WPF participates in White House Roundtable on Data Brokers

The World Privacy Forum was honored to participate in a White House Roundtable on the topic of Data Brokers, a topic WPF has spent decades researching and working on. In its readout of the roundtable, the White House noted that “Participants underscored how the data broker economy enables discriminatory practices in credit underwriting, insurance, housing, employment, and advertising, continuing patterns of exclusion that disproportionately harm underserved and vulnerable groups.”

Executive Director Pam Dixon spoke at the roundtable, noting in her comments the modern data broker issues related to profiling using encrypted data, utilizing identity resolution techniques to re-identify consumers from large data sets, and the widespread use of purchase histories in data brokering. Her comments reflected new research included in WPF’s regulatory filing with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regarding data brokers.

Related Documents:

White House Roundtable on Data Brokers: Statement
WPF Comments on the CFPB Data Broker Request for Information (16 pages)
The Scoring of America (WPF Report)
The Federal Government and Data Brokers (WPF Report)
Top Ten Opt Out List (WPF Consumer Tips )

Posted August 28, 2023 in AI, Complex Data Ecosystems, Data Brokers, Data Ecosystems, White House

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

About this Data Visualization: This interactive map displays the presence...
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.

WPF participates in White House Roundtable on Data Brokers

Related Documents:

White House Roundtable on Data Brokers: Statement

WPF Comments on the CFPB Data Broker Request for Information (16 pages)

The Scoring of America (WPF Report)

The Federal Government and Data Brokers (WPF Report)