Seizing the opportunity to improve Uganda’s national digital ID system

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Seizing the opportunity to improve Uganda’s national digital ID system

In 2014, Uganda introduced its first national digital ID system. Now, a decade later, as millions of ID cards are set to expire, the Government is planning a significant upgrade of the system and will soon begin a mass enrollment exercise to register all unregistered Ugandans. Given that many exclusions and harms have arisen from the current digital ID system, the Government’s plans to roll out a new system represent a key opportunity to learn from past experiences and ensure that the new system is more inclusive, equitable, and privacy-protecting.

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In this document, we raise 5 urgent recommendations that the Government must adopt to put Uganda on the path towards a digital ID system that centers inclusion, equity, privacy, transparency, and accountability. Drawing on research and lessons learned from Uganda’s existing national digital ID system, as well as incorporating lessons from other countries’ experiences and from international best practices, we recommend that the Government should:

  • Improve communication and transparency about plans for the new digital ID;
  • Proactively facilitate participation, particularly of vulnerable communities and of civil society organizations, in policy and design choices;
  • Conduct a comprehensive Human Rights Impact Assessment to identify risks arising from the ID system and the registration process;
  • Take steps to ensure that marginalized and vulnerable groups are proactively included in enrollment and renewal processes;
  • Put in place concrete plans for a transition period to ensure that no rights are violated as the Government works to introduce new digital components

This is not intended to be an exhaustive list but instead focuses on short-term, actionable recommendations that will help concretely improve the Government’s approach in the immediate term and avoid further entrenching the well-documented problems and weaknesses that have affected the current system.

July 25, 2024. 

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July 24, 2024 Youssef Farhat Product  

Carbon Markets, Forests and Rights: An Introductory Series for Indigenous Peoples

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

Carbon Markets, Forests and Rights

An Introductory Series for Indigenous Peoples

Indigenous peoples are experiencing a rush of interest in their lands and territories from actors involved in carbon markets. Many indigenous communities have expressed that to make informed decisions about how to engage with carbon markets, they need accessible information about what these markets are, and how participating in them may affect their rights.

In response to this demand for information, the Global Justice Clinic and the Forest Peoples Programme have developed a series of introductory materials about carbon markets. The materials were initially developed for GJC partner the South Rupununi District Council in Guyana and have been adapted for a global audience.

English
French
Spanish
Indonesian
Portuguese

The explainer materials can be read in any order:

  • Explainer 1 introduces key concepts that are essential background to understanding carbon markets. It introduces what climate change is, what the carbon cycle and carbon dioxide is, and the link between carbon dioxide, forests and climate change. 
  • Explainer 2 outlines what carbon markets and carbon credits are, and provides a brief introduction to why these markets are developing and how they function
  • Explainer 3 focuses on indigenous peoples’ rights and carbon markets. It highlights some of the particular risks that carbon markets pose to indigenous peoples and communities. It also highlights key questions communities should ask themselves as they consider how to engage with or respond to carbon markets
  • Explainer 4 provides an overview of the key environmental critiques and concerns around carbon markets
  • Explainer 5 provides a short introduction to ART-TREES. ART-TRESS is an institution and standard that is involved in ‘certifying’ carbon credits and that is gaining a lot of attention internationally.
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May 30, 2024 Dev Account Product  

Poor Enough for the Algorithm? Exploring Jordan’s Poverty Targeting System

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Poor Enough for the Algorithm? Exploring Jordan’s Poverty Targeting System

The Jordanian government is using an algorithm to rank social protection applicants from least poor to poorest, as part of a poverty alleviation program. While helpful to those individuals who receive aid, the system is excluding beneficiaries in need, as it is failing to accurately reflect the complex realities of poverty. It uses an outdated poverty measure, weights imperfect indicators—such as utility consumption—and relies on a static view of socioeconomic status.

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On November 28, 2023, the Digital Welfare State and Human Rights project hosted the sixteenth episode in the Transformer States conversation series on Digital Government and Human Rights. Victoria Adelmant and Katelyn Cioffi interviewed Hiba Zayadin, a senior researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), about a report published by HRW on the Jordanian government’s use of an algorithmic system to rank applicants for a welfare program based on their poverty level, using data like electricity usage and car ownership. This blog highlights key issues related to the system’s inability to reflect the complexities of poverty and its algorithmic exclusion of individuals in need.

The context behind Jordan’s poverty targeting program 

‘Poverty targeting’ is generally understood to mean directing social program benefits towards those most in need, with the aim of efficiently using limited government resources and improving living conditions for the poorest individuals. This approach entails the collection of wide-ranging information about socioeconomic circumstances, often through in-depth surveys and interviews, to enable means testing or proxy means testing. Some governments have adopted an approach in which beneficiaries are ‘ranked’ from richest to poorest, and target aid only to those falling below a certain threshold. The World Bank has long advocated for poverty targeting in social assistance. For example, since 2003, the World Bank has supported Brazil’s Bolsa Família program, which is a program targeted at the poorest 40% of the population. 

