Habeas Data, the Future of Work –– Talking Tech w/ Cyrus Farivar & Aaron Pinto
Host Brian Wesolowski sits down with author and journalist Cyrus Farivar about his new book, "Habeas Data." It takes a close look at the legal cases and policies that are shaping American surveillance practices, and shows, how not surprisingly, they have not kept up with new technologies.<br><br>Then Brian welcomes Aaron Joshua Pinto, a delegate to the G7 Youth Summit who shares his insights on the future of work and highlights how young leaders from the G7 countries see technology impacting their future. <br><br>Habeas Data book: http://habeasdatabook.com<br><br>More on Cyrus: https://cyrusfarivar.com/<br>More on Aaron: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronjoshuapinto/<br>More on our host, Brian: bit.ly/cdtbrian<br><br>Attribution: sounds used from Psykophobia, Taira Komori, BenKoning, Zabuhailo, bloomypetal, guitarguy1985, bmusic92, and offthesky of freesound.org.
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Transcript
Welcome to Tech Talk. Bye.
CT. Tea.
Welcome to CTT's tech talk where we dish on tech and Internet policy while also explaining what these policies mean to our daily lives. I'm Brian Wasilowski and it's time to talk tech. Today, we're talking to Sayruz Farvar about his new book, Habeas Data. It takes a close look at the legal cases and policies that are shaping American surveillance practices and shows how, not surprisingly, they have not kept up with new technologies. After that we welcome a delegate to the g seven youth summit who shares his insights on the future of work and highlights how young leaders from the g seven countries see technology impacting their future Whether luck or incredible foresight, today's guest timed the release of his book perfectly. It came out just a few days before the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica story broke and addresses how privacy laws across the board are not keeping up with the modern surveillance state. In his book, Habeas Data, Ars Technica senior editor, Sarooz Farvar, takes a look at the legal cases that have shaped current surveillance law and, not surprisingly,
shows how inadequate they are to address today's surveillance challenges. Welcome. Thank you very much, Amanda. It's great to have you here. So this book, totally singing the CDT song, love it. Also love the title, code it for the non lawyers. Why did you choose it? What does it mean? Yeah. So habeas data is sort of a play on a legal phrase that, you know, a lot of people who maybe aren't even lawyers, probably have heard or or understand this phrase habeas corpus. Right? This is an idea that's embedded into our founding documents. It says that, you know, you have to be brought. Habeas corpus literally means show me the body, bring me the body, into a courtroom is is what how we refer to it in court. So habeas data, you could think of, you could translate as and I've been corrected on my Latin. Latin is not my native language. As, you know, show me the data, as bring me the data. And so it's meant to habeas data as a legal concept exists in a number of countries around the world, not here in The United States, but in Latin America, Brazil, Peru, Chile, also in The Philippines. And versions of it exist in other countries, especially in Europe, in Germany. You could sort of say that that it's really in kind of embedded into this new, regulations in the EU, the GDPR. And also, you know, really what it comes down to is, it's the idea that anybody, any citizen can go to whether it's a government agency or also crucially a private company and ask them to give up their data about an individual so that an individual can say, hey, Facebook, Google, you know, whatever company, whether it's your local sandwich shop or a big scary tech company, you could ask them to share the data that they have and you have the right to see it, inspect it, you know, delete it Yeah. Modify it, whatever, which we don't have in you know, delete it Yeah. Modify it, whatever, which we don't have in this country. There are companies now, Facebook being among them, that very recently, are allowing that, but it's it's interesting and I think it was the New York Times that that did this, test, of asking Facebook to compare I think it was specific with Facebook and maybe other companies as well, asking under European law versus under American law Yeah. The voluntary thing and comparing what kinds of data they share. And it turns out, that if you're a European citizen, you get a lot more than than what we do over here. But I mean it in the book. I mean it beyond, what in that sort of strict legal I mean it as a way to not only talk about those kinds of privacy issues, but also as sort of a flag to people, you know, who are picking up the book, to tell them a little bit about what it's about. It's about, about, you know, legal issues. It's not about Latin. It's about legal issues,
