Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 26 November 2019
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment
Data Collection by Digital Assistants: Discussion
Mr. Dale Sunderland:
A significant number of those issues are covered by the transparency requirements under the GDPR. More could be done on user notices; that is a very good point. As well as the transparency elements, we have tried to focus on ensuring the risk to this is minimised to the greatest extent it can be so that it is not just a case of continuing where there is a significant risk of misactiviations and it is a case of users beware. This is so that users are protected from misactivations in the first place and that the data reviewed by humans are properly anonymised or pseudonymised and that they would take away personal identifiers so that when a human goes to review it that the privacy or data protection risk has been minimised to the greatest extent possible. That is what we mean by data protection by design and that is how we can do it. More could be done with user interfaces and the setup of these technologies to inform users. There is a long way to go but we have seen some positive moves in recent months by the service providers and manufacturers of the devices.