The Commitment to the Ethical Use of Data is a blueprint for leaders that enshrines corporate respect for customers’ private data.
We promote the following 5 principles for Ethical Data Use that must form the bedrock of ethical data guidelines:
Privacy
First and foremost, sensitive and personal data must be collected conscientiously – and used and protected with care. If personal data is no longer relevant to the purpose for which it was collected, it should be erased.
Ownership
To preserve people's data dignity, people should be given choice and control over how their data is used. People should have the power to change their decision at any time, and their choice should be enforced across all the data systems that process that data.
Transparency
Businesses must communicate – in simple language – how they will use data they collect, who it will share that data with, and how long they plan on storing the data.
Objectivity
Businesses must hold objectivity over the impact of data systems and the outputs in machine learning, intelligent systems, and artificial intelligence that may have disparate impact or bias in application.
Accountability
A business’s technology and its employees must do what it says it will do system and organization-wide. We envision a world where if entities don’t do right by people (by violating one of the four principles above), businesses are held accountable.
A reference architecture designed to guide technologists as they design, build and maintain systems that respect privacy and process data ethically.
We saw a gap between the work and rhetoric of policymakers on the issue of data privacy and the on-the-ground reality that developers face. So, we decided to do something about it. The Privacy Stack is built by engineers, for engineers.