and data and information and and privacy. Alright. So let's go into that. I mean, I didn't even mention GDPR in the intro. That's another, like, fortuitous timing there. Although that one you could have seen coming from a mile away. So certainly the folks that listen to this podcast will not be surprised that privacy laws are outdated. We've talked about that before, and you've done a ton of research for this book. So what are some of the, like, surprising or shocking gaps that you found in privacy law? One of the main things that I found,
that I most surprised me was that this really has been a matter of discussion in our republic for quite a long time. This is not, you know, this is not something that's new with the advent of smartphones or even if of the internet or of computers. These kinds of issues what is the balance of power between, you know, government and citizen? What tools should the government be allowed to have? In what circumstances should they be allowed allowed to have them, goes back I mean, my book covers fifty years from '67 to 2017, but you could argue it goes back even further than that. You know, there's a case that I talk about very briefly that dates back to the prohibition era, almost almost a hundred years ago, the nineteen twenties. A case called Olmstead that some people might be familiar with, where it involved a bootlegger in Seattle. And in that case, the police wiretapped, Roy Olmstead, without a warrant. No warrant was required at the time. The case which challenged to the Supreme Court ultimately in the majority opinion, Chief Justice Taft found there was no searching, there was no seizure saying that, you didn't need a warrant because what was being captured was sort of ethereal sound on a wire, and people understood or a lot of judges understood the Fourth Amendment really to be about physical trespass Right. Into physical space. But I think today when we think about there wasn't searching, there was no seizure, a lot of us I think feel would feel very invaded if we were being wiretapped. And we would be and so it kind of feels very anachronistic, that there would that wouldn't be a Fourth Amendment violation. But that was that was a century ago. But even if you go back farther into American history and you look at our founding documents, our documents, our Bill of Rights, our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence, although the word privacy does not appear in any of those documents, I think it's very clear that if you read particularly the Bill of Rights as a whole, it really is interested in privacy. I think you could argue, you know, the First Amendment, right, Congress shall make no law bridging the freedom of speech to the press and so on, it imposes limits on government power, right, for the first amendment, the second amendment, the often forgotten third amendment, which protects us against, the quartering of soldiers into our homes. And if you think about that, and this is brought up very briefly in a mid twentieth century case known as Griswold versus Connecticut. And I think is the last time that the third amendment got cited in a Supreme Court decision. But you could argue that the third amendment is really about privacy. Right? Why don't you want soldiers in your home? Because it's really invasive to have a bunch of early dudes in your house. Right? Let's hope that one remains forgotten for a bit. Right. Right. Right. And then, of course, we have the fourth amendment. Right? That that, that protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures. So I think I think it's clear to me and to many other people, that the founders were very concerned with with
overreach. And so this is something that we have really struggled with for quite a long time. Yeah. So let's let's, like, look at some of those tougher issues. Right? So ones that pop to mind as you go through all of that that just didn't exist, you know, when some of these laws were done. Things like email, but then go even further to, like, geolocation and the fact that each one of us has, like, a device in our pockets or on our wrist that, like, tracks where we are. And then go even even further with things like AI and applying that to all these things.
