In Memoriam: Joseph Alhadeff

I note with sadness the passing of Joseph Alhadeff over the Memorial Day weekend. Joseph was a thoughtful and important person in the privacy world who has left behind a substantial body of work and a legacy of privacy thought of the utmost quality. Joseph was deeply knowledgeable about privacy and technology, and he was unafraid to push for what he thought was right, not just what was easy.

Joseph and I crossed paths frequently over the years. Most recently, I worked with Joseph on an OECD advisory committee on health data uses; we were working on language for a new OECD Recommendation. There was a difficult point of discussion in the room about how to use health data that was only subject to very narrow consent, which meant that it could not be used more broadly. Some experts said that we should simply accept less privacy and move on to using more data. Joseph strenuously argued for a different outcome; here, I quote from one of his follow-up emails regarding this point of discussion:

If we can get away from the either/or discussions and focus on how we do both, I think we could dramatically improve the Recommendation.

It is exactly this clear sightedness, the cutting to the root of the problem, that Joseph brought to privacy work. The crux of the problem in the discussion was indeed either/or thinking, thinking which too often subterfuges genuine progress in privacy. Joseph was interested in finding a new way forward in the digital ecosystem, a way that allowed privacy and advancing technologies to co-exist. For Joseph, privacy was not an obstacle, it was something to be protected and treasured, and the real work was to find a way to do both, as he said — to keep moving forward in our evolving digital ecosystem, yet keep moving forward equally with privacy. And that is where the real work is. Joseph knew this.

Joseph’s legacy of clear thinking and thoughtfulness has made its mark in the policy world, but his good legacy is not enough comfort in losing such a thoughtful person too early. I will miss talking with Joseph about privacy, and the loss of his fine input into privacy thought going forward is a substantial one.

-Pam Dixon

Posted May 30, 2017 in Privacy News

New Report: Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new WPF report, “Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools.” This report sets out a definition of AI governance tools, documents why and how these tools are critically important for trustworthy AI, and where these tools are around the world. The report also documents problems in some AI governance tools themselves, and suggests pathways to improve AI governance tools and create an evaluative environment to measure their effectiveness. AI systems should not be deployed without simultaneously evaluating the potential adverse impacts of such systems and mitigating their risks, and most of the world agrees about the need to take precautions against the threats posed. The specific tools and techniques that exist to evaluate and measure AI systems for their inclusiveness, fairness, explainability, privacy, safety and other trustworthiness issues — called in the report collectively AI governance tools – can improve such issues. While some AI governance tools provide reassurance to the public and to regulators, the tools too often lack meaningful oversight and quality assessments. Incomplete or ineffective AI governance tools can create a false sense of confidence, cause unintended problems, and generally undermine the promise of AI systems. The report contains rich background details, use cases, potential solutions to the problems discussed in the report, and a global index of AI Governance Tools.
National IDs Around the World — Interactive map

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Report: From the Filing Cabinet to the Cloud: Updating the Privacy Act of 1974

This comprehensive report and proposed bill text is focused on the Privacy Act of 1974, an important and early Federal privacy law that applies to the government sector and some contractors. The Privacy Act was written for the 1970s information era -- an era that was characterized by the use of mainframe computers and filing cabinets. Today's digital information era looks much different than the '70s: smart phones are smarter than the old mainframes, and documents are now routinely digitized and stored and perhaps even analyzed in the cloud, among many other changes. The report focuses on why the Privacy Act needs an update that will bring it into this century, and how that could look and work. This work was written by Robert Gellman, and informed by a two-year multi-stakeholder process.