Accountability in the Digital Age

A dialogue with Rocio Moreno Lopez, Accountable Now

Esther George is an Independent Cybercrime and Cybersecurity Specialist and Former Senior Prosecutor for the Crown (UK). In the I4ADA Dialogue she discusses her view on Cyber Crime. Also see: https://zyberglobal.com. And for more information on the Zyber Global Community, please visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/zyberglobalcommunity

While everybody seems to be aware of cybercrime, why are the amount of cybercrime prosecutions relatively modest? What is the problem with statistics? What are the roles of respectively media, victims and reporting? Would segmenting and otherwise nuancing this vast domain be beneficial? Do these fit in the current rule of law scope and definitions? Is there a difference between cybercrime and cyber-enabled crimes? What are the current key threats in cyber? How to address and counter those? How to make the conversation more diverse and inclusive, and get all at the table?

A dialogue with James Hodson, CEO AI for Good Foundation.

When focusing on using emerging technologies as enablers for good; what does 'good' mean? How to engage academic and research communities to make emerging technologies work, for good? What are the benefits of using emerging technologies, such as the current generation of AI? What are the downsides? What collateral damage one needs to identity and avoid? How to achieve transparent and sustainable net benefits for people, society and planet? How to get those people and societal communities, generally non-technical, on board and interested? How can the various local, regional, international and global NGO and other initiatives find each other, complement each other while also keeping their own focus, sovereignty and accountability?

I4ADA Dialogue with David Jensen, Coordinator of the UNEP Digital Transformation Programme and Co-champion of the Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES)

A dialogue with Jonathan Reichental, Author Data Governance for Dummies

An I4ADA dialogue with Guy de Felcourt on “DIGITAL and EXTRATERRITORIAL OUTREACH”

Where the one who commits or has committed an criminal act such as sexual assaults is the perpetrator, what's the role and responsibility of bystanders of these acts? How are bystanders that failed to protect the assaulted person while being in a position to do so, now criminalized in the State of Utah? How about the enablers? And, what about digital platform and other intermediaries in the Digital Age that accept and share those posts? Are they enablers as well? Said otherwise, who is who, in the Digital space? Where legislation generally is geographically specific, how to expand to digital, or otherwise include the digital ecosystems? What is the extent of harm that is caused by such bystanders to such survivor? How to assess the harm a sexual assault enabler causes?

Amos Guiora has written the 'Armies of Enablers: Survivor Stories of Complicity and Betrayal in Sexual Assaults'. For more information, see his Wikipedia page here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_N._Guiora).

Amos is requesting the help of the audience with finding empirical data sets. Good news already, that occurred after the Dialogue, is that we have been able to liaise him with Joelle Casteix of the Zero Abuse Project (https://i4ada.org/dialogues/joelle-casteix-2/); connect, collaborate and co-create.

A dialogue with Olivier Crochat, Center for Digital Trust. 

How to diligently organise balanced, global multi-stakeholders discussions? What are good practices, lessons learned, and success factors? In these discussions and topics, how should accountability in the Digital Age be taken in? These and other key topics are addressed in this Dialogue with Latha Reddy is Co-Chairman at the Global Commission on Stability in Cyberspace. 

Glyn Moody is an independent journalist who has been writing about computer technology for almost 40 years. He is the author of the book 'Walled Culture' in this podcast he discusses copyrights and the need to reevaluate its purpose. A free digital version of his book is here: https://walledculture.org/the-book/

Why is free sharing, open source and other access to information so important? Why then are certain organisations (public and private) behaving in the opposite way, and seem to commonly strive for control and blocking information sharing? In what ways is copyright law misused? Is such misuse not merely censorship? Do you think it blocks and otherwise avoid those people and organisations to be accountability? Is balance between copyright versus the right to copy possible? What other problems arise out of invoking copyright? Does copyright actually protect or otherwise empower artists, scientists and other creators? Is it even fit for the Digital Age? What are ways forward do you see? Is providing free copies a problem, or part of the solution? What other measures would help to avoid copyright (law) abuse? This Dialogue covers all these important queries.