You know, does any of the current law law address these issues? Well, it's interesting. So, so, yeah, the book is about, 10 court cases going from, there's one that is about to be decided, by the Supreme Court called Carpenter. Oh, yes. That that we're all on pins and needles waiting to see what's gonna happen. As we record, it has not yet been officially decided. But, you know, it'll be coming within the next couple of weeks, so really really soon. So that's the sort of more recent case that I deal with in the book. The earlier case that I deal with goes all the way back to 1967, a case called Katz versus United States that has to do with a guy on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood who likes to make bets in phone booths. He's calling East Coast bookies and the police are putting microphones and and recording devices on top, physically on top, not inside, but on top of the phone booth to capture his voice. Again not a wiretap, not in the space, right on top. And so, you know, today we have cases that are more recent within the last decade or so. Some listeners may remember a case called Jones that involved, that happened right here in Washington DC, where there was a suspected drug dealer, Antwan Jones, who operated a nightclub called Levels, and the police without a warrant put a physical GPS tracker roughly the size of a smartphone, on the underside of his car and were able to track his movements as he drove around DC and and the environs. The court in that case ruled nine zero that that without a warrant you couldn't install a GPS tracker onto his car. More recently we have a case from my home state California called Riley versus California which has to do with, the questions as to whether police can search, somebody's phone when they're being arrested. The answer unanimously was no, they cannot. So we have two very recent cases, where we have unanimous decisions, in a arguably divided court. Right? Conservatives and, liberals would would agree that no, you can't, you know, do these particular things. And I think, particularly, you know, well, before he passed away, obviously, justice Scalia and I would say probably justice Gorsuch is in the similar vein, of being very interested in privacy issues, justice Sotomayor as well. You know, so I I would like to believe that the Supreme Court now is starting to think about these things in new ways. And we've seen in some appellate decisions and some lower court decisions, instances or moments I would say of clarity that that maybe haven't happened in the same way before. So I'd like to believe that, we're moving in the right direction. I'm an optimist at heart, you know, I I I really hope that, I I think that that Carpenter, you know, may not go as far as you or I might like it to go. Right. But I do think that Carpenter has a very very strong case here. And so I'm hopeful that, you know, we're we're starting to move increasingly in the right direction.
All this all the cases that you've viewed made me think we should have done a game of trivia with you to, like, test you on it. Don't worry. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not ready for it. We should have some drinks with us on that. Well, that would be more fun. That's the next podcast. So tune in for that one. That'll be good. That'll be on the first episode of Diva Boulevard. That well, that's right. This is a great idea. Diva Boulevard is where we host this podcast right at the CBT offices. So your book, it focuses mostly on government access Yes. To data. Yes. But you did bring up, you know, corporate access and corporate use of data. Right. You know, do you see similar issues in terms of the laws being outdated here? I mean, there's not really that many laws. Well, right. And that's what's interesting about it is is so so yeah. The book my book is about surveillance. And I think many civilians, you know, non lawyers, that includes me,
we a lot of people understand surveillance corporate spying as being both government action and also private action. But under I think most people who work in government or people who work for law enforcement or who have a more sophisticated understanding of the law understand surveillance to mean something very very specific, and it's nearly always government action. So my book covers what the government can do. And part of that is, I think, you know, in America and I think part of it has to do with our founding history, is that ever since the beginning right? Think about what is the what is the American Revolution all about. Right? It's it's distrust of the power of a foreign monarch, of a foreign sovereign who we believe we, the American colonists, the revolutionaries, believe is abusing power, not giving representation, not giving voice to the people, is exercise you know, putting soldiers in people's homes, shooting people. Right? Things like really terrible stuff, really terrible stuff. And so we had a whole old revolutionary about that. So we are inherently skeptical of government power that is baked into our founding mythology and our founding documents. And so and that continues. We're now, you know, more than two hundred years removed from that and I think that's still very very true. Right? We are we are all concerned about, whether you're I think liberal or conservative or somewhere in between. I think none of us like the idea of, you know, it's scary if you even something as basic as a traffic stop. Right? If you have to face down a police officer who has a weapon, especially if you're a minority, if you're a person of color, that's doubly scary, maybe 10 times more scary. You know, and but even if, you know, if you're under investigation or if you are suspected of a crime, whether you committed it or not, you know, you feel the kind of full brunt of government on you and the government has very certain powers so we have this inherent skepticism, maybe verging on paranoia sometimes