Increasingly, the World Bank has turned to new technologies to seek to improve the accuracy of poverty targeting programs. It has provided funding to many countries for data-driven, algorithm-enabled solutions to enhance targeting. Similar programs have been implemented in countries including Jordan, Mauritania, Palestine, Morocco, Iraq, Tunis, Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon.

Launched in 2019 with World Bank support, Jordan’s Takaful program, an automated cash transfer program, provides monthly support to families (roughly US $56 to $192) to mitigate poverty. Managed by the National Aid Fund, the program targets the more than 24% of Jordan’s population that falls under the poverty line. The Takaful program has been especially welcome in Jordan, in light of rising living costs. However, policy choices underpinning this program have excluded many individuals who are in need: eligibility restrictions limit access solely to Jordanian nationals, such that the program does not cover registered Syrian refugees, Palestinians without Jordanian passports, migrant workers, and the non-Jordanian families of Jordanian women—since Jordanian women cannot pass on citizenship to their children. Initial phases of the program entailed broader eligibility, but criteria were tightened in subsequent iterations.

Mismatch between the Takaful program’s indicators and the reality of people’s lives

In addition, further exclusions have arisen because of the operation of the algorithmic system used in the program. When a person applies to Takaful, the system first determines eligibility by checking whether an applicant is a citizen and whether they are under the poverty line. It subsequently employs an algorithm, relying on 57 socioeconomic indicators, to rank people from least poor to poorest. The National Aid Fund uses existing databases as well as applicants’ answers to a questionnaire – that they must fill out online. Indicators include household size, geographic location, utilities consumption, ownership of businesses, and car ownership. It is unclear how these indicators are weighted, but the National Aid Fund has admitted that some indicators will lead to the automatic exclusion of applicants from the Takaful program. Applicants who own a car that is less than five years old or a business valued at over 3000 Jordanian Dinars, for instance, are automatically excluded. 

In its recent report, HRW highlights a number of shortcomings of the algorithmic system deployed in the Takaful program, critiquing its inability to reflect the complex and dynamic nature of poverty. The system, HRW argues, uses an outdated poverty measure, and embeds many problematic assumptions. For example, the algorithm gives some weight to whether an applicant owns a car. However, there are cars in people’s names that they do not actually own; some people own cars that broke down long ago, but they cannot afford to repair them. Additionally, the algorithm assumes that higher electricity and water consumption indicates that a family is less vulnerable. However, poorer households in Jordan in many cases actually have higher consumption—a 2020 survey showed that almost 75% of low- to middle-income households lived in apartments with poor thermal insulation.

Furthermore, this algorithmic system is designed on the basis of a single assessment of socioeconomic circumstances at a fixed point in time. But poverty is not static; people’s lives change and their level of need fluctuates. Another challenge is the unpredictability of aid: in this conversation with CHRGJ’s Digital Welfare State and Human Rights team, Hiba shared the story of a new mother who had been suddenly and unexpectedly cut off from the Takaful program, precisely when she was most in need.

At a broader level, introducing an algorithmic system such as this can also exacerbate information asymmetries. HRW’s report highlights issues concerning opacity in algorithmic decision-making—both for government officials themselves and those subject to the algorithm’s decisions—such that it is more difficult to understand how decisions are being made within this system.

Recommendations to improve the Takaful program

Given these wide-ranging implications, HRW’s primary recommendation is to move away from poverty targeting algorithms and toward universal social protection, which could cost under 1% of the country’s GDP. This could be funded through existing resources, tackling tax avoidance, implementing progressive taxes, and leveraging the influence of the World Bank to guide governments towards sustainable solutions. 

When asked during this conversation whether the algorithm used in the Takaful program could be improved, Hiba noted that a technically perfect algorithm executing a flawed policy will still lead to negative outcomes. She argued that it is the policy itself – the attempt to rank people from least poor to poorest – that is prone to exclusion errors, and warns that technology may be shiny, promising to make targeting accurate, effective, and efficient, but that it can also be a distraction from the policy issues at hand.

Thus, instead of flattening economic realities and leading to the exclusion of people who are, in reality, in immense need, Hiba recommended that support be provided inclusively and universally—to everyone during vulnerable stages of life, regardless of their income and their wealth. Therefore, rather than focusing on using technology that will enable ever-more precise targeting, Jordan should focus on embracing solutions that allow for more universal social protection.

Additional resources

Rebecca Kahn, JD program, NYU School of Law;  and  Human Rights Scholar at the Digital Welfare State & Human Rights project. Her research interests relate to responsible AI governance, digital rights, and consumer protection. She previously worked in the U.S. House and Senate as a legislative staffer.

