Governments, humanitarian organizations and private contractors are capturing, storing and sharing an ever increasing volume of identity data, much of it pertaining to individuals such as refugees, whistleblowers and other vulnerable people who may never interact directly with the databases where their data is stored. While many countries have enacted legislation to establish baseline safety protocols for protecting personal data, and online privacy and security standards are becoming more ubiquitous outside of the technology economy, protecting data about people remains a challenging and underappreciated area of risk for most organizations, and securely sharing that data a significant impediment.
This talk by Timothy Quinn of the Dark Data Project, co-sponsored by IDDP, the Humanitarian Action Initiative, and SMPA’s Media and Peacebuilding Project, provides a better understanding of the tiered reality of identity protection, outlining appropriate strategies suitable to the needs of vulnerable people in a wide variety of contexts.