of, you know, big scary capital g government in America. And we're we we as Americans, by and large, are are that's our sort of default position, I feel like. We're much more accepting of big scary capital g Google. We're much more accept accepting of of private action. Right? We we willingly share lots of information online about ourselves. We willingly use services that we know at some level are transacting on our data. There was a right. So Mark Zuckerberg was just very recently before the senate, judiciary committee Yeah. And I think it was senator Cornyn, where where Zuckerberg said to senator Cornyn, he said we don't sell our users data. And senator Cornyn came back and said, yeah, but you rent it, which I thought was a great kind of analogy, to that. We we all like these services. We wanna use them. We all like cat GIFs. You know More than others. Right. We all like using these services, but, we, at the same time, are maybe troubled by, how these business models work. And because private companies have these data, most of us are ignorant as to exactly how this works to go to a company and say, hey, tell me how much like, I can't go to Facebook and say, hey, Facebook, how much money do you make off of me personally? They won't answer. And we're generally okay with that. Whereas interestingly in Europe, and I spent two years living in Germany some years ago, the default positions are kind of the opposite, where they're more trusting of government generally and they're less trusting of companies. And I sort of learned this when I first arrived in Germany in the 2010 when Google Street View had just arrived in Germany. And German politicians bent over backwards to show how frustrated, and, you know, negative they were towards Google Street View. You know, people would say, oh, you know, this foreign company has arrived on our streets and was taking pictures of all of their all of our homes and our businesses and our roads and, you know, nobody asked for permission and they just did it and like, you know, we don't like that and we're gonna stop it. And so there was this whole thing and Google did a very unusual step in that case where they allowed Germans to opt out Right. Of Google Street View. You can blur you can type in your address and tell Google I don't want to be on Street View and so your house or your apartment or your office or whatever is is blurred. If you look in Street View in The US, you'll notice that people's faces and license plates are blurred. But no buildings as far as I know are blurred. Not even the White House. Not even, you know, like important government office buildings or anything like that. So, it's interesting that there's this kind of cultural difference in that in that sense. I don't I have kind of a rough theory as to why just based on, like, the history and the background, you know, the American Revolution and then in Germany, I think people are more accepting of government, post war, and they're skeptical of, of of, you know, they they Germans are very interested in privacy. This is a country that did not have a census for decades because they were so paranoid about government information collection Yeah. Which is mind boggling to me. But I think all of us, German American, liberal conservative, whatever, I think we all have kind of a complicated relationship with
privacy, whether it's with private companies or the government. Absolutely. And the overlap is maybe not quite what we think so. Or the, the I mean, there is more overlap than we thought. And I think it's shocking, but people sort of forget about the Snowden revelations and the fact that a lot of that was information gleaned from companies. Right. So there is there is some overlap there. Certainly. So what needs to happen? What do we need to do here? Because I know that your book, you you talk about the cases, but you also talk about areas that you think, you know, we need to actually address some of those. Yeah. So one of the things that when I first started working in this book, you know, as a non lawyer, I
thought these judges, they don't know what they're doing. They're these old, stodgy, largely dudes who, like, you know, have been on the bench for a long time and, you know, maybe they barely know how to use their smartphone. And so I thought, oh, they're just out of touch and, like, it's hopeless. But then I started to think about more that really and this is something you hear actually from a lot of conservative judge judges and and people of of the on the conservative side, who say, look, you know, it's not the job of the judges to make the law. It's the job of the judges to interpret the law. And that's true. And so what I have come now to understand is that it's oftentimes too late to get when it reaches the Supreme Court. Right? We talked about this Carpenter case that we're all waiting for. The facts of Carpenter happened eight years ago. Wow. How good has your smartphone and my smartphone and all of our smartphones gotten in the last eight years? They've gotten really good. Yeah. I'm really good. Almost too good. Almost too good. And if you think about, right, how much better has, you know, drone technology, license plate reader technology, DNA analysis, anything, right, has gotten really good really fast. Yeah. And so it's by the time it reaches whether it's the unlikely destination of the supreme court or whether it's even a a federal district court or a local court. Oftentimes it's years after the fact. Maybe in the case of the Supreme Court, maybe a decade after the fact. Right. So we need to do a lot more ahead of time. We need to do a lot more on the front end of coming up with proactive affirmative legislation not only in congress but also at your local city council. Absolutely. There's some great cities and states doing things. Yeah. All the way yeah. And everything in between. County, state, tribal, everything. So where I live in Oakland, California, the