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February 19, 2024 Youssef Farhat Event Summary  

Co-creating a Shared Human Rights Agenda for AI Regulation and the Digital Welfare State

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Co-creating a Shared Human Rights Agenda for AI Regulation and the Digital Welfare State

On September 26, 2023, the Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU Law and Amnesty Tech’s Algorithmic Accountability Lab (AAL) brought together 50 participants from civil society organizations across the globe to discuss the use and regulation of artificial intelligence in the public sector, within a collaborative online strategy session entitled ‘Co-Creating a Shared Human Rights Agenda for AI and the Digital Welfare State.’ Participants spanned diverse geographies and contexts—from Nigeria to Chile, and from Pakistan to Brazil—and included organizations working across a broad spectrum of human rights issues such as privacy, social security, education, and health. Through a series of lightning talks and breakout room discussions, the session surfaced shared concerns regarding the use of AI in public sector contexts, key gaps in existing discussions surrounding AI regulation, and potential joint advocacy opportunities.

Global discussions on the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) have, in many contexts, thus far been preoccupied with whether to place meaningful constraints on the development, sale, and use of AI by private technology companies. Less attention has been paid to the need to place similar constraints on governments’ use of AI. But governments’ enthusiastic adoption of AI across public sector programs and critical public services has been accelerating apace around the world. AI-based systems are consistently tested in spheres where some of the most marginalized and low-income groups are unable to opt out – for instance, machine learning and other technologies are used to detect welfare benefit fraud, to assess vulnerability and determine eligibility for social benefits like housing, and to monitor people on the move. All too often, however, this technological experimentation results in discrimination, restriction of access to key services, privacy violations, and many other human rights harms. As governments eagerly build “digital welfare states,” incorporating AI into critical public services, the scale and severity of potential implications demands that meaningful constraints be placed on these developments. 

In the past few years, a wide array of regulatory and policy initiatives aimed at regulating the development and use of AI have been introduced – in Brazil, China, Canada, the EU, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, among many other countries and policy fora. However, what is emerging from these initiatives is an uneven patchwork of approaches to AI regulation, with concerning gaps and omissions when it comes to public sector applications of AI. Some of the world’s largest economies – where many powerful technology companies are based – are embarking on new regulatory initiatives with impacts far beyond their territorial confines, while many of the groups likely to be most affected have not been given sufficient opportunities to participate in these processes.

Despite these shortcomings, ongoing efforts to craft regulatory regimes do offer a crucial and urgent entry point for civil society organizations to seek to highlight critical gaps, to foster greater participation, and to contribute to shaping future deployments of AI in these important sectors.

In hosting this collaborative event on AI regulation and the digital welfare state, the AAL and the Center sought to build an inclusive space for civil society groups from across regions and sectors to forge new connections, share lessons, and collectively strategize. We sought to expand mobilization and build solidarity by convening individuals from dozens of countries, who work across a wide range of fields – including “digital rights” organizations, but also bringing in human rights and social justice groups who have not previously worked on issues relating to new technologies. Our aim was to brainstorm how actors across the human rights ecosystem can, in practice, help to elevate more voices into ongoing discussions about AI regulation.

Key issues for AI regulation in the digital welfare state

In breakout sessions, participants emphasized the urgent need to address serious harms that are already resulting from governments’ AI uses, particularly in contexts such as border control, policing, the judicial system, healthcare, and social protection. The public narrative – and accelerated impetus for regulation – has been dominated by discussion of existential threats AI may pose in the future, rather than the severe and widespread threats that are already seen in almost every area of public services. In Serbia, the roll-out of Social Cards in the welfare system has excluded thousands of the most marginalized from accessing their social protection entitlements; in Brazil, the deployment of facial recognition in public schools has subjected young children to discriminatory biases and serious privacy risks. Deployments of AI across public services are consistently entrenching inequalities and exacerbating intersecting discrimination – and participants noted that governments’ increasing interest in generative AI, which has the potential to encode harmful racial bias and stereotypes, will likely only intensify these risks.

Participants also noted that it is likely that AI will continue to impact groups that may defy traditional categorizations – including, for instance, those who speak minority languages. Indeed, a key theme across discussions was the insufficient attention paid in regulatory debates to AI’s impacts on culture and language. Given that systems are generally trained only in dominant languages, breakout discussions surfaced concerns about the potential erasure of traditional languages and loss of cultural nuance.

As advocates work not only to remedy some of these existing harms, but also to anticipate the impacts of the next iterations of AI, many expressed concern about the dominant role that the private sector plays in governments’ roll-outs of AI systems, as well as in discussions surrounding regulation. Where tech companies – who are often protected by powerful lobby groups, commercial confidentiality, and intellectual property regimes – are selling combinations of software, hardware, and technical guidance to governments, this can pose significant transparency challenges. It can be difficult for civil society organizations and affected individuals to understand who is providing these systems, as well as to understand how decisions are made. In the welfare context, for example, beneficiaries are often unaware of whether and how AI systems are making highly consequential decisions about their entitlements. Participants noted that human rights actors need the capacity and resources to move beyond traditional human rights work, to engage with processes such as procurement, standard-setting, and auditing, and to address issues related to intellectual property regimes and proliferating public-private partnerships underlying governments’ uses of AI.

