Children Data Rights: a Canadian step forward

In March 2021, I had the pleasure to share insights from my project Child Data Citizen in an interview with CSA Group and Springboard Policy from Canada. The fruit of their research dedicated to Children’s Privacy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence just got released.

This interview was the occasion to specifically focus on the datafication of life at home and how the Internet of Things intertwines and processes the data of parents with those of children, making no difference regarding user’s privacy or vulnerability. The second key subject regarded the harms linked to profiling practices, falsely enabled by AI technologies and the data they collect about our children. “Available evidence demonstrates that AI profiling is often inaccurate or biased, facilitating discrimination and unfairness” (Irwin, Dharamshi & Zon, 2021, p.17).

I am happy the Child Data Citizen project could contribute to the ambitious endeavor of CSA Group and Springboard Policy. The report advocates for a child-specific approach while designing, using and evaluating AI technologies. The researchers demonstrate how children are deeply and distinctly impacted by AI technologies and detail the data risks, function risks and oversight risks they are currently exposed to. The last section of the report presents recommendations for designers, developers and policymakers to implement. They range from a meaningful inclusion of children in the privacy and AI policy development to the creation of educational tools both for parents and children to better understand the privacy stakes but also the introduction of stricter penalties should the privacy rules be violated by a company.

You can find a presentation of their work here or download the full report here.