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Description
This project addresses the commonly neglected risks of digitization of public administration – digital discrimination and broad threat to privacy. The project aims to raise awareness of these issues and will put forward legal protective measures against excessive control of citizens'' privacy and digital discrimination regarding health related data, public space monitoring and access to public administration. The project will form a functional community and also involve less traditional target audience (parents) as well as activities (film festival) as this will significantly deepen its impact.
Summary of project results
Despite the undeniable benefits of digitisation of public administration, its serious risks to privacy and the risk of discrimination against non-users are often overlooked. The mix of deployment of algorithmic decision-making, services requiring advanced digital literacy, linking data on individuals and their behaviour, movements, etc. is done without public debate and safeguards, which compounds the risks described above. This creates the potential for both the introduction of complex systems of social surveillance a la the Chinese model and the dangerous widening of digital and social divides.
We consider two issues related to the introduction of new technologies in public administration to be particularly pressing. The first problem is the risk of digital discrimination (=indirect discrimination against people in accessing digital services - especially the elderly, the disabled, those without internet access).
The second problem is the area of data protection in the public sphere. The problem here is the deletion of the possibility to impose fines on public authorities for violation of data protection rules. This is followed by problems in the areas we want to pay more attention to. Firstly, the digitisation of healthcare and the creation of new registers (huge volumes of sensitive data without sufficient legislative safeguards). Next, the extensive interpretation of the police''s powers in monitoring public spaces with the use of detection methods (faces, number plates, etc.) and the associated risks known from abroad (racial discrimination, interference with rights in false detection, etc.).
1) Raising awareness of the risks of digitalisation of public administration among the target groups of the project
2) Creating a community - deepening the organisation''s cooperation especially with experts in new technologies, digital activists and media
3) Sufficient legislative anchoring of the right to non-digital alternatives in accessing public services (target group seniors, disabled, digiactivists rejecting technology)
4) Advocacy for increased enforceability of compliance with the rules on the processing of personal data in public administration
5) Enforcement of sufficient legislative guarantees for the functioning of health registers and video surveillance using modern technologies
6) Strengthening (know-how, stable team) and stabilization of the organization (systemicity of activities, financial)
The project focused on several priority topics, but at the same time it also focused on general watchdog and advocacy activities in the area of privacy protection, especially in connection with the COVID 19 pandemic, to which the project had to respond and thus increase part of its capacities contrary to the original plan.
We consider the establishment of the topic of digital exclusion in the public debate on digitalisation to be an important impact of the project. Among other important impacts are also our successes related to data processing in the pandemic such as promoting vaccination without registration or preventing sharing the data on people in quarantine to the police. In addition, long-term changes with a broad impact on digitization have also been pushed through in connection to the pandemic, such as the promotion of the exchange of analytical tools on state websites, including the key Citizen Portal and Public Administration Portal.
Among other priority areas, we took up the subject of biometric tracking, both thanks to an expert study, a seminar in the Chamber of Deputies or a suggestion to the Office for Personal Data Protection regarding biometrics at Václav Havel Airport, and also thanks to our involvement in the pan-European RYF campaign.
We were also successful in stopping the strengthening of the security forces and other state bodies at the expense of citizens'' privacy, especially when it came to the use of metadata about electronic communication or the mixing of data originally acquired for different purposes (due to amendments to the Act on the Police and the Criminal Code, changes in the amendment to the Act on Military Intelligence, the suspension of the amendment to the Act on Public Health). We will see the results of certain activities only in the following period, in particular the commenced and ongoing lawsuits in the matter of digital exclusion and data retention, or ongoing legislative activities.
An important impact within the organization is its overall professionalization, mainly its outward communication and community building, which counted among our weaknesses. The project was realized in partnership with Kinolab organization. We organized the Big Brother Film Festival together. The partnership led to mutual enrichment, which we then extended beyond the scope of the project by filming the film Digital Dissidents, which we use in events focused on the topic of the right to analog and digital exclusion.