Items where Author is "O'Hara, Kieron"

Abstract: In Wendy Hall's 2017 AI review, the first recommendation was to create data trusts to encourage data access and data sharing. A number of initiatives are exploring these ideas in concrete contexts, including Elena Simperl's Data Pitch project and the Open Data Institute's work on data innovation. This talk will consider the question in more abstraction, to consider data trusts' function, and how this will determine their form. I will argue that a data trust should work within existing law to provide ethical, architectural and governance support for trustworthy data processing, and I will unpack this in terms of how it might create trust, what architectures might help implement data trusts, and how they relate to the existing law of trusts. Biodata: Kieron O'Hara is an associate professor in the WAIS group of ECS. His research interests are in trust, privacy and the nature of digital modernity. He is a lead in the UKAN network of anonymisation experts. His latest book, The Theory and Practice of Social Machines (with Nigel Shadbolt, Dave De Roure and Wendy Hall) will be published by Springer in March.

Abstract: The concept of privacy has divided lawyers, scholars and policymakers for decades, not only in terms of whether it is a good or bad thing, but even what it is. Some say it is a human right, some that it is a prerequisite for democracy; others note that individuals are prone to breaching their own privacy and are remarkably relaxed about it, and have described various privacy paradoxes or other common inconsistencies in attitude; some argue that it is unenforceable; still others argue that it is a blocker to the knowledge economy and the socially-beneficial use of big data; and many more say that whatever its merits it is dead. In this talk, Kieron O'Hara will argue that the reason for this apparently confused disarray is that different privacy discourses are going on simultaneously, talking past each other and cheerfully committing various category errors. He sets out a series of seven types of privacy discussion, which are distinct but relatable to each other, as ! a first step towards clearing up some of the confusion, and argues that privacy itself is strongly implicated at the boundaries between the self and world. Our attitudes towards privacy depend crucially on where we wish those boundaries to be.

Slides to introduce political economy, and its relevance to the study of the Web. Brief review of methods and issues.

In 'Privacy and Politics', Kieron O'Hara discusses the relation of the political philosophy of privacy to technical aspects in Web development. Despite a vigorous debate, the concept remains ambiguous, and a series of types of privacy is defined: epistemological, spatial, ideological, decisional and economic. Each of these has a different meaning in the online environment, and will be defended by different measures. The question of whether privacy is a right is raised, and generational differences in attitude discussed, alongside the issue of whether privacy should be protected in advance, via a consent model, or retrospectively via increased transparency and accountability. Finally, reasons both theoretical and practical for ranking privacy below other values (such as security, efficiency or benefits for the wider community) are discussed.

Web Science lecture about the impact of law on the web and vice versa.