Some at Web Summit seek 'Contract for the Web' to protect user privacy

Rob Pegoraro, Special for USA TODAY Published 5:54 a.m. ET Nov. 12, 2018

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Former Cambridge Analytica researcher Christopher Wylie testified before members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, as they seek answers into how the London-based firm misused Facebook data during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. (May 16) AP

A city beneath a web of connected lines. (Photo: Getty Images)

LISBON—Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie had some harsh words at the Web Summit conference here for the business he had chosen and the company whose data he had once helped exploit for that now-bankrupt research firm.

"Facebook, it has so much power at its disposal, it is making a digital clone of our society,” he said to British newscaster Krishnan Guru Murthy in a panel last Tuesday afternoon. He compared Facebook’s conquest of social media to European colonizers’ conduct across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, calling it “our generation's East India Company."

Wearing an “Arrest the President” hoodie, Wylie demanded regulations for social media.

"If we can regulate nuclear power, why can't we regulate some [expletive] code?" he asked as the audience cheered.

That was a common sentiment at Web Summit. For instance, United Nations secretary general António Guterres warned in a speech last Monday night that "the weaponization of artificial intelligence is a serious danger."

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More: UK watchdog fines Facebook $644,000 over users’ data breach in Cambridge Analytica scandal

But Summit speakers also had suggestions about what to do to fix things. Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, for example, used the Berners-Lee keynote that opened the conference Monday night to call for companies, governments and Internet users to unite around a “Contract for the Web.”

Its nine principals call for meeting such goals as protecting privacy, providing universal Internet access, keeping the Internet open and universal (Berners-Lee has called for net-neutrality protections before), and building online social systems that impede harassment and hate speech but promote constructive conversations.

"As an individual, you need to hold those companies accountable,” Berners-Lee said. “You need to hold those governments accountable."

The U.S. government may not lead on those issues, but the European Union seems prepared to. EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a keynote Wednesday.

“There's no need to ask people to give up values like privacy, democracy, fairness in the name of innovation,” she said. "The real guarantee of an innovative future comes from keeping markets open.”

In a press conference afterwards, she defended the EU’s sweeping General Data Protection Regulation, which requires companies to let their customers see, edit or delete most data collected about them. Vestager said the GDPR’s principles, if not its extensive details, continue to draw interest on the other side of the Atlantic.

"I find that there is sort of an increased questioning and curiosity on what we're doing in Europe,” she said.

And even if this debate does not yield a new law, many U.S. firms have decided to extend some GDPR privacy protections to U.S. users. In a Web Summit talk, Google product-management vice president Tamar Yehoshua said the GDPR "has helped us focus our work” of providing clearer and more comprehensive privacy controls.

Microsoft president Brad Smith, meanwhile, used a Wednesday evening keynote to call for "a digital Geneva Convention” to end state cyberattacks against civilians and asking for support for the company’s Digital Peace campaign.

"The tools that we've created, the tools often times that you've created, have been turned by others into weapons,” he said, citing in particular last year’s international ransomware attacks.  "We need governments to do better."

(Disclosure: Pegoraro moderated four panels here, in return for which the organizers covered most of his travel costs.)

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Rob Pegoraro is a tech writer based out of Washington, D.C. To submit a tech question, e-mail Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/robpegoraro.  

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