NZCCL committee member Andrew Ecclestone went to the Statistics NZ Data Summit in 2018.

We’ll discuss balancing the tensions between data innovation and protecting privacy – ensuring New Zealanders have trust and confidence in the way their data is used. We’ll learn about data sovereignty from an international and New Zealand perspective. And we’ll take an in-depth look at privacy, ethics and algorithms.

His detailed report of the proceedings is well worth reading as a whole. Appendices include the presenter’s slide decks as well as the notes and whiteboards from the second day ‘Unconference’.

Alternatively, just read his summary of the civil liberties issues we should be considering (from page 33). Topics include:

• Collective rights to data and the intersection between statistics and privacy.
• How to do meaningful consultation with the groups affected by the ethical dilemmas discussed at the summit, and the extent that there was appetite to try and do so.
• The necessary structures and systems to properly audit algorithms used to analyse data and make decisions from it.