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Fantastic Interfaces and Where to Regulate Them: Three Provocative Privacy Reflections on Truth, Deception and What Lies Between

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Digital Transformation of Collaboration (COINs 2019)

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Complexity ((SPCOM))

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Abstract

Speech Interfaces represent a new interactive phenomenon, which entails massive personal data processing. The spectrum of legal issues that arises from this interaction impacts both user privacy and social relationships. This study addresses three potential issues or ‘provocations’ relating to speech interaction that illustrate the challenges and complexity of this socio-legal domain: (i) the potential for lying; (ii) the possibility of breaching the law; (iii) the ability to interpret an order. It deploys an in-depth analysis of the related legal consequences and implications with the scope to prompt discussion around these provocative issues. It first provides an overview of the correct hermeneutical approach to frame legal paradigms, highlighting the crucial legal aspects, conceptual approaches and interpretations to be considered when addressing the whole ‘interactive artificial agents’ (IAA) phenomenon. The study adopts the classical Civil Law system’s methodology (qualitative/top-down analytical). The core of the study then focuses on the three provocations as connected by personal data processing. The goal is to provide a critical legal analysis of those interfaces that could impact the foundation of human socio-legal interrelations. By raising awareness of these controversial aspects, the work contributes to fostering further discussion about interdisciplinary privacy issues that stand at the intersection of Law, Social Sciences and HCI design, and that cross-pollinate each other.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Which is defined as the ‘range of ideas tolerated in public discourse, also known as the window of discourse’ [5]. The concept states that an idea's political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range, rather than on politicians' individual preferences. Indeed, according to Overton, the window contains the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office in the current climate of public opinion. The range is formed by ‘unthinkable’, ‘radical’, ‘acceptable’, ‘sensible’, ‘popular’, ‘policy’, and describes the different stages of public perception.

  2. 2.

    The relationship between users and service providers for the use of a service provided through an online platform (e.g. social media platforms) falls into the legal regime of contractual relationship. Despite service providers allege the service is provided for free (gratuitousness), this is not true: users pay the service (counter-compensate it) with their personal data, with their attention, and by accepting both to undergo advertisement, to be profiled and their profile to be sold to third parties. Therefore, for the Law, it is wrong to call them ‘users’, because they must more appropriately be considered ‘clients’ instead. For instance, note that the Facebook frontpage to access the platform after the Cambridge Analytica case has deleted the phrase ‘it is for free and it always will be’. However, this misconception of the data processing relationship implies treating personal data as commodities (and properties), which is not the case. Under the GDPR and Civil Law, one does not own their personal data. Instead they have personhood rights over them (to license the data exploitation under certain conditions set by the regulatory framework). Privacy rights are fundamental rights and, as such, cannot (and must not) be monetised.

  3. 3.

    Meaning those contracts in which the conditions cannot be bargained and essentially work as a ‘take it or leave it’ proposal.

  4. 4.

    Although, the benefit of this improvement mostly privileges service providers’ power of prediction and of shaping personalised advertisement.

  5. 5.

    So-called ‘Analogia Iuris', i.e. the technique of applying, in absence of a specific regulatory framework, the legal regime provided for a similar phenomenon, e.g. what happened with airplanes at the beginning of the twentieth century, when were mutated navigation rules for regulating the phenomenon.

  6. 6.

    When the term “Law” is capitalised, it refers to the whole Legal System. Instead, when it is not capitalised, it refer to a single law or norm.

  7. 7.

    That is legal fictions: because it is not possible to measure, quantify, define or prove certain situations (acts, facts, conducts) the Law assumes that under certain circumstances there is a fixed outcome, called ‘presumption’. The party who undergoes the effects of legal presumptions is usually admitted to prove the contrary.

  8. 8.

    To provide stability of social relationships through enforceability.

  9. 9.

    It regulates—through standardisation—the technical requirements that a technology must match in order to achieve the wanted effects.

  10. 10.

