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PERSONA

security personal data
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What if border controls at airports were faster?

Human beings have never been so mobile. And our world has never been so small. In July 2019, there were over 250,000 flights in a single day. A decrease in prices accompanied by an increase in disposable income in certain countries brought the global number of yearly passengers close to 5 billion. The sheer magnitude of the numbers makes it evident that the system is strained, especially considering that air travel infrastructure and the staffing for it has not kept pace with the increase in demand. This poses several concerns that range from mild to severe: there are longer queues, and there is a higher risk of terrorist attacks. Furthermore, given the rise in the frequency of air travel, the world has witnessed the alarming speed at which pandemics can spread with the COVID19 outbreak becoming a global catastrophe in early 2020.

For this reason, the European Commission – whose Member States monitor some of the most frequently crossed borders – deemed it important to launch a research investigation into the social acceptability of a solution that could maximise efficiency and minimize contact in air travel: no-gate border checks. Hence, PERSONA (Privacy, Ethical, Regulatory and SOcial No-gate crossing point solutions Acceptance).

The project designs and establishes a unified and tailored impact assessment method to appropriately assess the effects of new border-controlling technologies and ensure that these solutions meet the requirements and expectations of both governments, Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) and border crossing individuals. CyberEthics Lab.’s role in the project consists in assessing the mood of people related to no-gate crossing board technologies in the web through a Sentiment Analysis as well as monitoring and managing a vast Community of Stakeholders (CoS – composed of members of LEAs, political and research institutions, civil society, and the private sector) in order to assess the societal acceptance of those technologies. CEL’s engagement with the CoS is undertaken in compliance with GDPR. The results of the Sentiment Analysis combined with the interaction with stakeholders will provide important information for decision-makers in the form of perceived risks and possible mitigation measures and guidelines that will permit the deployment of future, innovative solutions by industry and border authorities.

Website: http://persona-project.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 787123

Service involved

Assessment of technology impact on privacy
We help our clients and partners to achieve their business goals while addressing ethics, privacy and cybersecurity concerns in a manner that prevents conflicts, sanctions and loss of money derived by the lack of ethical and legal compliance to national and European applicable regulations. All information technologies must respect human fundamental rights and ensure the rights of people in relation to the protection of their private life, personal data and freedom. The new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that replaced the Data Protection Directive in all EU member states on May 2018 introduces many new obligations for companies and a comprehensive set of rights for data subjects, including the right to an effective judicial remedy against a controller or a processor and the right to compensation. Therefore, in addition to being at the receiving end of an enforcement action, data controllers and processors may be subject to court proceedings and have to pay compensation to data subjects for their infringements of the GDPR. Our approach to help our clients to avoid this kind of issues consists of a holistic service composed by the following main components: providing a Data Protection Officer to drive the organization’s legal compliance action; mapping the data processed by the organisation to measure its impact on the ethical principles and legal framework; assessing the cybersecurity mechanisms used by the organisation technologies; conducting an impact assessment for all data processing mechanisms identifying ethical, legal and security risks; making recommendations for the implementation of the organisational and technical means to be compliant with the legal framework while ensuring data confidentiality (preserving authorized restrictions on information access and disclosure, including personal privacy and proprietary information protection), integrity (assurance that data is not modified or deleted in an unauthorized and undetected manner), availability (ensuring there’s timely and reliable access to and use of information) and accountability (supporting non‐repudiation, deterrence, fault isolation, intrusion detection and prevention, and after‐action recovery and legal action).
Responsible Research & Innovation
We love discovering and staying on top of new research to continuously advance our knowledge and to transform it into responsible innovation, taking into account effects and potential impacts on ethics, privacy and data protection. We help national and international partners to handle ethical, legal and cybersecurity concerns on both the research process and the project outcomes, through the legal support for the involvement of human beings in the research activity, the analysis of the national and regional legal framework applicable to the implementing technology and the recommendations for the secure and compliant development of technology. We are a multidisciplinary team that promotes the inclusion of legal and ethical concerns in the design of the technology, researching and producing new knowledge and best practices towards making a conscious and transparent adoption of technology.