The Waving Cat

Categorydigital rights

Monthnotes for October 2018

By Peter Bihr
In conference, digital rights, work
5 Min read
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This month: Mozfest, a Digital Rights Cities Coalition, Trustable Technology Mark updates, ThingsCon Rotterdam.

If you’d like to work with me in the upcoming months, I have very limited availability but am always happy to have a chat. I’m currently doing the planning for Q2 2019.

Mozfest

Mozfest came and went, and was lovely as always. It was the 9th Mozfest, 8 or so of which I participated in — all the way back to the proto (or prototyping?) Mozfest event called Drumbeat in Barcelona in, what, 2010? But no time for nostalgia, it was bustling as always. The two things that were different for me that one, I participated as a Mozilla Fellow, which means a different quality of engagement and two, M and I brought the little one, so we had a toddler in tow. Which I’m delighted to say worked a charm!

A Digital Rights Cities Coalition

At Mozfest, the smart and ever lovely Meghan McDermott (see her Mozilla Fellows profile here) hosted a small invite-only workshop to formalize a Digital Rights Cities Coalition — a coalition of cities and civil society to protect, foster, promote digital rights in cities. I was both delighted and honored to be part of this space, and we’ll continue working together on related issues. The hope is that my work with ThingsCon and the Trustable Technology Mark can inform and contribute value to that conversation.

Trustable Technology Mark

The Trustable Technology Mark is hurtling towards the official launch at a good clip. After last month’s workshop weekend at Casa Jasmina, I just hosted a Trustmark session at Mozfest. It was a good opportunity to have new folks take a look at the concept with fresh eyes. I’m happy to report that I walked away with some new contacts and leads, some solid feedback, and an overall sense that at least for the obvious points of potential criticism that present themselves at first glance there are solid answers now as to why this way and not that, etc etc.

Courtesy Dietrich, a photo of me just before kicking off the session wearing a neighboring privacy booth’s stick-on mustache.

Also, more policy and academic partners signing on, which is a great sign, and more leads to companies coming in who want to apply for the Trustmark.

Next steps for the coming weeks: Finalize and freeze the assessment form, launch a website, line up more academic and commercial partners, reach out to other initiatives in the space, finalize trademarks (all ongoing), reach out to press, plan launch (starting to prep these two).

The current assessment form asks a total of 48 questions over 5 dimensions, with a total of 29 required YES’s. Here’s the most up-to-date presentation:


ThingsCon Rotterdam

Our annual ThingsCon conference is coming up: Join us in Rotterdam Dec 6-7!

Early bird is just about to end (?), and we’re about to finalize the program. It’s going to be an absolute blast. I’ll arrive happily (if probably somewhat bleary eyed after a 4am start that day) in Rotterdam to talk Trustable Technology and ethical tech, we’ll have a Trustmark launch party of some sort, we’ll launch a new website (before or right there and then), and we’ve been lining up a group of speakers so amazing I’m humbled even just listing it:

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Cennydd Bowles, Eric Bezzem, Laura James, Lorenzo Romanoli, Nathalie Kane, Peter Bihr, Afzal Mangal, Albrecht Kurze, Andrea Krajewski, Anthony Liekens, Chris Adams, Danielle Roberts, Dries De Roeck, Elisa Giaccardi, Ellis Bartholomeus, Gaspard Bos, Gerd Kortuem, Holly Robbins, Isabel Ordonez, Kars Alfrink, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Janjoost Jullens, Ko Nakatsu, Leonardo Amico, Maaike Harbers, Maria Luce Lupetti, Martijn de Waal, Martina Huynh, Max Krüger, Nazli Cila, Pieter Diepenmaat, Ron Evans, Sami Niemelä, Simon Höher, Sjef van Gaalen.

That’s only the beginning!

Here’s part of the official blurb, and more soon on thingscon.com and thingscon.nl/conference-2018

Now, 5 years into ThingsCon, the need for responsible technology has entered the mainstream debate. We need ethical technology, but how? With the lines between IoT, AI, machine learning and algorithmic decision-making increasingly blurring it’s time to offer better approaches to the challenges of the 21st century: Don’t complain, suggest what’s better! In this spirit, going forward we will focus on exploring how connected devices can be made better, more responsible and more respectful of fundamental human rights. At ThingsCon, we gather the finest practitioners; thinkers & tinkerers, thought leaders & researchers, designers & developers to discuss and show how we can make IoT work for everyone rather than a few, and build trustable and responsible connected technology.

Media, etc.

In the UK magazine NET I wrote an op-ed about Restoring Trust in Emerging Tech. It’s in the November 2018 issue, out now – alas, I believe, print only.

