app and they’ll use it, and it’s effective, and also so that they know that the way that the data is being handled is still protects their civil liberties and, you know, they can still trust that their rights are protected.

We are very fortunate in Canada to live in a country where we do have our civil liberties we have the ability to speak freely and gather, you know, except for you know when it’s dangerous to do that because we have a lot of freedoms, but by the same token, I don’t think we take those freedoms for granted because you know it’s too easy to look around and see places where people did once have freedoms. And then those freedoms were lost very suddenly.

And so, you’re always aware that, you know, these are you know human rights but in some ways we’re very privileged to have them. And so we want to maintain that and protect them.

So I hope that answers your question there. I mean, in terms of my specific research that I did for the project. The other project that you were referring to is a project that I had looked at analyzing Twitter data.

This is before I got into blockchain technology and I was working on another technology called Visual Analytics. And that is really doing, you know, understanding data and analyzing data in a way that leverages the unique cognitive capabilities of our human visual system. Because we humans are engineered to be able to see visual patterns and data in an amazingly rapid way.

And so visual analytics leverages that cognitive intelligence and is a technology that’s designed to, you know, create a human- machine interface that allows for data analysis. So we harvested Twitter data relating to the 2014 World Cup, might remember that there were a lot of protests in the streets around the World Cup. Brazilian people were really upset about the amount of money that was being spent on the World Cup.

And so the question was really around trust in government, you know, what was it that was causing people to protest in the streets, was it really related to the World Cup, or were there deeper reasons why people were protesting and what were they protesting and who were they really protesting against: were they protesting against politicians, or they were protesting against corruption, or state government. So we created this project which we called “We Feel Fine.”

Working out how do Brazilian people really feel about their government and levels of trust in government. So we found some interesting things through that project. When we analyze the data we built a visual interface to analyze the data.

And we found some interesting things like at the time people were saying the protests were related to the World Cup and they had to do with, you know, transportation and so on. And the money that was being spentWe found that specific things that, you know, politicians like Dilma Rousseff at the time who was president had said that really upset the Brazilian people.

And it was related to fairness, it was more a question of fairness, and people saying, you know, I don’t mind you spending money on this World Cup or, I don’t mind you spending money on really anything you need to run the country, as long as that money is is as long as the benefits of that money are evenly distributed. So it was a question of equality. And we see this all around the world where people don’t, you know, people don’t mind if you know we have to spend money on for example public health and protection from COVID-19, but not if all the benefits of that go to a certain group of people.

It’s only benefiting a small group of people, but where the benefits are evenly spread and we all also suffer equally, you know, we all have to be shut down and it’s not just so where the problems are occurring is where we’ve realized that, you know, maybe some of the shutdown and the economic measures that have been, you know that the economic impact hasn’t been evenly felt like here in Canada.

It’s clear that a lot of the frontline workers, a lot of the people you know in essential services that for example were working in care homes for elderly people, who are new immigrants to the country tend to be, you know, in the lower income bracket.

They might be from ethnic minorities. And so, the economic impact has not affected everyone equally. So, anyway, this research in Brazil we used this analysis of Twitter data to uncover some very similar dynamics in why the protests were happening around the World Cup and I think that the takeaway here is that, you know, people around the world.

Know It shouldn’t really be surprising, you know, people will accept hardship, will accept that we have to make sacrifices, but it should be that it benefits everybody, you know, we don’t make sacrifices and it shouldn’t be just that you know oh you people over here you have to make all the sacrifices and suffer hardship, so that we people over here who are already privileged and in power can continue to enjoy our privilege and power.

That does not make for a happy healthy society and that’s where you see people starting to protest, and people rising up and saying, “Oh, that’s not acceptable; we’re not going to take it.” So making sure that society’s remain inclusive, have equality, that benefits benefit everybody in society, continues to be something that’s very, very important for stable healthy societies. So, that’s the moral of that story.

Kohei: Yeah, that’s very awesome, is it? It was very impressive with me just because the evidence base to like citizen voice is a very important to make a decision processes. When it comes to the, like, new technology like a social media, the social data is new kind of the factors, make it political processing.

