Oxford professor calls for European ethical codes on patient data; Guardian, 4/12/16

Paul Hill, Guardian; Oxford professor calls for European ethical codes on patient data:

"Prof Luciano Floridi, director of research at Oxford University’s Internet Institute believes the time has come for new European ethical codes to govern “data donation” and its use for medical research.

He says debate in Europe over individual privacy versus societal benefits of shared data has been “swinging like a pendulum between two extremes”. Medical research with big data should be part of the future of Europe, according to Floridi, “not something we need to export to other countries because it is not do-able here”.

“The patient has to be informed and willing to share the information that researchers are collecting – for the benefit of the patient and anyone else affected by the same problems,” said Floridi, who is also chair of the Ethics Advisory Board of the European Medical Information Framework, the largest EU project on the unification of biomedical databases...

Floridi, who has advised Google on the ethics of information and the right to be forgotten, proposes the creation of two new ethical codes.

The first would govern the use and re-use of biomedical data in Europe – an ethical code from the practitioners’ perspective.

The second would relate to “data donation” and the informed choice of an individual to share personal information for research."

Ethical issues are tripping up tech firms and the backlash can be abysmal; Irish Times, 2/11/16

Karlin Lillington, Irish Times; Ethical issues are tripping up tech firms and the backlash can be abysmal:

"Now, Europe is trying to regain the socio-political upper hand, having previously left the whole environment in the hands of the corporate world, Floridi says.

“But that is so much not the issue. The real issue is, how do you re-establish an accountable, elected, socio-political control of the internet – of what is really, the essential blood of our society. That doesn’t seem to be very clear as a problem.”

Many of the current tensions between the US and EU over issues such as corporate taxation, data protection, and privacy stem from such concerns.

Floridi was recently appointed to the EU’s new ethics advisory group, set up by European data protection supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli to consider some of these fraught areas, within the ethical dimensions of data protection.

The group has 18 months to tease out the relationships between privacy, business models, technology, human rights, and markets and their implications for privacy and data, before reporting back with a white paper...

“But we need an ethical understanding, so that can inform the political and legal side, which can then regulate digital technologies in Europe.”"