Reminder: Our annual ThingsCon report The State of Responsible IoT is out.

What’s next?

Trips to Brussels, Rotterdam, NYC to discuss a European digital agenda, launch a Trustmark, co-host ThingsCon, translate Trustmark principles for the smart city context, prep a US-based ThingsCon conference.

If you’d like to work with me in the upcoming months, I have very limited availability but am always happy to have a chat. I’m currently doing the planning for Q2 2019.

Yours truly, P.

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On Business Models & Incentives

By Peter Bihr
In digital rights
4 Min read
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We’ve been discussing ethics & responsibility in IoT specifically, and business more generally, a lot lately. This seems more relevant than ever today, simply because we see so much damage done because wrong business models—and hence, wrong incentives—drive and promote horrible decision making.

One blatantly obvious example is Facebook and its focus on user engagement. I’d like to make clear I pick Facebook because it is simply the best known example of an industry-wide trend.

Advertisers are sold on “engagement” as a metric since the web allowed to measure user behavior (ie. what used to be called “Web 2.0”, now “social media”). Before that (early Web), it was various flavors of page impressions as a proxy for reach. Before that (print, TV) it was calculated/assumed reach based on sampling and the size of print runs.

It’s important to keep in mind that these metrics have changed over time, and can change and be changed any time. They aren’t a divine hand-down, nor a constant in the world. They are what we, as an industry and society, make them.

Now, for a few years advertisers have been sold on, and have been overall quite happy with, having their ad efficiency and effectiveness on engagement. This term means how many people didn’t just see their ads, but interacted (“engaged”) with them in one way or another. Typically, this means clicking on them, sharing them on social media or via email, and the like. It’s a strong proxy for attention, which is what advertisers are really after: They want potential customers to notice their messages. It’s hard to argue with that; it’s their job to make sure people notice their ads.

That said, the focus on engagement was driven forcefully by the platforms that profit from selling online ads as a means to differentiate themselves from print and TV media, as well as the online offerings of traditionally print/TV based media. “Look here, we can give you much more concrete numbers to measure how well your ads work”, they said. And they were, by and large, not wrong.

But.

The business model based on engagement turned out to be horrible. Damaging. Destructive.

This focus on engagement means that all incentives of the business are to get people to pay more attention to advertisements, at the expense of everything else. Incentivizing engagement means that the more you can learn about a user, by any means, puts you in a better position to get them to pay attention to your ads.

This is how we ended up with a Web that spies on us, no matter where we go. How we ended up with websites that read us more than we read them. With clickbait, “super cookies”, and fake news. Every one of these techniques are means to drive up engagement. But at what cost?

I truly believe you can’t discuss fake news, the erosion of democracy, online harassment, and populism without discussion online surveillance (aka “ad-tech”, or “surveillance capitalism”) first.

Business models, and the behaviors they incentivize, matter. Facebook and many other online advertisement platforms picked horrible incentives, and we all have been paying the price for it. It’s killing the Web. It’s eroding our privacy, the exchange of ideas, and democracy. Because where our communications channels spy on us, and the worst and most troll-ish (“most engaging”) content floats to the top because of ill-advised and badly checked algorithmic decision-making, we can’t have discussions anymore in public, or even in the spaces and channels that appear to be private.

It doesn’t have to be that way. We can choose our own business models, and hence incentives.

For example, over at ThingsCon we were always wary of relying too much on sponsorship, because it adds another stakeholder (or client) you need to accommodate beyond participants and speakers. We mostly finance all ThingsCon events through ticket sales (even if “financing” is a big word; everything is mostly done by our own volunteer work). Our research is either done entirely in-house out of interest or occasionally as a kind of “researcher-for-hire” commission. We subsidize ThingsCon a lot through our other work. Does that mean we lose some quick cash? Absolutely. Do we regret it? Not in the very least. It allows a certain clarity of mission that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. But I admit it’s a trade-off.

(A note for the event organizers out there: Most of the sponsors we ended up taking on were more than happy to go with food sponsoring, a ticket package, or subsidizing tickets for underrepresented groups—all entirely compatible with participants’ needs.)

If we want to build sustainable businesses—businesses that will sustain themselves and not poison their ecosystem—we need to pick our business models and incentives wisely.

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The key challenge for the industry in the next 5 years is consumer trust

By Peter Bihr
In AI, digital rights, IoT, work
3 Min read
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Note: Every quarter or so I write our client newsletter. This time it touched on some aspects I figured might be useful to this larger audience, too, so I trust you’ll forgive me cross-posting this bit from the most recent newsletter.