    The literature refers to these devices indifferently as conversational agents, voice user interfaces, speech interfaces, digital or virtual assistant, smart speakers, and so on.

  11. 11.

    Consider that, in Civil Law systems, the Law must be general and abstract, meaning that it should affect the most possible people and embrace the most possible situations.

  12. 12.

    We avoid the use of ‘intelligent’ as the Law does not care about the intelligence level of an agent (be it natural or artificial), unless constituting incapability, because it focuses on actions and, overall, their effects. The quality (legal status) of the agent affects only its imputability. The point for the Law is not how much clever one is but if an agent can be considered as a legal subject instead of a legal object. This goes for robots (embodied AIs), as well as for animals [14, 15].

  13. 13.

    It is instead shaped as a licensee agreement of use, paired with privacy policies by adhesion.

  14. 14.

    According to the GDPR the data processing must be informed by the principle of purpose, strictly linked with the principle of necessity and minimisation. They imply that the processing of personal data must be carried out for specific purposes only, as well as, the data processed must be quantitatively and qualitatively minimised to the extent of those solely necessary to provide the requested service.

  15. 15.

    Users cannot avoid advertisement nor, usually, can opt-out from personalised ads.

  16. 16.

    Usually dispatched together, so that users are forced to accept by adhesion both with no ability to opt-out from one or the other or single provisions.

  17. 17.

    For instance, Siri replies ‘I’m not programmed to lie’, while Google Assistant replies ‘I’d never lie to you’.

  18. 18.

    However, this is merely empirical. The terms and conditions do not cover this situation and there is no proof that the system turns off not to lie or to disclose the truth. However, it remains a fact that it does it every time for the same set of questions.

  19. 19.

    GDPR Article 25.

  20. 20.

    Consider that the goal of legal systems is to provide a twofold tool for social stability (reliability of socio-legal relationships) which is represented by foreseeability and certainty.

  21. 21.

    Articles 5 and 32 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) [41].

  22. 22.

    There is no discussion yet in the literature on the issue about knowing personal information of partners and the extent of this hypothetical right.

  23. 23.

    Often (legally) misused to approach self-driving car scenarios, their liability consequences and the related impact on AI systems programming.

  24. 24.

    It is not punishable whoever committed the fact for being forced to do so by the need to save himself or others from the current danger of serious harm.

  25. 25.

    The so-called ‘excitement causes’ which are established by the law and identify particular situations whose occurrence makes it lawful to commit a crime. For instance, self-defence.

  26. 26.

    Article 22.

  27. 27.

    However, consider that the WP29 guidelines [49, 50] underline how this should not be the case and, instead, the human intervention in the decision-making process should be substantial.

  28. 28.

    And according to GDPR Article 22.

  29. 29.

    And furthermore, it is against the general penal principles of Civil Law systems: one cannot be charged for the mere intention to commit a crime and, therefore, cannot be prevented to express that intention. For the Law, it is the action that is relevant.

  30. 30.

    Which, in both Economy and Criminology, falls into the rational-choice Theory, which posits that humans are reasoning actors who weigh means and ends, costs and benefits, through utilitarian approaches in order to make a rational choice [52, 53].

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Acknowledgements

This investigation has been carried out thanks to Fulbright-Shuman Grant scheme for Visiting Scholars’ Research Projects. The author would like to thank Dr. Marguerite Barry, which has no responsibility for the content, for her precious suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information and Communication Studies, University College Dublin, Belfield, D4, Dublin, Ireland

    Gianluigi M. Riva

  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Gianluigi M. Riva

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Correspondence to Gianluigi M. Riva .

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  1. Kozminski University, Warsaw, Poland

    Aleksandra Przegalinska

  2. Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Francesca Grippa

  3. MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Peter A. Gloor

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Riva, G.M. (2020). Fantastic Interfaces and Where to Regulate Them: Three Provocative Privacy Reflections on Truth, Deception and What Lies Between. In: Przegalinska, A., Grippa, F., Gloor, P. (eds) Digital Transformation of Collaboration. COINs 2019. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48993-9_15

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