DATAGOV focuses on liberal democracies, zooming in on Europe and three non-Western democracies: India, Brazil, and South Africa. Through multi-sited fieldwork, the project aims to understand regulatory data infrastructure as a key currency in local, regional, and global governance
EU
The world’s third largest population (447 million), the EU is one of the biggest data markets globally, regulated by the recent European Data Governance Act and the Data Act. It is also at the forefront of norm(ative) development regulating pervasive datafication. This “new regulatory wave” on data infrastructure (e.g., Digital Markets Act, AI Act) has its roots in the “European culture of human and fundamental rights”; it is regarded as the new “gold standard” for regulators across the world (Vermeulen, 2022). But the EU is also targeted by bottom-up reform initiatives, criticizing e.g., its plans on “trustworthy AI”. The Reclaim Your Face campaign wants to ban facial recognition from public space across the EU (2020). Recognizing that the EU is not a uniform bloc, DATAGOV focuses on the EU level with excursions to Member States markedly active in the field.
Brazil
Brazil (BR) is the biggest country of Latin America with its 214 million inhabitants and has the highest number of internet users (173 million). Brazil leads the adoption of facial recognition technology in the continent, but it has also a history of normative interventions in the digital. The Marco Civil da Internet (Civil Rights Framework for the Internet, 2014),) protects privacy rights and net neutrality and posits Internet access as a requisite to the exercise of civic rights. The Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (Data Protection Framework, 2018) defines data subject rights and the legal basis for processing personal data. In 12/2022, a committee of the Senate presented a Draft AI Law banning social scoring and biometric identification in public space and mandating risk assessment for all AI systems.
India
With a population of over 1,4 billion people half of which are internet users, India (IN) has the world’s largest biometric ID system, Aadhaar, but no comprehensive data protection law. Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identity number gathering both biometric and demographic data under the aegis of the Unique Identification Authority of India. Among others, it mediates access to food security programmes for the poor. The World Bank saluted it as “the most sophisticated ID programme in the world”. However, critics claim Aadhaar perpetuates marginality, depoliticizes the state and moves from inclusive citizenship of political subjects to exclusive citizenship of consumers. Concurrently, India boosts a burgeoning AI industry, largely underregulated.
South Africa
South Africa (ZA) is the 2nd largest economy of Africa. It has 59 million inhabitants, 70 percent of whom are internet users. It has a history of racial segregation and a present of elevated income inequality, but also a tradition of technology innovation: e.g., in the 1980s anti-apartheid activists developed their own encrypted communication network. The Protection of Personal Information Act, which preceded the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by five years, prohibits personal data transfer to a foreign country, unless consent is elicited. A National Data and Cloud Policy, is being finalized at the time of writing, “to strengthen the capacity of the State to deliver services to its citizens, ensure informed policy development based on data analytics, as well as promote South Africa’s data sovereignty and security thereof”.