How should accountable AI be governed, before it is procured and deployed? And how should AI be governed from and during deployment? How to embed and monitor the humanitarian dimension, by design? It that different from having a human-centric approach? What is the definition of the common principles such as: explainability, auditability, responsibility and trustworthiness? How to respect local, regional, cultural or other ethics in global context of AI? Can we use the various AI ethical frameworks and good practices for other emerging technology as well, such as quantum computing? Do governments, politicians and others understand the impact of AI? Do we need new, creative 21st solutions for the 21st century challenges related to AI? What would then be the role of traditional solutions, such as awaiting case law? This Dialogue with Kay Firth-Butterfield, Head of AI & Machine Learning and Member of the Executive Committee World Economic Forum covers all these important queries She is also the world's first Chief AI and Ethics officer.

Jan Kleijssen is the Director of Information Society and Action against Crime with the Council of Europe. In this presentation he discusses the work on the world’s first treaty on AI and Human Rights to be expected in 2023.

To what extent was accountability a topic in the educational curricula of engineers, back in the days? How about ethics? What has changed since then? Why is accountability in this Digital Age nowadays so important? And, who raised the issue to take in accountability? To what extent is technology neutral? Where technology is designed for use as has become a need to have, does that change whether technology can be seem as neutral or not? What types and levels of accountability does each stakeholder have? How to make accountability part of the design phase, and not a mere afterthought? What should be the role engineers and engineering managers? Where digital ecosystems are global, how to facilitate that, and who could cater for that? Who to invite at the table? How to leave nobody behind? These and other key topics are addressed in this Dialogue with Prof. Gong Ke, Immediate Past President, World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO).

What does the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics of the United Nations (UN) Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) do? How can artificial intelligence and robotics improve fighting crime in this Digital Age? How to cater for future-proof law enforcement? What new and emerging technologies are visible on and envisioned over the horizon? How to use those responsibly? And how to minimize bias and other risks of using AI and other technological capabilities? What guidelines and good practices are provided or developed? Is accountability also one of the main principles and requirements? How to balance out the rule of law in this Digital Age to the ongoing technological developments, and make those future-proof? What are the reasons to be optimistic about the current and upcoming technological developments, and the future in general? These and other essential queries are explored in this Dialogue with Irakli Beridze

Why can technology not work without democracy and rule of law? What is the state of play regarding the rise power of technology, and related rise of economic power? How to control technological power? How to preserve our democracy and quality of life, and increase their resilience. Can rule of law compatible technology actually support such preservation? How to make engineers aware that what they build has (direct or indirect) adverse impact on democracy and the quality of life. How to make sure they understand their ethical and societal responsibility and accountability of what is built? How to raise the understanding of technology and related powers of politicians, civil servants and other policy making stakeholders? How to get more engineers and other science, technology and interdisciplinary knowledge onboard in those policy making domains? This Dialogue with Paul Nemitz dives into these and related important matters.

A dialogue with Prof Ali Hessami, VC & Process Architect, IEEE Ethics Certification Programme for Autonomous & Intelligent Systems at IEEE Standards Association. Ali discusses the a new IEEE global standard developed titled " P7000 - Model Process for Addressing Ethical Concerns During System Design" Furthermore his latest book on "Factoring Ethics in Technology Policy Making, Regulation and AI

What effect does the emergence of autonomy of machines have? What brings the ever-increasing level of non-human agency towards full autonomy. How is in charge? Are human dignity, societal values, fundamental rights and related ethical topics on the radar of engineers? Why is there a seemingly perpetual clash between engineering and ethics? How to help engineers addressing ethical concerns during system design, and further downstream? How to get from a purely technologic-centric to human-centric technology approach? When talking about ethics, how to get the multiple perspectives and angles in scope and deployed, also be demonstrate accountability in a Digital Age? This Dialogue with Prof Ali Hessami dives into these and related important matters.

Marco Magnano is Comms Director at XR Safety Initiative. This dialogue is hosted by guest host Richard Foster-Flecher, founder of MKAI.

How is trust and being worthy of trust established in the physical world? Would that be the same online, and otherwise in the Digital Age? When adding immersive technology to the equation such as VR and AR, what does change, is augmented - or worsened - even more? Will data harvesting and other collection decrease or increase? Are we mere data points, and do we need to consider new notions about privacy and personal data? Can democratisation and related decentralisation and distribution methodologies and technologies perhaps help out? What should we do as individuals and society? This Dialogue covers all these important queries.

