Data trusts

Articles relating to Data trusts

Data trusts

European Data Protection Law Review, 6(4), 484-491

2020

Category: Journal article, Open access

Recent years have seen the burgeoning of a literature on data trusts, and the unwary might therefore be led to believe that it is an idea whose time has come. Unfortunately, the ideas of the various authors who have contributed to this literature, who include the present author, haven’t always coincided, and have been aimed at different problems at different levels of detail and hand-waving. We might therefore say more accurately that ‘data trust’ is a brand whose time has come, which in itself is a not uninteresting phenomenon, worthy of consideration.

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Data trusts: ethics, architecture and governance for trustworthy data stewardship

Web Science Institute White Paper #1, University of Southampton

2019

Themes: Data trusts, Trust

Category: White paper/report

In their report on the development of the UK AI industry, Wendy Hall and Jérôme Pesenti recommend the establishment of data trusts, “proven and trusted frameworks and agreements” that will “ensure exchanges [of data] are secure and mutually beneficial” by promoting trust in the use of data for AI. This paper defends the following thesis: A data trust works within the law to provide ethical, architectural and governance support for trustworthy data processing. Data trusts are therefore both constraining and liberating. They constrain: they respect current law, so they cannot render currently illegal actions legal. They are intended to increase trust, and so they will typically act as further constraints on data processors, adding the constraints of trustworthiness to those of law. Yet they also liberate: if data processors are perceived as trustworthy, they will get improved access to data. The paper addresses the areas of: trust and trustworthiness; ethics; architecture; legal status.

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