city for the first time very recently within the last couple of weeks, passed a unanimous city ordinance that established meaningful community oversight on the acquisition of surveillance technology. Oakland is not the first city to do this. Yeah. This has been passed by our neighbor Berkeley up the road, Davis up by Sacramento, Santa Clara County which is the home of Silicon Valley, home of Facebook, many other tech companies. Other cities I know are looking at similar versions of this. I know California as a a whole is looking at versions of this. Out here in the East Coast, I'm not I'm not so sure. Maybe you can tell me. I wish. I haven't seen it yet. But, yeah. California seems to be setting the trend here. But a lot of it's just oversight. Yeah. A lot of it a lot of it is oversight. Right. Is oversight. Yeah. And so one of the things I talk about in the book also is that not only is there this, what that oversight looks like is having the usually the police, but it could be any city agency. It could be the sanitation department. It could be anything. You know, sanitation department, it might be interested in illegal dumping. Right? Where I live in Oakland, there's there's neighborhoods where people are dumping mattresses and couches and all kinds of stuff. Obviously, nobody wants that to happen and so to enforce that they set up license plate readers and other types of Yeah. Surveillance to catch people who are doing things as banal as dumping their couch on the side of the road. But so the whether the police, want to acquire whether it's drones, whether it's license plate readers, whether it's sting rays, right, fake cell towers that that surveil people's phones, whether it's anything else, they have to to affirmatively say, here's what we want, here's why we want it, here's the policy that we've come up with, we've worked with CDT, ACLU, EFF, whatever group they want and we have, you know, had this discussion about it and here's what we're gonna do. Here's the objectives we're trying to reach. And in the case of Oakland, that's what these ordinances do in these different cities. Oakland has taken it actually one step further which is to say they have a, what is called the privacy advisory commission, which has existed in Oakland for two years. I'm not aware of any city in America that has something like this. That's awesome. So these are eight commissioners, eight voting commissioners each appointed by a member of the city council representing all the districts of the city plus a non voting city liaison and a non voting police liaison. And they have very reasoned, open, honest public debate. You can go to the Thursday night meetings. They're a little bit boring, but if you're a privacy nerd it's fun. You know, you can go and you can have an honest discussion with the police department with high ranking officers about what the appropriate, use of these technologies is. One of my favorite moments at a meeting that I went to was, where they were discussing what the appropriate retention policy should be for license plate reader data. And so just a few years ago, Oakland actually had no policy, which in effect meant they were kept keeping data for years, for four or five years. Now at the moment, they have a six month retention policy. And so they were discussing, like, okay, we have the six month retention policy. Is this the right amount of time? Should it be higher, lower, whatever? And you had the the police liaison, a guy named Timothy Birch, who himself was a former police officer in a different Bay Area city, but is now a civilian, he was saying, look, anybody who lives in Oakland knows that it is a city that tragically has very serious violent crime as many cities in America do. Yeah. And, and so and our police, like many police departments, are very understaffed. The police, you know, have limited time and resources so we are gonna concentrate on the most serious crimes. So if you are unfortunately the victim of a nonviolent property crime, if if your house gets burglarized and your TV gets stolen, you're not a big priority for us. And we have a backlog because we're understaffed. We have a backlog of, like, seven months or eight months. So right now, if it were up to me, I would like to have, as a representative of the Oakland Police Department, I would like to have a nine month retention policy because, you know, we've deleted it after six. And so that piece of information that might help us to solve the guy who stole your TV, you know, would be useful to us. And, you know, and then the commissioners can decide whether or not a more informed decision. Yeah. And I and I was sitting there and I was like, this is great. This is like what we this is what this is what should be happening in my mind. This is a conversation we all need to have. This is a conversation we all need to be happening need to be having, with our city councils, with our state governments, with our with our congressional leaders ideally, to be able to say upfront, okay, that's fine. You, county sheriff, you, FBI, you wanna have drones? Cool. Let's think about how they should be used. Let's think about what kind of data they should collect. Let's think about what circumstances they should or should not be used in. And we've done that before. This is not new. Right? The Wiretap Act, we were talking about Wiretaps earlier. The Wiretap Act dates back to the nineteen sixties, to 1967. A lot of us who who have seen and maybe love the TV show The Wire actually, I was just thinking there should be a podcast. It's now time for there to be like a rewatch review podcast for the Wire. We should get that in. Podcast ideas. Right? This is great. Just just one after the other. But right. So we've seen The Wire. We've seen other shows like that. We understand what a wiretap is, and yet we require an affirmative hurdles. We require that the government clear extraordinary things. Not only do they