These issues are compounded by the fact that, in many instances, AI-based systems are designed and built in countries such as the US and then marketed and sold to governments around the world for use across critical public services. Often, these systems are not designed with sensitivity to local contexts, cultures, and languages, nor with cognizance of how the technology will interface with the political, social, and economic landscape where it is deployed. In addition, civil society organizations face additional barriers when seeking transparency and access to information from foreign companies. As AI regulation efforts advance, a failure to consider potential extraterritorial harms will leave a significant accountability gap and risk deepening global inequalities. Many participants therefore noted both the importance of ensuring that regulation in countries where tech companies are based includes diverse voices and addresses extraterritorial impacts, but also to ensure that Global North models of regulation, which may not be fit for purpose, are not automatically “exported.”

A way forward

The event ended with a strategizing session that revealed the diverse strengths of the human rights movement and multiple areas for future work. Several specific and urgent calls to action emerged from these discussions.

First, given the disproportionate impacts of governments’ AI deployments on marginalized communities, a key theme was the need for broader participation in discussions on emerging AI regulation. This includes specially protected groups such as indigenous peoples, minoritized ethnic and racial groups, immigrant communities, people with disabilities, women’s rights activists, children, and LGBTQ+ groups, to name just a few. Without learning from and elevating the perspectives and experiences of these groups, regulatory initiatives will fail to address the full scope of the realities of AI. We must therefore develop participatory methodologies that bring the voices of communities into key policy spaces. More routes to meaningful consultation would lead to greater power and autonomy for previously marginalized voices to shape a more human rights-centric agenda for AI regulation. 

Second, the unique impacts that public sector use of AI can have on human rights, especially for marginalized groups, demands a comprehensive approach to AI regulation that takes careful account of specific sectors. Regulatory regimes that fail to include meaningful sector-specific safeguards for areas such as health, education, and social security will fail to address the full range of AI related harms. Participants noted that existing tools and mechanisms can provide a starting point – such as consultation and testing requirements, specific prohibitions on certain kinds of systems, requirements surrounding proportionality, mandatory human rights impact assessments, transparency requirements, periodic evaluations, and supervision mechanisms.

Finally, there was a shared desire to build stronger solidarity across a wider range of actors, and a call to action for more effective collaborations. Participants from around the world were keen to share resources, partner on specific advocacy goals, and exchange lessons learned. Since participants focus on many diverse issues, and adopt different approaches to achieve better human rights outcomes, collaboration will allow us to draw on a much deeper pool of collective knowledge, methodologies, and networks. It will be especially critical to bridge silos between those who identify more as “digital rights” organizations and groups working on issues such as healthcare, or migrants’ rights, or on the rights of people with disabilities. Elevating the work of grassroots groups, and improving diversity and representation among those empowered to enter spaces where key decisions around AI regulation are made, should also be central in movement-building. 

There is also an urgent need for more exchange not only across the human rights ecosystem, but also with actors from other disciplines who bring different forms of technical expertise, such as engineers and public interest technologists. Given the barriers to entry to regulatory spaces – including the resources, long-term commitment, and technical vocabularies imposed – effective coalition-building and information sharing could help to lessen these burdens.

While this event brought together a fantastic and energetic group of advocates from dozens of countries, these takeaways reflect the views of only a small subset of the relevant stakeholders in these debates. We ended the session hopeful, but with the recognition that there is a great deal more work needed to allow for the full participation of affected communities from around the world. Moving forward, we aim to continue to create spaces for varied groups to self-organize, continue the dialogue, and share information. We will help foster collaborations and concretely support organizations in building new partnerships across sectors and geographies, and hope to continue to co-create a shared human rights agenda for AI regulation for the digital welfare state.

As we continue this work and seek to support efforts and build collaborations, we would love to hear from you – please get in touch if you are interested in joining these efforts.

November 14, 2023. Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project at NYU Law Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and Amnesty Tech’s Algorithmic Accountability Lab. 
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November 14, 2023 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized  

Regulating Artificial Intelligence in Brazil

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

Regulating Artificial Intelligence in Brazil

On May 25, 2023, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice’s Technology & Human Rights team hosted an event entitled Regulating Artificial Intelligence: The Brazilian Approach, in the fourteenth episode of the “Transformer States” interview series on digital government and human rights. This in-depth conversation with Professor Mariana Valente, a member of the Commission of Jurists created by the Brazilian Senate to work on a draft bill to regulate artificial intelligence, raised timely questions about the specificities of ongoing regulatory efforts in Brazil. These developments in Brazil may have significant global implications, potentially inspiring other more creative, rights-based, and socio-economically grounded regulation of emerging technologies in the Global South.

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In recent years, numerous initiatives to regulate and govern Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems have arisen in Brazil. First, there was the Brazilian Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (EBIA), launched in 2021. Second, legislation known as Bill 21/20, which sought to specifically regulate AI, was approved by the House of Representatives in 2021. And in 2022, a Commission of Jurists was appointed by the Senate to draft a substitute bill on AI. This latter initiative holds significant promise. While the EBIA and Bill 21/20 were heavily criticized for the limited value given to public input in comparison to the available participatory and multi-stakeholder mechanisms, the Commission of Jurists took specific precautions to be more open to public input. Their proposed alternative draft legislation, which is grounded in Brazil’s socio-economic realities and legal tradition, may inspire further legal regulation of AI, especially for the Global South, considering Brazil’s position in other discussions related to internet and technology governance.

