Beyond the coronavirus emergency, other major issues need attention. Whether we like it or not, the digital revolution is transforming our economy, our society, and our political life.
Our party contains many committed privacy activists, and a heartening number of data scientists, to inform our debate. One of the several LibDem data scientists I’ve recently met lent me Jamie Susskind’s weighty volume on Future Politics: living together in a world transformed by tech, published 18 months ago (thank you Samie Dorgham).
It’s a very ambitious book, ranging from Aristotle and J.S. Mill to Tim Berners Lee and Silicon Valley. Its central message is that ‘the threats to liberty are unprecedented’, but that active engagement by principled defenders of an open society can hold in check ‘the supercharged state’ and the private monopolists of the internet.
He details examples of the rapid spread of misinformation on social media, and of ‘the engineering of consent’ through detailed targeting of voters. Well-funded professionals – political technologists, as the Russians call them – can shape public perceptions. He explores the algorithmic injustice that flows from incomplete data (often leaving out marginal groups) and (often unconscious) bias.
The billionaires of the digital revolution are almost all white, male and American, displaying varying degrees of naivety or arrogance about the impact of their networks on political and social life. Women, ethnic minorities, black and Asian faces, are all under-recognised. When algorithms are refined through machine learning, repeatedly analysing accumulated data, social injustice accumulates as well.
Susskind does not directly examine the policy responses that will be needed from national governments and international bodies to limit the power of these new networks and regulate their activities. His appeal is to those already working in the digital world, to save us from over-powerful states and network controllers.
The future of politics will depend, in large part, on how the current generation of technologists approaches its work… Technologists must become philosophers, if we are to preserve our liberty, enhance democracy and keep the arc of history bent towards justice.
That’s a huge challenge to the data science community. It urges them to become ‘digital republicans’, active citizens prepared to fight for transparency and accountability of both state surveillance and private exploitation, and ‘to demand participation’ in scrutinising the operation of these new technologies – so that ‘we do not become subject to rules that we can’t understand.’
This is an idealistic vision of how to avoid the systemic injustices that a digitised world could lead to. It’s rooted in an optimistic understanding of the liberal philosophical tradition, that it is possible to build and maintain an educated and enlightened citizenry that will resist undue concentrations of power. Disillusioned liberals will fear, instead, that active citizenship remains a minority aspiration, with passive citizenship enough for the many who love the new technology and don’t think about the exploitation of their personal data.
Liberals have no choice to engage in this arena, and struggle (as I do) to understand. In the current emergency, conspiracy theories are spreading across global social media, with faltering efforts to counter them. Governments are using technology to trace their citizens’ movements, to limit the spread of the virus. Democratic politics has not yet got to grips with how to balance the advantages that mass data offers with the real risks to privacy and liberty they pose.
What should I say, as our party’s Lords Cabinet Office spokesman, when the government publishes its promised ‘Data Strategy’ at some point in the coming year? I’ll need the expert advice of our data scientists before I respond.
* William Wallace is LibDem peer, a former vice-chair of the Federal Policy Committee and convenor of the party's 1997 manifesto team.
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9 Comments
I am not a victim of “unconscious) bias” For instance I am aware that I did not expect the effect on Lib Dem MP in the south west of England in the 1915 general election which was caused by social media.
We are privileged today to receive a letter from the Prime Minister, delivered by the Post Office as part of what they call “unsolicited business direct mail”.
While Donald Trump says he is praying for Boris, it might be better to have Jimmy Carter, a Southern Baptist. When the Financial Times wanted to talk to him they attended a Sunday School in Georgia.
Most of the privacy legislation so far has been a way in which the state (government) and large corporatist bodies can control what we all get, aided and abetted by the big internet corporations themselves and their political friends, all in their own interests of power and money. Anyone trying to fight back is subject to detailed and draconian controls that hinder if not prevent. Meanwhile all the lies, distortions, nasty porn, criminality and all the other rubbish get effectively free rein to do their worst.
William Wallace: “The billionaires of the digital revolution are almost all white, male and American, displaying varying degrees of naivety or arrogance about the impact of their networks on political and social life. Women, ethnic minorities, black and Asian faces, are all under-recognised.”
Agreed. We also have to add the growing-up factor. Bill Gates in 2020, married man who has time to read more than the finance news, is quite a different person from the business executive at the start of this millennium.
Can we wait for Facebook and Google executives to grow up AND stick with their companies to make them better?