have to show a probable cause of a warrant, surveillance has failed, would fail, or would be too dangerous to undertake. That's a big deal. That is a big deal. And so, if we set you know, maybe flying a drone is maybe not quite as invasive as a wiretap, so maybe we're not gonna have that some standard, but at least do something. Because now we're in a situation where, you know, my home county, Alameda County, the county sheriff right now has six drones and flies them, as far as I know, without any real, like, notification or anything. I mean, they're not, I don't think, flying them over my house at the moment. But, but, you know, there are these instances and I write about some of them in the book. There's a company out of Ohio called Persistent Surveillance Systems that flies planes. They describe it as a TiVo in the sky. It essentially is looking down and they flown this over American Wow. This is not like out of a movie. This is real. This they flew it over Compton, California. They flew it over Dayton, Ohio. They flew it over Baltimore. They tried to fly it over Miami. I think it got it got nixed before they went aloft. But, once people fit or, you know, a lot of people who find out about it after the fact, are very upset. Absolutely. So I really think that that city council, state legislatures and everything, you know, all up and down the chain, should really try to sit down and think about,
how we, you know, deal with this sort of vexing problem. Well, this is a good note to leave it on. The book is Habeas Data Privacy versus the Rise of Surveillance Tech. So, Roos, thanks for joining. Where can we find the book? The book is available wherever books are sold. It's also available at habeasdatabook.com. Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining. My pleasure. Thank you. The g seven summit just took place in Quebec with leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The United Kingdom, and The United States coming together to address pressing economic issues. Before the g seven summit back in April, there's a youth version that also brings together delegates from g seven member state, the y seven. They develop policy recommendations that are then shared directly with g seven leaders. One of those areas that the youth focused on was the future of work. Seems like a darn good one to focus on. Today, Erin Pinto, a youth delegate from the g seven host nation of Canada, who also led their delegation's interventions on the future of work, joins us. Welcome, Aaron. Hi, Brian. I'm very happy to be here. Thank you. It's great to have you, you know, and especially, from the host nation of Canada. Here, you did a great job up there. So tell me about the y seven. Is that exactly what we called it or call it and how you got involved with it?
Yeah. Sure. So, so you you know, you beautifully mentioned, about the the g seven itself. So So it's an informal group composed of those seven advanced industrialized countries. And it's a unique platform because it allows for direct and candid discussions among the members. And it's a consensus based forum. And so these countries, they meet every year. And they discuss and they try to build consensus and they set trends around some of the most pressing, challenging global issues. And so eventually, they play a major global leadership role and they impact world issues. So 2018 was Canada's year to take on the presidency of the group, and this was the sixth time that Canada was hosting it. And so it happened this past Friday and Saturday, the G7 Leader Summit, and it was held in Chatelet Blanc, Quebec. And so Canada had its focus on kind of these five broad themes about economic growth, gender equality, security, climate change and then preparing for the jobs of the future. And now alongside these traditional leaders summit that happens every summer, it became accustomed to hold these kind of several preparatory meetings throughout the year. And so it would happen at the ministerial level, then at the Sherpa's level, which are essentially high ranking government officials appointed by the by each of the G7 leaders. And then you have these official G7 engagement groups, And they play an advocacy role. They allow civil society to mobilize those characters and kind of bring institutions closer to the grassroots. And so the Youth seven was one of these official youth engagement kind of official G7 engagement groups that I was part of back in April. And I was a member of the Canadian delegation and we focused on three policy themes. And then I particularly led the negotiations on the future of work. And in terms of how I got involved, each of the G7 new delegations, they comprise of four delegates each, and they're each recruited by an organization in that respective country that kind of affords opportunities for young people to get engaged in That's right. Kind of the international policy arena. And so in Canada, we have the the young diplomats of Canada. And so the recruitment back, you know, started back in February for the Y7 summit and then, you know, involved in application process and interview and so forth. But, but, you know, once we were selected, you know, that's when the real work began. It involved consultations to inform the Canadian physician, at researching, strategizing, reporting. It was a very formative experience that really allowed me to put on that diplomatic hat and kind of experience what diplomatic work entails, which is, of course, very arduous and tiring, but also very fruitful at the same time. Great. So what's your day job? I mean My day job so currently, I'm, I'm working at the Canadian consulate in New York. I'm there's I represent the province of Ontario here in the Northeastern Part of The United States,
and we focus on trade investment. Very cool. Okay. So let's let's talk about what you did, while you were in Ottawa, on the future of work. What were some of the main issues that came up?