Bill 21/20 was the first bill directed specifically at AI. But this was a very minimal bill; it effectively established that regulating AI should be the exception. It was also based on a decentralized model, meaning that each economic sector would regulate its own applications of AI: for example, the federal agency dedicated to regulating the healthcare sector would regulate AI applications in that sector. There were no specific obligations or sanctions for the companies developing or employing AI, and there were some guidelines for the government on how it should promote the development of AI. Overall, the bill was very friendly to the private sector’s preference for the most minimal regulation possible. The bill was quickly approved in the House of Representatives, without public hearings or much public attention.

It is important to note that this bill does not exist in isolation. There is other legislation that applies to AI in the country, such as consumer law and data protection law, as well as the Marco Civil da Internet (Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet). These existing laws have been leveraged by civil society to protect people from AI harms. For example, Instituto Brasileiro de Defesa do Consumidor (IDEC), a consumer rights organization, successfully brought a public civil action using consumer protection legislation against Via Quatro, a private company responsible for the subway line 4-Yellow of Sao Paulo. The company was fined R$500,000 for collecting and processing individuals’ biometric data for advertising purposes without informed consent.

But, given that Bill 21/20 sought to specifically address the regulation of AI, academics and NGOs raised concerns that it would reduce the legal protections afforded in Brazil: it “gravely undermines the exercise of fundamental rights such as data protection, freedom of expression and equality” and “fails to address the risks of AI, while at the same time facilitating a laissez-faire approach for the public and private sectors to develop, commercialize and operate systems that are far from trustworthy and human-centric (…) Brazil risks becoming a playground for irresponsible agents to attempt against rights and freedoms without fearing for liability for their acts.”

As a result, the Senate decided that instead of voting on Bill 21/20, they would create a Commission of Jurists to propose a new bill.

The Commission of Jurists and the new bill

The Commission of Jurists was established in April 2022 and delivered its final report in December 2022. Even if the establishment of the Commission was considered a positive development, it was not exempt from criticism from civil society, for the lack of racial and regional diversity of the Commission’s membership, as well as the need for different areas of knowledge to contribute to the debate. This criticism comes from a reflection of the socio-economic realities of Brazil, which is one of the most unequal countries in the world, and those inequalities are intersectional, considering race, gender, income, territorial origin. Therefore, AI applications will have different effects on different segments of the population. This is already clear from the use of facial recognition in public security: more than 90% of the individuals arrested using this technology were Black. Another example is the use of an algorithm to evaluate requests for emergency aid amid the pandemic, where many vulnerable people had their benefits denied based on incorrect data.

During its mandate, the Commission of Jurists held public hearings, invited specialists from different areas of knowledge, and developed a public consultation mechanism allowing for written proposals. Following this process, the new proposed bill had several elements that were very different from Bill 21/20. First, the new bill borrows from the EU’s AI Act by adopting a risk-based approach: obligations are distinguished according to the risks they pose. However, the new bill, following the Brazilian tradition of structuring regulation from the perspective of individual and collective rights, merges the European risk-based approach with a rights-based approach. The bill confers individual and collective rights that apply in relation to all AI systems, independent of the level of risk they pose.

Secondly, the new bill includes some additional obligations for the public sector, considering its differential impact on people’s rights. For example, there is a ban on the treatment of racial information, and provisions on public participation in decisions regarding the adoption of these systems. Importantly, though the Commission discussed the inclusion of a complete ban on facial recognition technologies in public spaces for public security, this proposal was not included: instead, the bill included a moratorium, establishing that a law must be approved regulating this use.

What the future holds for AI regulation in Brazil

After the Commission submitted its report, in May 2023 the president of the Senate presented a new bill for AI regulation replicating the Commission’s proposal. On 16th August 2023, the Senate established a temporary internal commission to discuss the different proposals for AI regulation that have been presented in the Senate to date.

It is difficult to predict what will happen following the end of the internal commission’s work, as political decisions will shape the next developments. However, what is important to have in mind is the progress that the discussion has reached so far, from an initial bill that was very minimal in scope, and supported the idea of minimal regulation, to one that is much more protective of individual and collective rights and considerate of Brazil’s particular socio-economic realities. Brazil has played an important progressive role historically in global discussions on the regulation of emerging technologies, for example with the discussions of its Marco Civil da Internet. As Mariana Valente put it, “Brazil has had in the past a very strong tradition of creative legislation for regulating technologies.” The Commission of Jurists’ proposal repositions Brazil in such a role.

