Do I Spit or Do I Pass?

This study explores privacy concerns perceived by people with respect to having their DNA tested by direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com. Data collected from 510 respondents indicate that those who have already obtained a DTC genetic test have significantly lower levels of privacy and security concerns than those who have not obtained a DTC genetic test. Qualitative data from respondents of both these groups show that the concerns are mostly similar. However, the factors perceived to alleviate privacy concerns are more varied and nuanced amongst those who have obtained a DTC genetic test. Our data suggest that privacy concerns or lack of concerns are based on complex and multiple considerations including data ownership, access control of data and regulatory authorities of social, political and legal systems. Respondents do not engage in a full cost/benefit analysis of having their DNA tested.

Survey Research in Times of Big Data

La encuesta es la técnica de investigación predominante en la investigación en Ciencias Sociales. Sin embargo, la aparición de otras fuentes de datos como las publicaciones en redes sociales o los datos generados por GPS suponen nuevas oportunidades para la investigación. En este escenario, algunas voces han defendido la idea de que, debido a su menor coste y la velocidad a la que se generan, los big data irán sustituyendo progresivamente a los datos de encuesta. Sin embargo, este optimismo contrasta con los problemas de calidad y accesibilidad que presentan los big data como la fata de cobertura de algunos grupos de la población o el acceso restringido a alguna de estas fuentes. Este artículo, a partir de una revisión profunda de la literatura de los últimos años, explora como la cooperación entre los big data y las encuestas resulta en mejoras significativas de la calidad de los datos y una reducción de los costes. Nowadays, while surveys still dominate the research landscape in social sciences, alternative data sources such as social media posts or GPS data open a whole range of opportunities for researchers. In this scenario, some voices advocate for a progressive substitution of survey data. They anticipate that big data, which is cheaper and faster than surveys, will be enough to answer relevant research questions. However, this optimism contrasts with all the quality and accessibility issues associated with big data such as the lack of coverage or data ownership and restricted accessibility. The aim of this paper is to explore how, nowadays, the combination of big data and surveys results in significant improvements in data quality and survey costs.

Austria’s Digital Vaccination Registry: Stakeholder Views and Implications for Governance

In this study, we explore the recent setup of a digital vaccination record in Austria. Working from a social-scientific perspective, we find that the introduction of the electronic vaccination pass was substantially accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our interviews with key stakeholders (n = 16) indicated that three main factors drove this acceleration. The pandemic (1) sidelined historical conflicts regarding data ownership and invoked a shared sense of the value of data, (2) accentuated the need for enhanced administrative efficiency in an institutionally fragmented system, and (3) helped invoke the national vaccination registry as an indispensable infrastructure for public health governance with the potential to innovate its healthcare system in the long term.

Data Ownership: A Survey

The importance of data is increasing along its inflation in our world today. In the big data era, data is becoming a main source for innovation, knowledge and insight, as well as a competitive and financial advantage in the race of information procurement. This interest in acquiring and exploiting data, in addition to the existing concerns regarding the privacy and security of information, raises the question of who should own the data and how the ownership of data can be preserved. This paper discusses and analyses the concept of data ownership and provides an overview on the subject from different point of views. It surveys also the state-of-the-art of data ownership in health, transportation, industry, energy and smart cities sectors and outlines lessons learned with an extended definition of data ownership that may pave the way for future research and work in this area.

Who Owns and Controls Farming Data?

This publication aims to clarify the concerns regarding data ownership and explain the responsibilities of that ownership, sharing, and benefits in a collaborative smart farming application. Written by Ziwen Yu, Albert De Vries, Yiannis Ampatzidis, and D. Daniel Sokol, and published by the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, October 2021.

Digital data: is a new legal regulation needed?

This article analyzes the phenomenon of digital data and its impact on both the daily lives of each individual and businesses. Article discusses the legal issue of data ownership, which is inextricably linked with the emergence of Big data. The EU legal regulation of digital data faces the following shortcomings: i. legal regulation of data does not keep pace with the rapid development of technology and the phenomenon of such large-scale data creation; ii. the current EU data legislation is intended to protect the interests of the data subject or business and not to create a common data regulatory ecosystem. For these reasons, the question of data ownership is raised, which is thought to be able to change the whole legal perception of digital data in the further evolution of the Industrial Revolution.

BECA: A Blockchain-Based Edge Computing Architecture for Internet of Things Systems

The scale of Internet of Things (IoT) systems has expanded in recent times and, in tandem with this, IoT solutions have developed symbiotic relationships with technologies, such as edge Computing. IoT has leveraged edge computing capabilities to improve the capabilities of IoT solutions, such as facilitating quick data retrieval, low latency response, and advanced computation, among others. However, in contrast with the benefits offered by edge computing capabilities, there are several detractors, such as centralized data storage, data ownership, privacy, data auditability, and security, which concern the IoT community. This study leveraged blockchain’s inherent capabilities, including distributed storage system, non-repudiation, privacy, security, and immutability, to provide a novel, advanced edge computing architecture for IoT systems. Specifically, this blockchain-based edge computing architecture addressed centralized data storage, data auditability, privacy, data ownership, and security. Following implementation, the performance of this solution was evaluated to quantify performance in terms of response time and resource utilization. The results show the viability of the proposed and implemented architecture, characterized by improved privacy, device data ownership, security, and data auditability while implementing decentralized storage.

Data Ownership and Secure Medical Data Transmission using Optimal Multiple Key-Based Homomorphic Encryption with Hyperledger Blockchain

Recent healthcare systems are defined as highly complex and expensive. But it can be decreased with enhanced electronic health records (EHR) management, using blockchain technology. The healthcare sector in today’s world needs to address two major issues, namely data ownership and data security. Therefore, blockchain technology is employed to access and distribute the EHRs. With this motivation, this paper presents novel data ownership and secure medical data transmission model using optimal multiple key-based homomorphic encryption (MHE) with Hyperledger blockchain (OMHE-HBC). The presented OMHE-HBC model enables the patients to access their own data, provide permission to hospital authorities, revoke permission from hospital authorities, and permit emergency contacts. The proposed model involves the MHE technique to securely transmit the data to the cloud and prevent unauthorized access to it. Besides, the optimal key generation process in the MHE technique takes place using a hosted cuckoo optimization (HCO) algorithm. In addition, the proposed model enables sharing of EHRs by the use of multi-channel HBC, which makes use of one blockchain to save patient visits and another one for the medical institutions in recoding links that point to EHRs stored in external systems. A complete set of experiments were carried out in order to validate the performance of the suggested model, and the results were analyzed under many aspects. A comprehensive comparison of results analysis reveals that the suggested model outperforms the other techniques.

The curious absence of cybernationalism in Latin America: Lessons for the study of digital sovereignty and governance

In this article, we are interested in examining the factors that drive cybernationalism and digital governance in media policies. As scholars with a long-standing interest in media industries and policies in Latin America, we start with a simple empirical observation: the curious absence of debates and strong efforts to regulate digital media in the region grounded on nationalistic arguments. It is not exaggerated to affirm that for the past two decades, the region has largely adopted a laissez-faire, deregulatory approach on fundamental issues about the structure and functioning of the Internet, including the performance of global digital platforms, content traffic, data ownership and access, and speech. We believe that understanding the decades-long transition from nationalistic media regulations to pragmatism in digital policies in Latin America yields valuable insights for theorizing the conditions that foster (and discourage) nationalism and sovereignty in digital policies.