Public Private Partnerships Accountability
Public Private Partnerships Accountability
As the internationally acclaimed Prof. Zuboff highlighted, the digital market is prominently built on a surveillance capitalism model. This represents a considerable democratic challenge. Especially now that administrative authorities rely more and more on the private sector for the analysis and management of the population's personal data.
At Data Rights we believe that accountability and transparency are keys to ensure the social contract with citizens is honored. Even in the context of national security purposes, where the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has built robust accountability assessment tools to ensure democratic safeguards legitimise secrecy.
Why is this important?
We hear and see leaders of public bodies lean on the private sector with the belief that it will free them from accountability. It is disheartening and worrying for public trust. Outsourcing technology paid with public money should never mean losing accountability. At least not in functioning democracies.
Transparency exceptions for national security or trade secrets must be limited and subject to oversight. Unnecessarily shielding projects from accountability prevents citizens from ensuring public money is used effectively. Public authorities (sometimes) waste millions, citizens’ rights are eroded and in the long run, European democracies lose relevance.
Methods
A cornerstone of accountability is Freedom of Information (FoI) rights. These rights exist in every country of the European Union (EU), and yet they are poorly known by citizens and administrations. Therefore, in this programme we expect to lead researches on FoI exemptions, and campaign to promote accountability standards in transparency exemptions. In addition, we plan to monitor progress, litigate and empower civil society and/or individuals to enforce their right to information.
Status
Our research on Freedom of Information (FoI) requests from Privacy International, No Tech For Tyrants and investigative journalists of Lighthouse Reports shows that numerous authorities invoke national security purposes for varied projects that do not meet the European transparency exemptions threshold. Thereby posing serious threats to EU rule of law, compulsory accountability and rights to information and privacy.
Although we dearly care about this topic, at the moment we do not have the capacity to progress this work stream. This should only be a question of time!
Projects
This programme is not currently active.
A case we started before the creation of Data Rights is still ongoing. This case focuses on strict State intelligence powers, instead of any partnership with the private sector.
This case is in support of then Member of the European Parliament (MEP), Sophia in 't Veld. Mrs in 't Veld reached us to try the remedies created by the Intelligence Law of France (2015). More specifically, she was interested to know how much her communications, as an elected EU politician, may have been intercepted when she was going to the European Parliament's Strasbourg offices. The case is ongoing, although we should stress that in the procedure her time to write her arguments was shrunk for no clear reason, when the intelligence oversight body was given unusually long time to produce theirs. As the proceedings were in French the lack of fairness towards an MEP was already surprising. Stay tuned!
Resources
Data Rights resources
- Research done while at the Oxford Internet Institute by Lori Roussey, "Outsourced National Security: Policy Trends, Freedoms Encroachment and Accountability in the European Union", 2021, SSRN.
- Cases while some of us worked with the Exegetes litigation coalition
- Bulk data retention and real-time data analysis: France’s Data Retention & 2015 Intelligence Laws
- Data Rights’ press release on the European Court of Justice’s judgements on France’s “Loi Renseignement” 2015 and the UK’s “Investigatory Powers Act” 2016
- Data Right's takeaways on the CJEU rulings “Privacy International” and “La Quadrature du Net, French Data Network et al.”
- Timeline and briefs
- France’s wireless communications surveillance loophole
- Real-time interception of data during France’s state of emergency following the 2015 terrorist attacks
External resources
- International and legally binding Principles on the Right to Freedom of Information. These Principles are binding as the UN has endorsed them multiple times and tied them to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). See for instance Freedom of Information principles endorsed by the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression (E/CN.4/2000/63).
- Albeit not binding, the Tshwane Principles (2013) concentrate on the intersection of the right to information and the need to protect national security.
- Carrer, L., Coluccini, R., Di Salvo, P. (2020). "How facial recognition is spreading in Italy: the case of Como", Privacy International.
- Council of Europe’s European Court of Human Rights. (2013). National Security and European Case-law.
- On Palantir
- European Data Protection Supervisor inspection reports, 2018, 2019