September 28, 2023. Marina Garrote, LLM program, NYU School of Law whose research interests lie at the intersection of digital rights and social justice. Marina holds a bachelor and master’s degree from Universidade de São Paulo and previously worked at Data Privacy Brazil, a civil society association dedicated to public interest research on digital rights.

https://vimeo.com/51589652
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September 28, 2023 Dev Account Uncategorized  

Contesting the Foundations of Digital Public Infrastructure

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Contesting the Foundations of Digital Public Infrastructure

What Digital ID Litigation Can Tell Us About the Future of Digital Government and Society

Many governments and international organizations have embraced the transformative potential of ‘digital public infrastructure’—a concept that refers to large-scale digital platforms run by or supported by governments, such as digital ID, digital payments, or data exchange platforms. However, many of these platforms remain heavily contested, and recent legal challenges in several countries have vividly demonstrated some of the risks and limitations of existing approaches.

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In this short explainer, we discuss four case studies from Uganda, Mexico, Kenya, and Serbia, in which civil society organizations have brought legal challenges to contest initiatives to build digital public infrastructure. What connects the experiences in these countries is that efforts to introduce new national-scale digital platforms have had harmful impacts on the human rights of marginalized groups—impacts that, the litigants argue, were disregarded as governments rolled out these digital infrastructures, and which are wholly disproportionate to the purported benefits that these digital systems are supposed to bring.

These four examples therefore hold important lessons for policymakers, highlighting the urgent need for effective safeguards, mitigations, and remedies as the development and implementation of digital public infrastructure continues to accelerate.

The explainer document builds upon discussions we had during an event we hosted, entitled “Contesting the Foundations of Digital Public Infrastructure: What Digital ID Litigation Can Tell Us About the Future of Digital Government and Society,” where we brought together the civil society actors who have been litigating these four different cases.

August 28, 2023. Katelyn Cioffi, Victoria Adelmant, Danilo Ćurčić, Brian Kiira, Grecia Macías, and Yasah Musa

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August 28, 2023 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized  

Shaping Digital Identity Standards: An Explainer and Recommendations on Technical Standard-Setting for Digital Identity Systems.

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Shaping Digital Identity Standards

An Explainer and Recommendations on Technical Standard-Setting for Digital Identity Systems.

In April 2023, we submitted comments to the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to contribute to its Guidelines on Digital Identity. Given that the NIST guidelines are very technical — the Guidelines are written for a specialist audience — we published this short “explainer” document with the hope of providing a resource to empower other civil society organizations and public interest lawyers, to engage with technical standards-setting bodies to raise human rights concerns related to digitalization in the future. This document therefore sets out the importance of standards bodies, provides an accessible “explainer” on the Digital Identity Guidelines, and summarizes our comments and recommendations.

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The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is a prominent and powerful standards body. Its standards are influential, shaping the design of digital systems in the United States and elsewhere. Over the past few years, NIST has been in the process of creating and updating a set of official Guidelines on Digital Identity, which “present the process and technical requirements for meeting digital identity management assurance levels … including requirements for security and privacy as well as considerations for fostering equity and the usability of digital identity solutions and technology.”

The primary audiences for the Guidelines are IT professionals and senior administrators in U.S. federal agencies that utilize, maintain, or develop digital identity technologies to advance their mission. The Guidelines fall under a wider NIST initiative to design a Roadmap on Identity Access and Management that explores topics like accelerating adoption of mobile drivers licenses, expanding biometric measurement programs, promoting interoperability, and modernizing identity management for U.S. federal government employees and contractors.

This technical guidance is particularly influential, as it shapes decision-making surrounding the design and architecture of digital identity systems. Biometrics and identity and security companies frequently cite their compliance with NIST standards to promote their technology and to convince governments to purchase their hardware and software products to build digital identity systems. Other technical standards bodies look to NIST and cite NIST standards. These technical guidelines thus have a great deal of influence well beyond the United States, affecting what is deemed acceptable or not within digital identity systems, such as how and when biometrics can be used. . 

Such technical standards are therefore of vital relevance to all those who are working on digital identity. In particular, these standards warrant the attention of civil society organizations and groups who are concerned with the ways in which digital identity systems have been associated with discrimination, denial of services, violations of privacy and data protection, surveillance, and other human rights violations. Through this explainer, we hope to provide a resource that can be helpful to such organizations, enabling and encouraging them to contribute to technical standard-setting processes in the future and to bring human rights considerations and recommendations into the standards that shape the design of digital systems. 

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June 1, 2023 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized  

Comments on Draft of the NIST Digital Identity Guidelines, Special Publication 800-63-4

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Comments on Draft of the NIST Digital Identity Guidelines, Special Publication 800-63-4

In April 2023, the Digital Welfare State & Human Rights Project at the Center along with the Institute for Law, Innovation & Technology (iLIT) at Temple University, Beasley School of Law submitted comments to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in response to a consultation regarding their draft Digital Identity Guidelines.

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In formulating these comments, we drew on examples from many other countries and contexts beyond the United States. After all, these Guidelines have the potential to shape the development not only of the digital ID systems that will be used by U.S. federal agencies, but also of digital ID systems around the world, given that NIST publications serve as a reference point and source of legitimization globally. Drawing on a global evidence base of the impacts of digital ID systems, our contribution to the consultation seeks to ensure that the Guidelines accurately identify and guard against some of the most acute risks of harm, particularly for those who are already experiencing marginalization and discrimination. We hope that our comments will provide actionable guidance to ensure that digital identity systems fulfill the central goal of advancing equity.