Jim Poisant is the Secretary General at The World Innovation, Technology & Services Alliance (WITSA).

Nathalia Foditsch is a Senior Policy and Regulatory Specialist, with the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) part of the Web Foundation. In this dialogue she discusses the recent report the A4AI produced on the status of the Universal Service and Access Funds for the Latin American and Caribbean Countries. She also brings up the topic of the need for meaningful connectivity.

You can find a link to the A4AI report here.

Nathalia Foditsch is a licensed attorney and has worked on technology and communications policy and regulatory issues over the past twelve years. She has worked for some of the main international organizations and think tanks, which she has represented in official missions to numerous countries in the Latin America, Caribbean, and Europe. Nathalia has also worked as an International Adviser for the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), the Brazilian antitrust authority, and served as a coordinator for communications policy and regulation at the ministerial level in Brazil. Foditsch is affiliated to Cornell University’s Broadband Network and Emerging Markets Institute. Among other publications focused on technology and communications policy and regulation, Foditsch has co-edited and co-authored the book “Broadband in Brazil: Past, Present, Future”, which was a finalist of the 2017 “Jabuti Awards” (the main literary award in Brazil). Nathalia is an adjunct professor at the University Jose Cela (Spain); and holds a master’s in law (LLM) and a master’s in public policy (MPP) and is a member of the advisory board of the Brazil-U.S. Legal and Judicial Studies Program at the Washington College of Law (WCL). She is fluent in Portuguese, English, Spanish and German.

Prof. Jan Scholtes, University of Maastricht, Founder ZyLAB discusses role of eDiscovery in Accountability in the Digital Age.

What does eDiscovery mean? What kind of fact finding does it facilitate? How to find relevant data, and how to trust it? How to avoid bias, tunnel vision and echo chamber behaviour by the investigators? How to respect human values and rights? When does one know it has found and investigated the appropriate data sets? How does one know whether it has seen it all? Can the eDiscovery tools and processes be trusted, and do they demonstrate accountability themselves? What can accountable eDiscovery and related good practices help our with accountability issues in the Digital Age? This Dialogue dives into these and related matters.

A dialogue with Saskia Bruines, deputy mayor of the city of The Hague. She talks about the history of The Hague as a UN city and the role it plays as the city of peace and justice in the digital age.

This dialogue is in DUTCH

A dialogue with Pavan Duggal, Advocate, Supreme Court of India, Head Artificial Intelligence Law Hub. Which developments have been accelerated because of the Covid-19 pandemic? And why? How did or do stakeholders such as nations, technology companies or cybercriminals used the pandemic, and how to counter the detrimental effects and other negative consequences? How could or should people, rule of law respectively accountability support this better, on local, regional and global levels? How much time do we have? What are examples of 21st solutions for these, post-Covid-19 pandemic 21st century challenges? This Dialogue dives into these and related important matters.

Listen to media expert Cyril Pereira and our institute's co-director Frits Bussemaker having a dialogue about questions such as: Do newspapers have a future in this Digital Age? What is data journalism, and how to convert that into accountability instruments? How do the next generation journalists and free journalism look like, and what does it take? And much more!

Prof. Christoph Stueckelberger, Founder of Globethics.net Foundation discusses cyber ethics.

What does ethics means, around the world? What are the common denominators? What changes when one goes online? What can one reasonably expect online and why are some behaving differently online. How to be reliable towards people online – with the many persona individuals have during the day –, and remain accountable? How to deal with the long-term memory of digital systems, and the internet in specific, when people change and are allowed to change their minds over time? How to catch up, speed up, and keep up with every increasing and accelerating technological developments? How to keep the human in the driving seat in the Digital Age? These and other key topics are addressed in this Dialogue.

Globethics offers over 4 million documents for free on ethics. Please check out the report Cyber Ethics 4.0: Serving Humanity with Values which you can download here.