Up? Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, of course, the future of work, quite a quite a broad, quite a broad theme. And our conversations focused on a couple of key, key trends. You know, the first is, you know, we understood that the world of work is in a state of flux, which is causing a lot of anxiety and of course, with good reason. And we see that there's this growing polarization of labor market opportunities between the high and low scale jobs. Then there's unemployment and underemployment, especially among young people. There's stagnating incomes for large proportion of household and income inequality. So there's that. And then we see this deployment of advanced technologies, AI to AR VR to IoT that's essentially reshaping our social lives and labor markets. And it's imposing this very rapid change. And this rise in automation capabilities and artificial intelligence, these are the chief catalysts. So we were talking a little bit about that as well. And now because you have a lot of these tasks, which are starting to be automated, there's now there's growing value for human capital and there's this competition for high talent oriented jobs. But then at the same time, we were discussing about how our education systems, for the most part, are still stuck in a very different age, very siloed. It's not really applied focused. And many times, it's not really supporting a more efficient, a more effective transition to work. I was reading there's a statistic that I came across. The kids of today will actually experience in the future 17 job changes. Wow. Exactly. Right? And and and four it'll take them about four point seven years to get a permanent full time job. And one third of the time in the workplace will be actually on learning constantly. And technology, of course, no doubt will be part of this model. So there's that component. Another trend we were discussing is about the huge influx of data, which of course, yes, can provide a lot of opportunities, but then at the same time, there remains very extant ethical challenges, privacy or otherwise. So it goes on and on. I mean, if there's so many different facets to touch on, particularly when it comes to even younger people's interests when it comes to work, right? We're not really interested in life what would be termed as lifetime work. You know, millennials kind of want their flexibility in their careers, and they value that work life balance. So how can we integrate that also when it comes time to the future of work at the policy level or otherwise, right, especially when you're considering that a lot of young people nowadays and it's going to increase in the future, they're engaged in freelancing, more precarious work, and they're tapping into the wider gig economy, right? So what does this mean then for support systems? How will government play a role in ensuring that young people and others are going to be able to meet the needs and the requirements for the future work in when the time comes. And in all of this, as much as we talk about the future and the future of work, you know what? And there's so much excitement about these discussions. I'm always reminded by the fact that we tend to lose sight of the fact that we also must continue addressing the current disparities that exist in our labor market as well. So this was this is where our discussions went, kind of essentially all over the place in this Yeah. But all fascinating discussions.
Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's, what were side so I understand that, you know, you were able to deliver a set of recommendations to to the g seven folks. What were some of the top level recommendations you made on this? You know, maybe focusing on on ones related to tech, but, heck, I'm intrigued in the broader ones that you sent.
Sure. Yeah. So in terms of our our recommendations for tech, you know, future work, our our main priority was, calling on the g seven member states, to declare that the privacy of individuals' personal data is a human right.
And Yes. I love that. Say that again. That is a great one.
