The Right to Privacy (Article 8) and the Digital Revolution Contents
Annex: Reflections from participants who attended evidence sessions
We invited six individuals from diverse backgrounds to our oral evidence sessions. These individuals were not experts in data, technology, or human rights matters, but instead were ordinary members of the public who used the internet as part of their day-to-day lives. The aim of inviting the participants to the session was to hear their reflections on the oral evidence and in particular to understand whether the data practices of private companies seemed acceptable to them or whether any of the evidence worried them. Some of their reflections are included below:
- “Algorithms are scripted by people and therefore are not free of biases. How can this be mitigated? How can this be made transparent? The implications of this are scary.”
- “I didn’t know that even if you pay for an app the app has most probably used third party code and if that is the case (which is mostly the case) then your data is not safe with the app as it goes beyond the control of the app.”
- “Paying for a service also does not guarantee data protection. Data protection should not be something you should have to pay for.”
- “It’s very clear that Google chooses higher exposure standards because it’s in their financial interest to do so.”
- “the age of consent to access the internet is 13, it should be older”
- [was worried to hear that] “our cookies are being used as surveillance.”
- [was worried to hear that] “paid apps are still sharing data with Facebook”
Published: 3 November 2019