What does digital sovereignty mean? Why has it become a hot topic? What are digital assets, and why are they important? What technologies with either local, regional or even global reach are relevant to build, achieve and sustain digital sovereignty? What geopolitical threats need to be taken seriously? Are these challenges too big for one country, and if so, how to collaborate? How to speed up and keep up with ever-increasing and accelerating technological developments including essentials such as cybersecurity and trust? Is speed actually a friend or a foe? Which trustworthy and accountable 21st century digital, collaborative and organizational capabilities can support addressing challenges in this Digital Age? These and other essential queries are explored in this Dialogue. with Paul Timmers, Oxford University.

Mei Lin Fung is chair and co-founder together with Vint Cerf of the People Centered Internet. See PCI.

What was the internet originally intended to be? To which other historic innovations is the evolution of the internet similar? What can we learn from those, and the first decades of the internet? How to improve or rebuild the current internet so it can become less technology-dependent, less vulnerable, more robust and more resilient? Who and which organisations could or should be part of these efforts? How can accountability be included, by design, while running, and by supporting continuous improvement? These and other key topics are addressed in this Dialogue.

A dialogue with Pradeep Gupta, Chairman Cyber Media Group discussing the role of media and Accountability in the Digital Age.

Is the role of media news and other content provider, watch dog, or both? What has the media reporting about (and had  influence in) during the past decades. What is it focusing on now and the next years? How does a media organisation implement accountability, both internally as well as externally? How does it cope with being branded as ‘fake news’? How does it deal with such attacks from a technical, digital perspective? Are there national/regional differences through the world? Why do people (like to) believe unverified information, and seem to enjoy echo chambers? How can an accountable media organisation help and share good practices? What are 21st good practices for 21st problems? Who should be at the table to help (further) develop, build, try, implement and improve accountability in the Digital Age? What can start-ups learn and how can they take in these good practices and initiatives? This Dialogue covers all these important queries.

What is AI for Good about? When did it start, why, and where is accountability taken in? What’s the level of awareness of digital impact (positive and negative) of people, society and businesses? What are their leaders doing about it? Are there already instruments available that can be deployed to support and cater for accountability? Who should be at the table on these ever-growing opportunities, challenges and related accountability? And, how can you engage? Concrete examples throughout the world, on all kind of different levels, in this dialogue with Stephen Ibaraki, Chairman REDDS Capital.

Jacques Kruse Brandao, Global Head of Advocacy, SGS and Co-Founder Charter of Trust talks about connected devices and systems have become a need to have. Now each will need to be able to demonstrate that those are safe and (cyber)secure, and can be trusted. Both seperately as well as holistically. Locally, nationally, and globally. This Dialogue touches on this important dimensions.

Where for journalists internet 1.0 was about how to use it in its daily course of work, nowadays, in this Digital Age, press freedom, freedom of expression and traditional and digital media have been influenced, impact and otherwise changed dramatically, both in positive and negative ways. Who are the players and gatekeepers of communication, what are the nuances of accountability for each of them, and how take in and balance out the numerous different perspectives of multiple stakeholders? In this Dialogue with Guy Berger, Director for Strategies and Policies in the field of Communication and Information with UNESCO these and other topics are addressed, from a practical and UNESCO perspective.

A dialogue with Kai Hermsen, co-CEO of IDENTITY Valley. Next to cybersecurity as a key trust ingredient in this Digital Age there are many more, including digital literacy, transparency and human agency and identity, to name a few. How to come to a set of holistic, intertwined yet actionable ingredients that can be furthered as digital responsibility goals, to support the Sustainable Development Goals and improve the measurability thereof. In this Dialogue seven of these key ingredients and related challenges and opportunities are discussed.

A dialogue with Nicolas Diaz Ferreyra, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Duisburg-Essen working on areas of privacy and cybersecurity

In this Digital Age, are users able to make their own decisions about using digital services, and sharing their personal data? Why do they seemingly give away so much? Are they aware of the risks, impact and other consequences of doing so? What can and should developers add to the accountability table? How can one check and validate trust, what can we learn from existing non-digital use cases, and what accountability tools can help users to make better decisions? These and other essential queries are explored in this Dialogue.

A dialogue with Boris Koprivnikar, CEO Sincular Consulting. Former deputy Prime Minister Republic of Slovenia.