Digital Policy Salon: Welcome to 2022

How do antidepressants affect fish? Can biological remediation improve water health (e.g. intentionally planting cattails in dirty waterways)? How can the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI) innovate freshwater research? These are just a few of the questions researchers at Institute of International Sustainable Development’s (IISD) Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) have been tackling over the last few years.

Founded in 1968, ELA is one of the world’s most influential and oldest freshwater research facilities. Data from Winnipeg-based ELA helps researchers examine human impacts on the environment as well as informing national and international policy. As the global population increases and countries continue to feel the intensifying impacts of climate change, this environmental research on freshwater is urgently needed.

“We now have 50 years of intense research on lakes that are now becoming almost a climate-observatory,” says Geoffrey Gunn, former Policy Advisor for Data and Technology at IISD. “By analyzing lake data, we can start to see the more subtle influences of climate change.”

Government should play a role in ensuring that technology is safe to use, most would agree. But enacting principles of safety is hard to do when technology is tested only for narrow impacts. For example, a technology that is safe to use for its intended purpose may be unsafe when introduced back into the environment via landfill, potentially impacting drinking water or marine habitat. “Forever Chemicals,” recently in the news, are a great example of products with long-term, accumulating harms.

Marie-Louise Bilgin has a background in biotechnology, international law, and medicine. She now works with the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, which is centred in The Hague, the third-largest city in the Netherlands and internationally famous for housing the International Court of Justice of the United Nations. We spoke over Zoom about Safe-by-Design, a concept for addressing safety issues early on in any emerging technology project that might impact people, animals or the environment.

Safe-by-Design is hard to define because it means something different for different fields: biotechnology, nanotechnology, chemistry, are all trying to integrate this concept. “Safe-by-Design means inherent safety, the inclusion of safety thinking from the very beginning of a project as soon as you start on R&D,” Marie-Louise explains. “Our mission is to have negligibly small risks to humans and the environment: so identify the substances, materials, processes, and risks associated at the beginning and make sure they are risks are minimized and that the resulting product is preferably inherently safe.” When I asked Marie-Louise to comment further on safe for whom, she clarified, “safe for humans and the environment during the product’s life cycle based on its intended applications.”

Ensuring that all substances and processes are inherently safe in all environments may seem like a tall order, and it is. For example, biotechnology researchers from the Dutch Wageningen University have tried to apply Safe-by-Design by altering synthetic bacteria to only survive under controlled conditions. Imagine thinking ahead to consider the entire lifespan of a product and its impact after its intended and original use. While this may seem like a bottomless task, many contend that it is essential to the goal of a circular economy, as safe recycling requires safe materials.

We will be hosting several high-profile speakers, such as Dr. Roberta Bondar – First Canadian Woman in Space; Hon. Perrin Beatty – President and CEO for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce; Ron Keller – Expert on International Financial, Economic and Geopolitical Matters; and Johan Rockström – Internationally Recognized Scientist on Global Sustainability Issues.

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Last month, CBC released a report divulging new details about the Toronto Police Service’s use of Clearview AI’s controversial surveillance technology. The findings confirmed that Toronto police had employed facial recognition software to identify both suspects and victims in several dozen police investigations.

These findings built on news from February 2020 that initially revealed several officers had used a trial version of the software, despite their denial of its use a month prior. 

This news in itself is deeply unsettling, and not just for the privacy implications. It reveals a concerning degree of power held by police forces and how certain technologies can enable the abuse of that power.

This article merges two hot topics in today’s public discussion: calls for enhanced regulation of technology (and especially AI), and further attention to the potential for police overreach in Canada. Clearview AI’s now infamous facial recognition technology – which uses data comprised of billions of photos from social media profiles – has been used by multiple Canadian police forces, with the Toronto police force the latest to admit to it. Late last year, privacy authorities in BC, Alberta, and Quebec ordered the company to stop using images of people who had not consented, claiming that doing so ignores Canadian privacy laws. The office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, meanwhile, wrote in a special report to Parliament that the RCMP’s use of Clearview AI “represented mass surveillance and was a clear violation of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA),” and the RCMP no longer uses the technology. While these developments indicate that Clearview may be done for in Canada, so long as new technologies emerge, regulators will need to continue to play an active role in ensuring that they do not infringe on privacy rights or lead to discrimination, including when used by law enforcement. To read more about Clearview AI, check out this ICTC blog post. - Khiran O'Neill