Trends: Ethics, Privacy, Transparency, Trust

1. Trends: Ethics, Privacy,
Transparency, Trust
Geography in Government, UK
December 2020

3. “
Its about seeing the disruption
coming, assessing how fast it
will get here, knowing what to
be concerned about and being
ready for the change it brings.
@spatialred

4. Trust
Responsibility
Ethics
Privacy
Transparency
Accountability

5. When does cool become creepy?
The IoT and mobile devices bring
amazing opportunities for new
tech to make our lives easier. But
at what point does it do from
innovation to creepy intrusion?
denise-mckenzie.com

6. COVID-19
happened…..

9. Benchmark
• Supported by PlaceFund (part of the
Omidyar Network) and Ordnance Survey
• Complementary program in USA EthicalGeo

10. Objectives
• Thought leadership through events
• Real-world tools and services
through entrepreneurship program
• Create interaction between data
ethics and geospatial fields
• Explore what responsible and
ethical practice looks like for
location data use

11. Locus Charter

12. Our Vision
• A world where location data is utilized for the betterment of the world and
all species that live in it.
Who we are
• An international collaboration of governments, organisations and individual
practitioners seeking to ensure the ethical & responsible use of location
data throughout the world.
Audience
• The Charter is written for individuals and organisations who use location
data or have responsibility for activities that create, collect, analyze and
store location data.

13. Draft Principles (Dec 2020)
Principle One
• Understand impacts: Users of location data have the responsibility
fully to understand the potential impacts of their uses of data, including who
(individuals and groups) and what could be affected, and how. The
understanding of specific capabilities and risks relating to location data
should be employed to support informed and proportionate decisions, and
to minimise harms.
Principle Two
• Do no harm: Physical proximity amplifies the potential harms that can
befall people, flora and fauna, therefore users should ensure that the
individual or collective location data pertaining to all species should not be
used to discriminate, exploit or harm.

14. Principle Three
• Protect rights: Location technologies support capabilities that can
enable users to undermine the autonomy of individuals and groups, making
it all the more important that rights established in the physical world must
be protected in digital contexts and interactions.
Principle Four
• Protect the vulnerable: Give that vulnerable people and places can
disproportionately harmed by the misuse of location data, and may lack
the capacity to protect themselves, when using location data relating to
vulnerable people and places, users should take additional care to balance
the benefits being sought with the potential for harms, and to act positively
to minimise harms.

15. Principle Five
• Address bias: Bias in the collection of location data can either remove
affected groups from mapping that conveys rights or services, or amplify
negative impacts of inclusion in a dataset, therefore care should be taken
to understand bias in the location data that is collected, and to act to
minimise negative impacts.
Principle Six
• Minimise intrusion: Given the intimate and personal nature of location
data, users should avoid undue intrusions into people’s lives and the
locales where they dwell.

16. Principle Seven
• Minimise data: Most business and mission applications do not require
the most invasive scale of location tracking in order to provide the intended
level of service; therefore all organizations should comply with good
location data practices that adhere to the data minimization principle,
including abstracting location data to the least invasive scale feasible for
the application.
Principle Eight
• Protect privacy: Tracking individual’s movements through space and
time gives insights into the most intimate aspects of their lives, therefore in
the rare cases when aggregated and anonymized location data will not
meet some acute business or mission need, location data that identifies
individuals should be respected, protected, and used with informed
consent where possible.

17. Principle Nine
• Prevent identification of individuals: As an individual’s mobile
location data is situated within more and more geospatial context data, its
anonymity erodes, therefore measures should be put in place to prevent
subsequent use of the data resulting in identification of individuals or their
location.
Principle Ten
• Be accountable: Where feasible, people should be able to access
when location data is collected about them, what data, by whom, and for
what purposes.

18. Related initiatives
Activities Document Type Audience
Locus Charter (Benchmark Initiative & EthicalGEO) Strategic Global Principles Organisations (private & public)
primarily, but can also be endorsed
by individuals
ODI Data Ethics Canvas
GEO – Data Working Group Ethics best practice (in discussion)
Geonovum – Ethical Framework
OGC – GeoEthics adhoc (proposed working group)
Frameworks / Best Practices Organisations
W3C SDWWG – Responsible Use Guide
Godan – Ethical Code Toolkit
SDSN TReNDS – Contracts for Data Collaboration
Omidyar Network - Ethics Explorer
DevGRG – Development Research Ethical Guidelines
Gather principles
Guides / Guidelines / Templates Practitioners implementing on a
daily basis
URISA / GISCI (USA)
SSSI (Australia & NZ)
RICS (UK)
ASPRS (USA)
Codes of Ethics Individuals, Professionals

21. Projects by IF
How to measure
representation in a location
data set and protect people’s
privacy
Case study – look at racial access
to and use of micro-mobility
Open Source Tool in Jupyter
Notebook and Github
https://benchmarkinitiative.com/
blog/PBIF_Summary

22. Clear your tracks
A web based mobile friendly education experience to teach general
public about how location data is collected and used from mobile use.
https://www.clearyourtracks.org/

23. Gather
Based on international sanitation
data Gather will create a publicly
accessible online tool aimed at
government, funders and civil
society organisations. Using the
ODI Data Ethics Canvas and
regardless of data literacy skills,
the tool will enable any user to
better understand availability,
access and accuracy of the
location data available
https://benchmark.gatherhub.org/

24. What should you do?
• Get informed – read the draft Locus Charter
• Be a change in your organisation - https://ethicalexplorer.org/
• Ask questions – especially the difficult and challenging ones
• Contribute to the conversation
• Embrace the culture change

25. Thank you
Denise McKenzie
denise.mckenzie@geovation.uk