Some questions I’ve been pondering and that we’ve been exploring in conversations with our peer group day in, day out.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, of course, but gives you a hint about my headspace?—?experience shows that this can serve as a solid early warning system for industry wide debates, too. Questions we’ve had on our collective minds:

1. What’s the relationship between (digital) technology and ethics/sustainability? There’s a major shift happening here, among consumers and industry, but I’m not yet 100% sure where we’ll end up. That’s a good thing, and makes for interesting questions. Excellent!

2. The Internet of Things (IoT) has one key challenge in the coming years: Consumer trust. Between all the insecurities and data leaks and bricked devices and “sunsetted” services and horror stories about hacked toys and routers and cameras and vibrators and what have you, I’m 100% convinced that consumer trust?—?and products’ trustworthiness?—?is the key to success for the next 5 years of IoT. (We’ve been doing lots of work in that space, and hope to continue to work on this in 2018.)

3. Artificial Intelligence (AI): What’s the killer application? Maybe more importantly, which niche applications are most interesting? It seems safe to assume that as deploying machine learning gets easier and cheaper every day we’ll see AI-like techniques thrown at every imaginable niche. Remember when everyone and their uncle had to have an app? It’s going to be like that but with AI. This is going to be interesting, and no doubt it’ll produce spectacular successes as well as fascinating failures.

4. What funding models can we build the web on, now that surveillance tech (aka “ad tech”) has officially crossed over to the dark side and is increasingly perceived as no-go?

These are all interesting, deep topics to dig into. They’re all closely interrelated, too, and have implications on business, strategy, research, policy. We’ll continue to dig in.

But also, besides these larger, more complex questions there are smaller, more concrete things to explore:

  • What are new emerging technologies? Where are exciting new opportunities?
  • What will happen due to more ubiquitous autonomous vehicles, solar power, crypto currencies? What about LIDAR and Li-Fi?
  • How will the industry adapt to the European GDPR? Who will be the first players to turn data protection and scarcity into a strength, and score major wins? I’m convinced that going forward, consumer and data protection offer tremendous business opportunities.

If these themes resonate, or if you’re asking yourself “how can we get ahead in 2018 without compromising user rights”, let’s chat.

Want to work together? I’m starting the planning for 2018. If you’d like to work with me in the upcoming months, please get in touch.

PS: I write another newsletter, too, in which I share regular project updates, thoughts on the most interesting articles I come across, and where I explore areas around tech, society, culture & business that I find relevant. To watch my thinking unfolding and maturing, this is for you. You can subscribe here.

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Interview with Netzpolitik.org: Regulierung und Datenschutz im Internet der Dinge

By Peter Bihr
In digital rights, Digital Transformation, IoT, media, media coverage, politics
1 Min read
I

In September I spoke at Netzpolitik’s annual conference, Das ist Netzpolitik. While I was there, Netzpolitik.org also recorded an interview with me: “Regulierung und Datenschutz im Internet der Dinge“.


A big thank you to Netzpolitik and Stefanie Talaska for the conversation!

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New report: A Trustmark for IoT

By Peter Bihr
In connected world, digital rights, IoT, Research, work
3 Min read
N

Summary: For Mozilla, we explored the potentials and challenges of a trustmark for the Internet of Things (IoT). That research is now publicly available. You can find more background and all the relevant links at thewavingcat.com/iot-trustmark

If you follow our work both over at ThingsCon and here at The Waving Cat, you know that we see lots of potential for the Internet of Things (IoT) to create value and improve lives, but also some serious challenges. One of the core challenges is that it’s hard for consumers to figure out which IoT products and services are good—which ones are designed responsibly, which ones deserve their trust. After all, too often IoT devices are essentially black boxes that are hard interrogate and that might change with the next over-the-air software update.

So, what to do? One concept I’ve grown increasingly fond of is consumer labeling as we know from food, textiles, and other areas. But for IoT, that’s not simple. The networked, data-driven, and dynamic nature of IoT means that the complexity is high, and even seemingly simple questions can lead to surprisingly complex answers. Still, I think there’s huge potential there to make huge impact.

I was very happy when Mozilla picked up on that idea and commissioned us to explore the potential of consumer labels. Mozilla just made that report publicly available:

Read the report: “A Trustmark for IoT” (PDF, 93 pages)

I’m excited to see where Mozilla might take the IoT trustmark and hope we can continue to explore this topic.

Increasingly, in order to have agency over their lives, users need to be able to make informed decisions about the IoT devices they invite into their lives. A trustmark for IoT can significantly empower users to do just that.