So, in Canada is the how government is collecting the data, interacting with the citizens so people? Who worries about the political decisions the political philosophies, or any good activities to interact with the people is that they live in your country?

・What is the better analysis for democratic society?

Vicki: Yeah, well so in Canada, public consultation is part of the way that the government does gather this information about citizen voice like what the citizen wants to say. So, there was a new public consultation announced just recently around opening up society, getting back to normal. So the government is doing public consultations.

Because the project that I worked on was focused on Brazil, I’m not actually sure and I have moved away from analytics and into blockchain. I’m not actually sure if the government is using the advanced analytic techniques that we developed at the time (or they were advanced at the time, they’re more commonplace now).

I’m assuming so, but I don’t know I don’t have any insight into that, really, but I think that there is much to be gained by using those kinds of technologies and techniques, because you can see at scale. Oftentimes we have to go out and we have to do surveys, with people and people respond to the surveys and that’s great.

It’s one source of collecting that data but sometimes surveys will tell you what people are thinking at the time, or what choices they think they’ll make, but the day to day actions are maybe different and analyzing Twitter data gives you a different dimension, you know that it has its limitations for sure which we talk about in the paper that you’re referring to. But you get a different take on things so you get people’s day to day conversation and exchanges. The thing about Twitter is it tends to be the the exchanges tend to be kind of more antagonistic, we know that Twitter is often a place where people just take snipes at each other and so on.

And sentiment analysis which we use for the analysis, t’s come a long way since we used it, but it’s still not very good at picking up on humor. So, when you’re doing the analysis somebody might say something in a joking way.

And the sentiment analysis algorithm would probably interpret it as being serious. So, there’s still a lot of work to do. I have a colleague at the iSchool who actually does work on sentiment analysis and computational linguistics, has done amazing work to extend the capabilities of sentiment analysis.

So I think there’s a lot of room to use that technology,. The government has to be committed to talking to its citizens. Before they, can even start to use a technology, which thankfully the Canadian government is doing.

Kohei: That’s pretty amazing that you’re speaking and throughout this interview still a very impressive with me. So, now, lastly, I want to ask you about a new message to the panel listeners who wants to reach out the looking at details. So could you give me any message to them?

Message to the Listeners

Vicki: I’m always really cautious about, you know, I don’t want to be prescriptive like you should do this or you should do that so no messages about that. Just a message of, you know, as a democratic country like Canada.

Just a message of solidarity with, we are all you know, trying to respond to and figure out how to continue as healthy democratic societies in the face of this enormous health challenge that we face globally. And it affects all people everywhere, all different types of us in all different types of, you know, geopolitical states. And so just a message of solidarity through collaboration.

You know through the kind of collaboration that has been expressed in the the CCI initiative for example, you know, kind of collaboration you showed by participating and coming to talk to my witness webinar, you know, me coming to talk to you and share what I know.

Collectively, through all of the contributions that we can make and the knowledge that we share and the conversations that we have. I have hope that as humanity, we will be able to overcome this pandemic.

And, you know, be able to have a brighter future. But I think at the same time we could learn some important lessons from this, during this time:we know that we’ve seen how it’s affected our mental health.

And our own freedom to move, the environment, like, the sustainability effects have been good. You know the environment has a bit of a break from human pollution.

And we’ve seen in Canada where I live, I’ve seen more wildlife coming out I’ve seen more growth in plants and, and green, so I think we shouldn’t also forget, you know, some of the good things that have happened as a result of COVID-19 and some of the lessons about leading digital lives that we’ve learned.

The word crisis, you know, also conveys opportunity, as well as danger. So, though this has been a dangerous time, and a time of crisis,I hope we can look at it as a time of opportunity as well where we as humans can make choices for ourselves about what kind of future we want. And it’s based on reflections that we’ve done during this time.

Kohei: Thank you for your great message to the audiences, so which is a good time to collaborate with each other to find the best solutions to put forward thinking. So we are thank you for having us this time. Great appreciate that Vicki.

Vicki: Oh, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and, yeah, I look forward to staying in touch thanks Kohei.

Kohei: you, too.

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