Future Politics book: “The future of politics will depend, in large part, on how the current generation of technologists approaches its work… Technologists must become philosophers, if we are to preserve our liberty, enhance democracy and keep the arc of history bent towards justice.”
Every undergraduate technology course contains an element about ethics. Data scientists will be arguing about what is moral and what is not. A few will be pondering whether they are morally permitted to breach a non-disclosure contract.
“Can we wait for Facebook and Google executives to grow up AND stick with their companies to make them better?”
I’m not holding my breath.
And there’s no such thing as a free lunch. If one uses Microsoft Windows at least one generally has paid Bill Gates & Co somewhere along the line for a licence. You pay facebook and google with your personal data.
The future is already here. In fact it always has been. The way in which society is controlled has changed but it still relies on the idea that individuals can own the land, and its resources. The resources include fellow humans. The idea of common ownership of land and the resources of the planet largely disappeared a long time ago.
The problem is that we do not have a model for making decisions in large groups.
In the meanwhile we are not facing the problem that we cannot eat money – or technology.
“You pay facebook and google with your personal data. “
I’m afraid the data genie is out of the bottle, and these cyber connections with your personal data are being made hundreds of times per day.
Try this.
Go to B&Q and buy a pack of screws or tube of silicone etc.
Pay through the till with your debit card.
Come home and log on to the internet.
Click on your browser and click on LDV.
Scroll through the threads and watch as ads from B&Q pop up between the comments
Click on one of the B&Q ads and the system pays/donates a few tenths of a penny revenue, to LDV coffers.
It’s everywhere.
You can protect yourself to a degree, but you have to be very proactive. Pay with cash, Apps like Ghostery, a VPN (virtual private network) It’s very difficult (beyond living in a cave!), to avoid the inevitable data tracking. Every time you use your debit card The System knows who you are, and where you are.
Back on topic
My polemic of choice back in the 70’s was Future Shock by Alvin Toffler. Exiting read, full of bold revolutionary ideas and a very popular book at the time.
However, the greatest shock we discovered about the future, was that it was almost nothing like the book Future Shock.
While we must continue to monitor the government’s foray into restricting civil liberties and support new ways for our government to work, we should also take the opportunity to reinforce our support for electoral reform and a proper written constitution that would have prevented some of the excesses and provided for proper scrutiny.
A Liberal Democratic response to the government’s proposed data strategy will require more than data strategists for it to be in anyway meaningful. As a twenty year veteran of the digital industry, i can tell you that convenience is the greatest enemy. Privacy was surrendered the day, location services were switched on a smartphone, search and social media activated or store loyalty card points redeemed.
Surveillance capitalism prospers because of it’s simplicity for the consumer. It is inevitable the state will harness some of these developments. As Liberals how do we ensure the digital state does not reflect the bias or prejudice of wider society.
While we currently have no national i.d card, we do have separate national insurance and NHS numbers, unique reference numbers for income tax and voting. Imagining a situation where a single identifier tied to whether you have had covid 19 or not and replicating the former information is not beyond the realms of imagination .
There is a strong case for more joined up government integrating tax and benefits to advance social justice and produce better health outcomes. As Liberals we should be pressing the case for British web hosting services, data security specialists at the very least.
“Surveillance capitalism prospers because of it’s simplicity for the consumer. / /… As Liberals how do we ensure the digital state does not reflect the bias or prejudice of wider society. “
Sadly, I think it’s too late for halting ‘digital biases’.
It’s the subtlety of this ‘data creep’ which is so pervasive. I give you one example, which I admit I don’t know if it happens, but may very well do so behind this digital curtain?
Going online to a comparison website like Moneysupermarket, you are confronted with a myriad of search possibilities, for car insurance, broadband, energy switches, house insurance, life insurance, travel insurance,.. and so on.
If you go to this website and search for car insurance (only), the data about yourself is fairly innocuous. And questions about your personal health situation is fairly general.
Next year you decide to search for some travel insurance, and invariably you will be asked for more specifics. Do you have Chrons, asthma, heart issues, arthritis etc.?
Question :
Do these search sites ‘pool’, all of your data under your one profile, in which case does your search for car insurance next year inform car insurance suppliers with your updated and more detailed health problems, and use it to crank up your car insurance?
I don’t know, and you don’t know, and we’ll probably never know why our insurance premiums went up by an inordinate and unexpected amount.
I don’t want to inflict any paranoia on anyone, but if you do feel paranoid, for heavens sake don’t tell a search comparison website. !