For more background, the executive summary, and all the relevant links, head on over to thewavingcat.com/iot-trustmark.

Also, I’d like to extend a big thank you! to the experts whose insights contributed to this reports through conversations online and offline, public and in private:

Alaisdair Allan (freelance consultant and author), Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (Designswarm, IoT London, #iotmark), Ame Elliott (Simply Secure), Boris Adryan (Zu?hlke Engineering), Claire Rowland (UX designer and author), David Ascher, David Li (Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab), Dries de Roeck (Studio Dott), Emma Lilliestam (Security researcher), Geoffrey MacDougall (Consumer Reports), Ge?rald Santucci (European Commission), Holly Robbins (Just Things Foundation), Iskander Smit (info.nl, Just Things Foundation), Jan-Peter Kleinhans (Stiftung Neue Verantwortung), Jason Schultz (NYU), Jeff Katz (Geeny), Jon Rogers (Mozilla Open IoT Studio), Laura James (Doteveryone, Digital Life Collective), Malavika Jayaram (Berkman Klein Center, Digital Asia Hub), Marcel Schouwenaar (Just Things Foundation, The Incredible Machine), Matt Biddulph (Thington), Michelle Thorne (Mozilla Open IoT Studio), Max Kru?ger (ThingsCon), Ronaldo Lemos (ITS Rio), Rosie Burbidge (Fox Williams), Simon Ho?her (ThingsCon), Solana Larsen (Mozilla), Stefan Ferber (Bosch Software Innovation), Thomas Amberg (Yaler), Ugo Vallauri (The Restart Project), Usman Haque (Thingful, #iotmark). Also and especially I’d like to thank the larger ThingsCon and London #iotmark communities for sharing their insights.

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We need to approach Smart Cities as empowerment tech for citizens

By Peter Bihr
In digital rights, Research
2 Min read
W

Doing some research-related reading this morning had me go down a bit of a rabbit hole that led to this Twitter thread. The points hold up, I think, so here it is in easier-to-read-and-reference format:

Smart Cities are often framed as part of industrial #iot. I think we need to frame it as empowerment tech for citizens instead.

This industrial #iot framing is only natural: Most vendors of smart city tech come from that background. But I think it’s not healthy. A technology that impacts, by definition, all citizens needs to be framed, regulated & designed accordingly. Meaning: If there’s not opt-out (and there isn’t, in public space), we need to make sure this works for everyone, can be understood & queried.

We need strong democratic oversight on smart city technologies and the algorithms, processes, vendors powering them. Which is why we need to follow the principles that made the early open web so strong & resilient: decentralization, open source, etc.

Only if we reframe our thinking of smart cities from industrial to citizen centric can these technologies unfold their positive potential.

///

This echoes the position we developed for a report for the German federal government a while ago as part of research into how to best make smart cities work for citizens. The findings of that report are summarized here.

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Netzpolitik13: Das Internet der Dinge: Rechte, Regulierung & Spannungsfelder

By Peter Bihr
In conference, connected world, digital rights, IoT, policy, work
2 Min read
N

My slides from Das ist Netzpolitik (Berlin, 1. September 2017). Title: “Das Internet der Dinge: Rechte, Regulierung & Spannungsfelder“.

Vom Hobby-Basteln bis hin zur Smart City: Das Internet of Things (#IoT) hat zunehmend Berührungspunkte mit allen Bereichen unseres Lebens. Aber wer bestimmt was erlaubt ist, was mit unseren Daten passiert, und ob es OK ist, unter die Haube zu gucken? IoT sitzt an der Schnittstelle vieler Technologie-, Governance- und Regulierungsbereiche—und schafft dadurch gleich eine ganze Reihe von Spannungsfeldern.

Due to technical issues with the video projection, my slides weren’t shown for the first few minutes. Apologies. On the plus side, the organizers had kindly put a waving cat on the podium for me. ?

It’s a rare talk in that I gave it in German, something I’m hardly used to these days.

In it, I argue that IoT poses a number of particular challenges that we need to address (incl. the level of complexity and blurred lines across disciplines and expertise; power dynamics; and transparency). I outline inherent tensions and propose a few approaches on how to tackle them, especially around increasing transparency and legibility of IoT products.

I conclude with a call for Europe to actively take a global leadership role in the area of consumer and data protection, analog to Silicon Valley’s (claimed/perceived) leadership in disruptive innovation as well as funding/scaling of digital products, and to Shenzhen’s hardware manufacturing leadership.

Netzpolitik has an extensive write-up in German.

Update: Netzpolitik also recorded an interview with me: Regulierung und Datenschutz im Internet der Dinge.

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