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Expanding Perspectives on Data Privacy: Insights from Rural Togo

Zoe Kahn, Meyebinesso Farida Carelle Pere, Emily Aiken, Nitin Kohli, Joshua E. Blumenstock

Abstract

Passively collected "big" data sources are increasingly used to inform critical development policy decisions in low- and middle-income countries. While prior work highlights how such approaches may reveal sensitive information, enable surveillance, and centralize power, less is known about the corresponding privacy concerns, hopes, and fears of the people directly impacted by these policies -- people sometimes referred to as experiential experts. To understand the perspectives of experiential experts, we conducted semi-structured interviews with people living in rural villages in Togo shortly after an entirely digital cash transfer program was launched that used machine learning and mobile phone metadata to determine program eligibility. This paper documents participants' privacy concerns surrounding the introduction of big data approaches in development policy. We find that the privacy concerns of our experiential experts differ from those raised by privacy and development domain experts. To facilitate a more robust and constructive account of privacy, we discuss implications for policies and designs that take seriously the privacy concerns raised by both experiential experts and domain experts.

Expanding Perspectives on Data Privacy: Insights from Rural Togo

Abstract

Passively collected "big" data sources are increasingly used to inform critical development policy decisions in low- and middle-income countries. While prior work highlights how such approaches may reveal sensitive information, enable surveillance, and centralize power, less is known about the corresponding privacy concerns, hopes, and fears of the people directly impacted by these policies -- people sometimes referred to as experiential experts. To understand the perspectives of experiential experts, we conducted semi-structured interviews with people living in rural villages in Togo shortly after an entirely digital cash transfer program was launched that used machine learning and mobile phone metadata to determine program eligibility. This paper documents participants' privacy concerns surrounding the introduction of big data approaches in development policy. We find that the privacy concerns of our experiential experts differ from those raised by privacy and development domain experts. To facilitate a more robust and constructive account of privacy, we discuss implications for policies and designs that take seriously the privacy concerns raised by both experiential experts and domain experts.
Paper Structure (41 sections, 1 figure, 4 tables)

This paper contains 41 sections, 1 figure, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Literature Review
  3. Privacy as Sociotechnical (in Brief)
  4. Privacy and Poverty
  5. Common Data Privacy Concerns Raised by Domain Experts: Mobile Phone Metadata to Inform Development Policy
  6. Methods to Elicit Data Privacy Concerns From Experiential Experts
  7. Methods
  8. Methods Overview
  9. Phase 1: Pilot Phone Interviews (January - May 2021)
  10. Phase 2: Pilot Fieldwork (December 2022)
  11. Phase 3: Fieldwork (February - April 2023)
  12. Data Collection Overview
  13. Village Selection, Recruitment, and Access
  14. Participants
  15. Interview Guide Description
  16. ...and 26 more sections

Figures (1)

  • Figure 1: Left: Photograph of visuals used to facilitate conversations with participants about four pieces of data recorded in mobile phone data: mobile money and mobile money transactions, phone calls, text messages, and location. Each visual is printed on card stock and laminated to facilitate easy rearrangement and reuse. The second author who is Togolese helped ensure the visuals were culturally relevant. For example, the image of the map is the map that is commonly taught in schools in Togo; the images of basic feature phones were used over smartphones because these more closely resemble the phones used by our participants in rural villages in Togo. Right: Photograph of visuals being used during an interview. Participants would often pick up, arrange, or point to the visuals during interviews to help articulate their ideas.