CDT’s Written Testimony in Senate Paper Hearing on Privacy & Big Data in Coronavirus Response
Enlisting Big Data in the Fight Against Coronavirus Before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Statement of Michelle Richardson, Director, Privacy and Data Project Center for Democracy and Technology
On behalf of the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), thank you for the opportunity to testify about enlisting big data in the fight against coronavirus.
We commend the committee for holding this paper hearing while usual congressional functions are suspended. Both governmental and corporate responses to the coronavirus are evolving quickly, and Congressional oversight will hopefully encourage best practices while deterring behavior that is unjustifiably risky. It is never too soon to ask whether data use violates privacy, treats people unfairly, or fails to solve the problem for which it was obtained.
Academics, public health officials, and advocacy organizations have already registered their concerns with coronavirus response efforts violating privacy or other human rights. These concerns are only heightened when a government agency is the collector or recipient of the data, the data is individualized, or the data collection or use is mandatory. It’s important to note that these entities and individuals do not categorically oppose all corporate or government collection or use of data in response to the coronavirus. They instead seek to ensure it is conducted in a way that does not risk privacy or human rights.
Coalition Urges Senate Not to Let Companies Waive Financial Regulations for AI
CDT joined AI Now Institute, American Civil Liberties Union, and several organizations dedicated to tech policy, consumer protection, and civil rights in a letter to Senate leadership and the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee opposing the “AI Innovation Labs” language in Sec. 10509 of the CLARITY Act.
As concern about risks and harms related to AI systems continue to grow, a growing chorus of policymakers, industry leaders, and advocates have called for independent AI assessments. This explainer provides an overview of recent proposals for third-party assessment in the United States, including state and federal legislation, executive actions, and industry proposals.
Having third parties assess AI systems might seem like common sense, but crafting effective policies toward this goal can be devilishly tricky. A poorly-constructed ecosystem for third-party assessment could easily fail to consider the most consequential mechanisms of risk, neglect the AI harms that most impact people, or do more to protect AI companies than people.
Not All Guardrails Are Created Equal: Comparing Content Safety and Copyright Filtering
As courts and policymakers work through questions about chatbot liability, they should be wary of analogies that flatten meaningful technical differences. Copyright filtering and safety intervention share real challenges around ambiguity and evasion, but they diverge in what each control must assess, how each manifests over the course of a conversation, and how much can be verified from the outside.
