The announcement by Facebook that Libra will "deliver on the promise of 'the internet of money'" has drawn the attention of the financial world. Regulators, institutions, and users of financial products have all been prompted to react and, so far, no one managed to convince the association behind Libra to apply the brakes or to convince regulators to stop the project altogether. In this article, we propose that Libra might be best seen not as a financial newcomer, but as a critical enabler for Facebook to acquire a new source of personal data. By working with financial regulators seeking to address concerns with money laundering and terrorism, Facebook can position itself for privileged access to high-assurance digital identity information. For this reason, Libra merits the attention of not only financial regulators, but also the state actors that are concerned with reputational risks, the rule of law, public safety, and national defence.
Citation
V Khan and G Goodell. "Libra: Is it Really About the Money?" August 2019. In Technology, Society, and Ethics, Jeremy Pitt, Ed., July 2021.
In this article, we consider the roles of tokens and distributed ledgers in digital payment systems. We present a brief taxonomy of digital payment systems that use tokens, and we address the different models for how distributed ledger technology can support digital payment systems in general. We offer guidance on the salient features of digital payment systems, which we comprehend in terms of consumer privacy, token issuance, and accountability for system operators.
Citation
G Goodell. "Tokens and Distributed Ledgers in Digital Payment Systems." Discussion paper, July 2022.
Data harvesting and profiling have become a de facto business model for many businesses in the digital economy. The surveillance of individual persons through their use of private sector platforms has a well-understood effect on personal autonomy and democratic institutions. In this article, we explore the consequences of implementing data-rich services in the public sector and, specifically, the dangers inherent to undermining the universality of the reach of public services, the implicit endorsement of the platform operators by the government, and the inability of members of the public to avoid using the platforms in practice. We propose a set of good practices in the form of design principles that infrastructure services can adopt to mitigate the risks, and we specify a set of design primitives that can be used to support the development of infrastructure that follows the principles. We argue that providers of public infrastructure should adopt a practice of critical assessment of the consequences of their technology choices.
Citation
A Rychwalska, G Goodell, and M Roszczynska-Kurasinska. "Data management for platform-mediated public services: Challenges and best practices." Surveillance & Society, Vol. 19 No. 1 (2021).
For decades, proponents of the Internet have promised that it would one day provide a seamless way for everyone in the world to communicate with each other, without introducing new boundaries, gatekeepers, or power structures. What happened? This article explores the system-level characteristics of a key design feature of the Internet that helped it to achieve widespread adoption, as well as the system-level implications of certain patterns of use that have emerged over the years as a result of that feature. Such patterns include the system-level acceptance of particular authorities, mechanisms that promote and enforce the concentration of power, and network effects that implicitly penalise those who do not comply with decisions taken by privileged actors. We provide examples of these patterns and offer some key observations, toward the development of a general theory of why they emerged despite our best efforts, and we conclude with some suggestions on how we might mitigate the worst outcomes and avoid similar experiences in the future.
Citation
G Goodell. "The Forgotten Preconditions for a Well-Functioning Internet." Data & Policy (2023), 5: e1.