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May 1, 2023 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized  

Prominent human rights expert admitted as amicus curiae in groundbreaking legal challenge to Ugandan national digital ID system

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

Prominent human rights expert admitted as amicus curiae in groundbreaking legal challenge to Ugandan national digital ID system

Today, at the High Court of Uganda in Kampala, the Hon. Justice Boniface Wamala issued a decision to admit the application of Professor Philip Alston of New York University School of Law to participate as amicus curiae, or ‘friend of the court’, in a petition for the enforcement of human rights challenging the use of the country’s national digital ID system as a pre-condition to access to public services.

The admission of the amicus application is a critical development in this groundbreaking litigation, the latest in a series of legal challenges that have raised concerns about national digital ID systems in countries including India, Kenya, and Jamaica. This case is one of the first globally to center concerns around social and economic rights. The applicants, three Ugandan civil society organizations, argue that the national digital ID system suffers from persistent and severe gaps in coverage, and its integration with the country’s social welfare programs has resulted in the exclusion of vulnerable and marginalized individuals from fundamental services such as social protection and healthcare.

“Given the importance of the national digital ID system and its mandatory usage, it is imperative that it is fully inclusive. All Ugandans, regardless of age or economic status, must be able to access their social welfare benefits,” said Professor Alston. “Today’s decision by the High Court is an important and welcome step in that direction.”

In a 32-page brief, Professor Alston seeks to assist the court in analyzing some of the novel legal questions at the heart of the case. He calls attention to the obligations of the Government of Uganda under international human rights law, the serious consequences that digital and non-digital barriers to public services may have on the enjoyment of rights, and the high burden of proof that falls on the government to justify any measure that leads to exclusion. The brief also emphasizes the need to ensure equal treatment and non-discrimination in the enjoyment of these rights, particularly given the high risk that any negative impacts of the digital ID system will continue to fall disproportionately on poor and marginalized groups.

“As many governments turn to digital ID systems to mediate access to essential public services, there is an urgent need for courts to ensure the protection of economic and social rights,” said Professor Alston.

Setting aside the objections of the two government respondents, the Attorney General and the National Identification & Registration Authority, Judge Boniface Wamala stated that the “positive benefits of the intervention as amicus curiae outweighs any possible opposition from the parties in the main cause. It is in public interest, the interest of justice, the protection and progressive development of human rights and socio-economic reform that the leave sought in the application is granted.”

“The court and by extension the multitude of Ugandans whose human rights the main petition is fighting to protect shall benefit from the input and expertise that Prof. Philip shall contribute in its adjudication,” said Counsel Elijah Enyimu, who represented Professor Alston. “The contents of the amicus brief shall be elucidatory on the standards and protections necessary for the realization of ESCR in Uganda.”

The Applicants and Respondents will be back in court to argue their cases on April 5, 2023. In the meantime, those who have missed out on social protection payments or been turned away from health centers due to their inability to access the national digital ID will continue to wait for a judicial decision.

This post was originally published as a press statement on March 24, 2023. 

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March 24, 2023 Dev Account Uncategorized  

The Aadhaar Mirage: A Second Look at the World Bank’s “Model” for Digital ID Systems

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

The Aadhaar Mirage: A Second Look at the World Bank’s “Model” for Digital ID Systems 

Drawing inspiration from India’s Aadhaar system, the World Bank is promoting a dangerous digital ID model in the name of providing “a legal identity for all.” But rather than providing a model, Aadhaar is merely a mirage—an illusion of inclusiveness, accuracy, and universal identity.

Last month saw the publication of a report on the World Bank’s ill-conceived approach to digital ID, described as “essential reading for all concerned about human rights and development” by former UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Philip Alston. As the press release summarizes:

“Governments around the world have been investing heavily in digital identification systems, often with biometric components (digital ID). The rapid proliferation of such systems is driven by a new development consensus, packaged and promoted by key global actors like the World Bank, but also by governments, foundations, vendors, and consulting firms. This new ‘manufactured consensus’ holds that digital ID can contribute to inclusive and sustainable development—and is even a prerequisite for the realization of human rights.”

The report argues that India’s digital identification system has been central to the formation and promotion of this consensus. This has also been increasingly clear to me in my experience as an economist and identity management consultant who has provided advisory services to the World Bank. For the World Bank—and particularly its Identification for Development (ID4D) cross-sectoral practice—the Indian system, named Aadhaar, has become the singular answer to development and a key source of inspiration. This continues irrespective of the body of evidence which shows how poorly a “fit” the Aadhaar system is for identity management in India, and even more so elsewhere. Aadhaar represents a mirage: it is not evidencing the universality, inclusiveness, unprecedented enrollment speed, meaningful legal identity, nor accuracy that it is claimed to represent.

