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4 Ways Your Google Searches And Social Media Affect Your Opportunities In Life

Written by Lorna McGregor, Daragh Murray and Vivian Ng 

1. Calculating credit scores

2. Job searches

3. Parole and bail decisions

It’s not clear exactly what data is used to help make these assessments, but as the move toward digital policing gathers pace, it’s increasingly likely that these programmes will incorporate open source information such as social medial activity - if they don’t already.

These assessments may not just look at a person’s profile, but also how their compares to others’. Some police forces have historically over-policed certain minority communities, leading to a disproportionate number of reported criminal incidents. If this data is fed into an algorithm, it will distort the risk assessment models and result in discrimination which directly affects a person’s right to liberty.

4. Vetting visa applications

The programme was recently withdrawn, reportedly on the basis that “there was no ‘out-of-the-box’ software that could deliver the quality of monitoring the agency wanted”. But including such goals in procurement documents can create bad incentives for the tech industry to develop programmes that are discriminatory-by-design. There’s no question that big data analytics works in ways that can affect individuals’ opportunities in life. But the lack of transparency about how big data are collected, used and shared makes it difficult for people to know what information is used, how, and when. Big data analytics are simply too complicated for individuals to be able to protect their data from inappropriate use. Instead, states and companies must make – and follow – regulations to ensure that their use of big data doesn’t lead to discrimination.


Lorna McGregor, Director, Human Rights Centre, PI and Co-Director, ESRC Human Rights, Big Data and Technology Large Grant, University of Essex; Daragh Murray, Lecturer in International Human Rights Law at Essex Law School, University of Essex, and Vivian Ng, Senior Researcher in Human Rights, University of Essex

Books by these Authors:

Transitional Justice from Below: Grassroots Activism and the Struggle for Change (Human Rights Law in Perspective) Publisher: Hart Publishing
List Price: $80.95


Human Rights Obligations of Non-State Armed Groups (Studies in International Law) Author: Daragh Murray
List Price: $103.00


Practitioners' Guide to Human Rights Law in Armed Conflict List Price: $150.00
 Category: Justice / Privacy and Security
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