Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Erroll and Baroness Kidron

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, this amendment has a lot of merit. For some time I have been discussing with certain people who know an awful lot about this, as has the noble Lord, the concept of agency: having control over your own information. It is a very important concept because the GDPR and the Bill are all about data processors looking after your stuff for you, but the real issue is having control over things that affect you. Why, if people are using it to make money out of you or on your behalf, should you not sell them that control in return for better access?

There are many issues around this that might suit a modern world in which your data can be useful, but to you, so that data processors do not just mine it and use it for their own purposes—you have control over it. This amendment has a lot of merit because it gives a foundation for us to start researching this. There is no compulsion here, but it could move us down a line whereby the data subject—the person in the street— suddenly gets some control over what happens when people research things for their own good. We are going to have to give away our location and other things to use most of these apps, so why can we not also control that and decide how to sell it to other people and benefit from it ourselves?

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I, too, support the amendment. I raised this issue at Second Reading and pointed to the work of the ethics committee of the IEEE, which has done a lot of work on this. This is not as blue sky as the noble Lord suggested; this is indeed the direction of travel.

Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Earl of Erroll and Baroness Kidron

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment. There is a huge amount of power in the hands of search engines regarding the way they influence how people think. This could be used as a form of propaganda, as we have seen with the recent rows about fake news. From the point of view of protecting Britain, there could even be some security implications because of the way they could affect how people think. So it is quite a sensible power to have, just in case.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I too support the amendment. I thank the noble Lord for his explanation of what an algorithm is. I always found BBC Bitesize’s explanation rather helpful—a set of rules to solve a problem—along with its corresponding explanation of how an algorithm can go wrong: a set of rules designed for getting dressed that insists on your coat going on before your jumper. This would lead to a great many children arriving at school in sartorial disarray. It helpfully indicates that a set of rules is not benign—it has a purpose and a process, both of which are man or woman-made.

It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of an algorithm. I recently read Weapons of Math Destruction, by Cathy O’Neil, a Harvard PhD and Wall Street quantitative analyst. It goes step by step through the ways in which algorithms—apparently neutral and benign—have the capacity to change lives in huge ways and in an ever-increasing list of scenarios. If wrongly attributed or designed, they can have devastating effects on job prospects, education, financial outcomes or the reputation of an individual, with very little possibility of appeal, correction or compensation.