The World Bank’s own data on the completeness of ID systems displays the “20/80-rule”: the overwhelming odds are that digital ID systems not building on a functional civil registration system (in which births, deaths, marriages and so forth are recorded) will exclude 20% or more of (mostly vulnerable) people, or they will take at least 80 years to cover all. Many developing countries often abandon underperforming ID-systems obtained at great cost, only to launch new and even more sophisticated systems. Instead of using existing service infrastructure for civil registration, new digital ID systems are rolled out through a quick fix “mobile campaign,” held once or twice, with mobile enrollment kits and temporary enrollment staff. But this invariably leaves a coverage and service void behind.

But what about Aadhaar, then? Hasn’t Aadhaar enrolled almost all of the Indian population (1.29 billion by March 2021, out of 1.39 billion), in just a decade (from September 2010­), at minimal cost (USD $1.60/enrollment)? If one believes the data from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), then yes. But independent data are unavailable; UIDAI controls the message—even the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) had to use UIDAI data for its first ever audit of Aadhaar. Still, CAG found that UIDAI’s operational and financial management have been utterly deficient. Claims about Aadhaar’s impressive coverage and universality might, then, be questionable. Neither is the database accurate: the Aadhaar system has no way of weeding out dead enrollees (about 80 million in 10 years) or people leaving India (including Indian citizens). CAG also found UIDAI’s digital archiving and its collection and storage of the physical documents that back up enrollments to be inadequate.

Furthermore, claims about the uniqueness guaranteed by biometric technologies within Aadhaar are also illusory. There is no uniqueness for the approximately 25 million children under five years old enrolled in the database. Multiple Aadhaars were issued to the same persons, while different Aadhaar numbers associated with the same biometric data were issued to multiple people. Fingerprint authentication success for 2020-21 was only (an unverifiable) 74-76%. This may well be the canary in the coalmine, indicating exaggerated coverage claims for Aadhaar. Indeed, a Privacy International study explains the very statistical impossibility of a unique biometric profile in a population of 1.39 billion people. Rather, each Indian person has an average of 17,500 indistinguishable biometric “doubles.”

These claims about the benefits of biometrics have far-reaching implications as Aadhaar is linked to other areas of governance. A new law provides for the use of Aadhaar to verify the electoral roll. Weeding out “ghost entries” when the uniqueness and de-duplicated nature of the Aadhaar database is disproved is a doomed exercise, and represents another potential threat to India’s democracy.

Aadhaar’s “big numbers” are a mirage too. Proponents claim that over a billion were newly enrolled at record speed at low cost. But this is not as unprecedented as is suggested. For elections in India, 900 million voters are registered or verified every five years—which tops Aadhaar’s enrollment accomplishment. And India’s bureaucracy has long provided multiple forms of documentation; for proof of identity, date of birth, and address, enrollees can choose from a menu of no less than 106 valid documents. Less than 3 in 10,000 enrollees lacked valid ID prior to Aadhaar enrollment by 2016. The Aadhaar system is a duplication which simply adds on biometrics—which, as we saw, are not the holy grail they are claimed to be. To suggest that other countries, which do not have this multitude of breeder documents and existing enrollment capacities, can copy the Aadhaar approach and obtain widespread coverage, is an illusion.

In respect of claims that Aadhaar brings down costs and increases efficiencies: these costs are applicable only in India. I have found that digital ID systems in many African countries cost 5 to 10 times more per capita than India’s ID system. The high failure rates of ID-systems in many developing countries add to the unbearable costs for poorer countries and their more vulnerable people.

This cries out for a better identity management model—one that is centered around citizenship, with civil registration as the foundation, which seeks to guarantee rights. A model closer to northern European identity management systems comes to mind, or one that is already in use in South Africa. Such systems stand in contrast with Aadhaar, which seeks to side-step the “pesky political issue” of citizenship. This is perhaps the most serious and dangerous element of the mirage: Aadhaar only provides an “economic identity” (with rights limited to government hand-outs, and “voluntary” use for private services), which aims to facilitate economic transactions and private sector service delivery. The UIDAI, then, insists that Aadhaar has “nothing to do with the citizenship issue.”

But Aadhaar’s “citizenship-blindness” is make-believe. Enrollment into Aadhaar was selective in Assam state, for example, where the issuance of digital ID was linked to citizenship determinations. Suddenly, Aadhaar proved to be an exclusionary “citizenship ID” after all. Aadhaar has dangerously played into worrying trends, such as the Citizenship Amendment Act and widespread lack of proof of citizenship—all while proponents claim that it is a model of how to achieve “legal identity for all.”

Aadhaar proves to be a mirage that we see while traveling on “the road to hell,” which is paved with imaginary intentions and is leading to a deadly development destination. Its presentation as a “model” digital ID system should be urgently reconsidered.

July 14, 2022. Drs. Jaap van der Straaten, MBA, is an economist and identity management consultant. In 2016­–2017, he provided advisory services to the World Bank’s ID4D practice. He has published extensively on Elsevier’s SSRN and ResearchGate.

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July 14, 2022 Dev Account Uncategorized