Tag: Onora O’Neill

An Evening With Onora O’Neill & Cara At The Royal Society, Then An Afternoon Watching A Dissemination Of Terrorist Publications Case At The Old Bailey, 28 & 29 October 2019

This was neither my first evening with Onora O’Neill nor my first visit to The Old Bailey.

Was it really nearly 12 years ago that I dined with Onora, again at The Royal Society, at a BCS Thought Leadership event? Yes:

BCS Thought Leadership Debate On Sharing Human Data, Royal Society, 15 January 2008

The Cara evening was actually a consequence of my first visit to The Old Bailey a few weeks ago…

Bound To Appear At The Old Bailey, 30 September 2019

…as Stephen Wordsworth of Cara was one of the guests for lunch at the Old Bailey that day and asked me if I would like to attend O’Nora’s forthcoming evening. Of course I said yes.

Monday 28 October – Communication and Democracy in a Digital Age

Onora O’Neill’s talk was fascinating. It is well summarised on the Cara website and there is also a link to the audio of the whole talk – click here or below.

Cara Science and Civilisation Lecture 2019

Lectures steeped in Kantian philosophy are not exactly awash with soundbite takeaways, but one especially good thought did stick in my mind in takeaway fashion; Onora’s assertion that the post World-War Two switch from duties-based philosophies towards rights-based philosophies is proving unhelpful for matters such as regulating social media.

The near-monopolies that deploy/control social media fall back on rights such as freedom of expression, privacy and autonomy while abdicating responsibility for duties such as truthfulness, trustworthiness and consideration for the sensibility of others.

Onora maintained a largely pessimistic line of argument, both in her talk and through the lively question and answer session that followed. I do not share her long-term pessimism on this topic; I think new media tend to go through an unruly phase when they can be especially disruptive to society (by which I mean negatively disruptive) because society and individuals within society take time to adapt to the positive uses of the new media.

In short, as long as we don’t destroy ourselves as a society before the new media settle down, I think those media will settle down and be a force for good to a greater extent than a force for ill.

Still, a fascinating evening, with some food and drink for sustenance as well as for thought after the main event. I met some interesting people for the first time and re-established connections with some others I had met before, including, very briefly, Onora.

Here’s that link again if you want to hear the talk.

Tuesday 29 October 2019, Afternoon, The Old Bailey Court Five

Coincidentally, my return visit to The Old Bailey, to spend a little time seeing a case unfold, was the afternoon following the Onora O’Neill Lecture.

Even more coincidentally, the case I watched for 90 minutes or so was about disseminating terrorist publications through social media. The subject matter of the cases are a matter of public announcement and record, so here and below is a link to the listing for this day:

What’s on at the Old Bailey, Oct 29

I watched with several of the people who had taken lunch with the judges that day, including Prue Leith (whom I had not met before) and Crispin Black (whom I had met before).

This was the first time I had sat in on a criminal trial in England; I did sit in on a case in New York some 30 years ago (to be Ogblogged in the fullness of time). It was fascinating for me to see an English criminal trial process at close hand, not least this particularly interesting trial.

There were several binders of material, mostly print-outs from the web, which were being outlined in opening statements that afternoon.

Without making any comment on the contents of those binders as evidence for this case itself, I found it unusually depressing (not a term I use lightly) to wade through the voluminous materials that had been printed out from the web to be used as evidence. I knew of such publications, of course, but had not actually seen, read or heard such materials before.

I also found myself thinking deeply about the lecture the evening before and Onora O’Neill’s pessimism about the impact that social media might have on our society if we do not find ways to regulate and curate such media towards good rather than ill. Despite my theoretical optimism (expressed above), the practical examples before me that afternoon allowed me little room for optimism for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow will be brighter, not least because I shall be spending the day in a very different type of court amongst friends.

Guilty…but only of poor technique

Despite it not making me feel good, I am very glad I went to The Old Bailey that day and that I have now experienced watching part of a trial unfold at close hand. I am grateful to Michael and his shrieval team for organising the visit for me.

Postscript: the trial resulted in convictions for both of the accused – click here for a newspaper report on the convictions.

BCS Thought Leadership Debate On Sharing Human Data, Royal Society, 15 January 2008

My role on the British Computer Society (BCS) Ethics Panel resulted in me leading the debate at one of the tables at this Thought Leadership event at the Royal Society.

I was lucky enough to have Onora O’Neill on my table; not only an absolutely brilliant mind for such a discussion but also delightful company.

OnoraONeillChairingWCITColloquiumHouseOfLords26June2013

The idea was that I simply take hand-written notes and then Penny Duquenoy, who ran the secretariat of our group, would produce a write up.

But a few days after the event Penny e-mailed me to say that she couldn’t read my hand-writing at all, so could I provide her with some typed notes. My handwriting illegible – who knew?

Several days of too-ing and fro-ing ensued in an attempt to get my hand-written notes back to me. Eventually they came and I then submitted the following notes, which paid careful heed to the Chatham House rule so I feel perfectly at liberty to reproduce them here. The topic of this debate is all too relevant as I write 11 years later and for sure will remain relevant for some time to come.

BCS THOUGHT LEADERSHIP DISCUSSION ON SHARING HUMAN DATA – TABLE ONE NOTES

• Concern that we do not have privacy legislation in the UK, we have data protection legislation which is not the same thing. We have incoherent case law on privacy and a resulting inconsistency between case law and statute law.
• Principles such as “proportionality” and “need to know” are extremely hard to interpret and we don’t even have formal mechanisms on how to interpret these concepts.
• Discussed the example of patient identifiers at some length – the pros and the cons (as outlined in the introductory talks).
• Discussed “lazy data sharing” – i.e. many of the problems we experience are connected with human error, laziness etc., not information systems themselves.
• Discussed the principle of autonomy, how that differs from privacy etc.
• Discussed the relative merits of “opt out” and “opt in” schemes. Concerns about complexity in both cases – i.e. concerns that both practitioners and subjects struggle to understand such schemes. Opt out often simpler in many ways, but concerns about direct and/or indirect discrimination against those who opt out. US examples cited.
• DNA database discussed at length as an example with many facets. Should everybody be on the DNA database (avoids the discrimination risk). But then how much DNA information could/should reasonably be held to ensure benefits while minimising the risk of misuse. Worried about lack of safeguards, wrongful use of information, over-abstraction (e.g. to the extent that such DNA evidence would be inadmissible in court).
• Discussed Prüm Treaty and its implications for sharing DNA information. Also discussed Passenger Name Record proposal (EU).
• Should each citizen have a unique chip implant at birth? This led on to discussion of ID cards.
• Concern about too much stricture. People like multiple identities without necessarily using same for serious crime, fraud or mischief. Several “close to home” examples were discussed; these are mercifully protected by the Chatham House Rule and the fact that I did not write them down at the time.

Re that last point, it’s not exactly a breach of the Chatham House rule for me to state that I explained my use of Ged Ladd as a benign second identity for the purposes of fun stuff and for communicating with nephews and nieces who, at that time, might have found corresponding with uncles and aunts on (e.g.) Facebook a little embarrassing.

I don’t think it breaches the Chatham House rule for me to reveal that, once I self-outed such use, that more than half the other people at the table admitted that they too, for various benign reasons, use second identities on line for some purposes. Fascinating.