Vint Cerf suggests GDPR could hurt coronavirus vaccine development
- Reference: 1589528644
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/15/vint_cerf_coronavirus_gdpr/
- Source link:
In an essay written for Indian outlet [1]Medianama titled “Internet Lessons from COVID19”, Cerf – a Google vice-president and chief internet evangelist – opens by pointing out that networks have more than proven their worth by facilitating interactions and economic activity that would otherwise have had to be conducted face-to-face and therefore may not have been conducted at all.
He went on to note that internet access is not universal and to suggest that subsidies could perhaps build the infrastructure to improve coverage.
“Given the rich varieties of Internet-based services aimed at facilitating socially distant economies, it is not hard to argue for policies that encourage more Internet infrastructure,” he said, suggesting global collaboration to improve privacy, security and access to quality multi-lingual content.
And then he offered this observation:
Variations of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are propagating around the world with good intent although implementation has shown some unintended consequences, not least of which may be the ability to share health information that would assist in finding a vaccine against SARS-COV-2.
Cerf says no more on the matter. The Register is aware that GDPR requires researchers to develop the same data management plans as required of commercial entities and that this can be an onerous chore. A March 2020 [2]article in the European Journal Of Human Genetics explains that GDPR means secondary researchers can’t identify individuals and could therefore make it harder to translate research into action.
Cerf’s piece also says he feels “Mobiles and the Internet appear to have roles to play for at least some tracking and tracing system designs” and suggests the current crisis has shown that online education is powerful but needs further evolution.
“More generally, we must imagine other potential global catastrophes and put in place plans to mitigate,” he says as the piece winds up. “The time to agree on best practices for emergency response is before the emergency, not during.”
“We must not allow this pandemic or a future one to become our society’s Titanic.” ®
[1] https://www.medianama.com/2020/05/223-internet-lessons-from-covid19-by-vint-cerf/
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41431-020-0596-x
дух желает, но плоть слаба
The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten
with apologies for an early attempt at rule based machine translation.
Secondary researchers don’t need to identify an individual - if they do then they can go back to the primary researcher, the individual can be told that a secondary researcher wants to contact them and given contact details...
GDPR is there to prevent your data being used without your consent.
It isn't hard to get consent, to use the data only for the purposes stated and to delete it when it's no longer required for those purposes.
It's particularly important to get consent in exceptional circumstances, such as the present, because the last thing you need is people refusing to cooperate or deliberately sabotaging your otherwise worthwhile project.
Vint began his war on privacy [1]long before coronavirus came along. It's just a convenient excuse to rekindle it.
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/20/vint_cerf_privacy_may_be_an_anomaly_online/
The USA has been doing that for two hundred years and look where that's got them.
It's the spirit of the law that should count, not the letter, but you just can't write something that cannot be interpreted in a manner that was not intended. Courts should be there to keep things in the spirit of the law, but they have been undermined by decades of reinterpretations of script.
Unless you have a robust corps of judges who are well versed in the spirit of the law and hell-bent on refusing alternate interpretations, your legal system will break down.
And, on top of those issues, you have the lawmakers who can very well make laws for their own interest or financially-interested parties, instead of making laws that ensure that actual, living, breathing humans* have a chance at a decent living.
* I wrote people first, then realized that, in the USA, corporations have the same rights, so I had to correct that
> IMHO GDPR was to prevent malicious use of personal data.
Who decides what counts as "malicious" use of personal data? The EU? The government? The courts? Google? Facebook?
The GDPR goes some way to putting that decision in the hands of the individual whose data is being used.
Piper paying
Vint Cerf works for Google. Google does not like GDPR.
Re: Piper paying
Yes, but what he says seems to imply that the EU's GDPR isn't a problem but that other legislation inspired by or derived from it may have unintended consequences. For instance, the German phone networks have been providing anonymised phone location data to the Robert Koch Institute to help their modelling for months now and this is okay within the bounds of GDPR, but this might not be possible in other countries.
Elsewhere it should be noted that Google and the other titans have been lobbying intensely to get hold of patient data. This is, in my opinion, an accident waiting to happen as.
As for off-premise commerce: it's been happening for decades with things like catalogues. Just took a bit longer to happen. And we could have had video conferences since the 1970s except that no one thought they were worth the price. Even now, where they are nearly free, it's hard to argue that the video part really adds much.
GDPR 'an onerous chore' says distinguished tech website The Register
Irresistible quote for someone
Re: GDPR 'an onerous chore' says distinguished tech website The Register
Passing a driving test is an onerous chore.
Washing your hands before preparing food is an onerous chore.
Treating a patient or taking them to the toilet and cleaning their bum is an onerous chore.
We do all those things because they are necessary , not because they are easy.
Vint Cerf suggests GDPR could hurt coronavirus vaccine development
plain English: I could "lose" so much money! Can we call Boris and DO SOMETHING?!
Run-away techies pipe dreams meet problem-o-phile reasoning
* With wearables we could collect the health data of millions of individuals
* With these data, we can do research
* With this reseach we could cure
* But, wait, the GDPR prevents us from collecting the data in the first place, ohh the humanity!
* GDPR prolongues
--> never mind the handwaving involved in point 3
And there you have it, the techies cry foul, the media report, an nobody is ever the wiser.
Techies should stick to tech, law people to law; it doesn't bring any good, if suddenly techies decide laws do not apply to them.
Re: Run-away techies pipe dreams meet problem-o-phile reasoning
Robert Koch Institute, in Germany, has an app to collect health data from smart watches to help with diagnosing Corona. The app stays within GDPR, because it has a privacy statement and is opt-in.
The data is anonymised and is used to help them detect early signs of COVID-19.
GDPR gets blamed for making things impossible, when it only makes people actually have to think about what they are doing and to get the correct permissions and to ensure the data is handled accordingly.
I note that,
of all the things Cerf has taken note of, lambasting ISPs for immoral interpretation of the word "unlimited", specifically not making any efforts to improve bandwidth and coverage, and doing their damnedest to ensure that their contracts are as nebulous and incomprehensible as possible while maximizing their profits is nowhere in the list of things that His Cerfness deems an issue.
Obviously, demanding government handouts is the way to go when you've sold out.
Other ways the world would be safer....
1) Locking people up at night.
2) Restricting the top speed of cars to 20mph.
3) Banning activities such as surfing, sailing, swimming, climbing, travelling abroad.
4) Forcing everyone to have implanted ID chips, capable of letting authorities know where everyone is at any time.
etc.
Re: Other ways the world would be safer....
Sounds great, but wouldn't someone please think of the children?
5) Sequencing every citiziens genes and having the government (maybe through a public-private partnership so it is free of charge) select the optimal partner so there are no more disadvantaged birtths is the only way to go!
Re: Other ways the world would be safer....
I can't believe I forgot about the children! Sigh, I must be a pædo apologist!
IMHO GDPR was to prevent malicious use of personal data.
Its time to understand the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law isn't it?