Once again, yeah, privacy of individuals' personal data is a human right. And that alongside for humans working alongside these new technologies, again, we were very future oriented and bold in making this statement that humans should be considered the owners of the data even if it is used and adapted for profit. And so this recommendation was very much influenced by the current affairs issues of the recent months. EU's their implementation of the GDPR. And then we also find the Facebook revelation that what up to 87,000,000 of its users were exposed in that whole Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal. And of course, a lot of the other news of our time on data our time on data privacy. And we realized that you know what, data privacy and the future work, they don't doubt go hand in hand. The workplace has, of course, dramatically changed since the early days of the computers and the basic databases of the 1970s. And now employee data is going to be what is sent well, it was before maintained largely for record keeping. But now it's been evolved into in kind of using that data for whether it's business purposes or otherwise. And this obviously raises a lot of legal and ethical issues about data protection and privacy. And this is where, you know, the y seven's primary recommendation came from. And it embraces user empowerment. And one thing that was really encouraging actually, is, you know, a couple of days after we made this recommendation, Satya Nadella, you know, CEO of Microsoft, he actually blatantly recognized as well that data privacy is a human right. And he further went on saying that there's no reason, for anyone for that matter to be a second class citizen when it comes to data privacy. And and and so this was quite reassuring for us. Yeah. No. That's fantastic.
When you think about the future of work, I mean, you got to meet with delegates from, the other countries. Any are any countries seemingly more ahead or, you know, more advanced in preparing the workforce of the future? Anyone that impressed you besides, I'm sure, Canada, of course. Right? Now
you know what? Yeah. You know you know, well, first, this is the thing. So how exactly can we prepare young people for a future job market that we essentially can't predict? So our education systems, we must give young people the necessary skills to adapt. And those are not necessarily skills that you might think. You know, of course, you know, literacy, numeracy, scientific knowledge, they'll always be critical. But you know what? There were world leading companies that they were they were highlighted in one report that that try to pinpoint what exactly will be the important job skills for the 20 for 2020. And they, without a doubt, said complex problem solving. And, of course, apart from critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, EI, and so forth. But, unfortunately, our school systems across the g seven nations and beyond, you know, they were largely built during the industrial revolution. They're not really well equipped to impart these skills. But I have to say, I would kind of underscore the efforts of Japan and Canada in kind of doing well when it comes to preparing young people for the future work, but particularly the skill of collaborative problem solving. But again, it's not just educational curricula, though, right? It's the entire environment. It's about the policy environment. The infrastructure technology is available, but it's also being used. Canada, we recently launched the innovation skills plan, and we are investing in these innovation superclusters and also allowing young people to have opportunities to engage in coding as well. But it's seeping in through many different parts of the educational curricula. And so that is something that's quite fascinating. And I think it's a good trend to watch. In Japan, for example, they released something called the Society five point zero plan. And so it's trying to reinforce these fundamentals of STEM and incorporating these advanced technologies in not only industry, but in social life and, of course, in the educational stream as well. But outside of the G7, I have to say that Singapore does a fantastic job in ensuring that the curriculum is supporting education for future skills. You know, they've made these investments in education technology. Yeah. They started by building up the infrastructure, then training the teachers how to use the gadgets and identifying the schools, to experiment with these new innovations. And that's fantastic. You know, there are classrooms in Singapore now where, digital devices are increasingly being viewed as a means to bring students together in collaboration
rather than to, you know, separate them further, kind of take notes in their own laptops and so forth. It is fascinating. It's very hands on. It's very applied. So there's a lot to learn from these countries. Yeah. No. That's fascinating. It was not too long ago at a conference in Berlin talking about about AI and the future of work, and there seems to be as many, you know, potential problems as as opportunities. But the countries that, recognize that AI is is a tool and empower, workers to use it as a tool, you know, may not see the same sort of displacement and workforce. So sounds like, a lot of what you're talking about there. So we have to wrap it up. But, Aaron, thank you so much for joining Tech Talk, sharing your insights, and I absolutely hope that the g seven folks are listening to you, your recommendations, and especially the one about privacy being a fundamental human right.
Thanks so much, Brian.
That's it for this episode of Tech Talk. For the very latest on what CDT is doing on privacy and data issues, including our work on AI and ethics, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or visit cdt.org. I'm Brian Wasilowski. Thanks so much for listening.
