The AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Sciences) Science and Human Rights Coalition organized a 2-day conference on ‘Big Data and Human Rights’ on January 15 and 16 in Washington DC, where Data-Pop Alliance’s co-founders Emmanuel Letouzé and Patrick Vinck participated in panel discussion.
The AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition, created in January 2009, brings together scientists, engineers, and health professionals with human rights leaders and policy makers to consider emerging issues at the nexus of science and human right at their bi-annual Coalition meeting. The January 2015 meeting focused on the topics of Big Data and human rights. The advent of Big Data forces researchers, practitioners, and activists to think deeply about these questions about collection, analysis, and access Big Data can impact human rights and the ways in which human rights principles can provide guidance for responsible data use.
Emmanuel Letouzé participated on the plenary session “Human Rights Implications of Big Data” explaining the ethical, political, and legal questions, risks, and benefits associated with Big Data and its application to human rights issues. He emphasized that human rights, especially the rights to agency and participation, should be considered a key factor in development of, use of, and guidelines surrounding Big Data.
Patrick Vinck moderated the panel entitled “Big Data in the Service of Human Rights: Opportunities and Responsibilities and Closing Remarks.” He discussed the responsibility that actors have to comprehensively examine the benefits and risks associated with the use of Big Data.
Read more about the event Data-Pop’s blog-post: “A new and sometimes awkward relationship” on Big Data and Human Rights Should be Further Explored