Seed Catalog > Data Ethics Principles

Data Ethics Principles

Data ethics refer and adhere to the principles and values ​​on which human rights and personal data protection laws are based. It’s about honest and genuine transparency in data management. To actively develop privacy-by-design and privacy-enhancing products and infrastructures. To treat someone else’s personal information as you wish your own, or your children’s, treated. Data ethics is the step further than mere compliance with personal data protection laws: All data processing therefore respects as a minimum the requirements set out in the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the European Convention on Human Rights.

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The human being at the centre

Human interests always prevail for institutional and commercial interests. People are not computer processes or pieces of software, but unique with empathy, self- determination , unpredictability, intuition and creativity and therefore have a higher status than machines. The human being is at the centre and have the primary benefit of data processing.

Individual data control

Humans should be in control of their data and empowered by their data. A person’s self-determination should be prioritised in all data processes and the person should be actively involved in regards to the data recorded about them. The individual has the primary control over the usage of their data, the context in which his/her data is processed and how it is activated.

Transparency

Data processing activities and automated decisions must make sense for the individual. They must be truly transparent and explainable. The purpose and interests of data processing must be clearly understood by the individual in terms of understanding risks, as well as social, ethical and societal consequences.

Accountability

Accountability is an organisation’s reflective, reasonable and systematic use and protection of personal data. Accountability is an integral part of all aspects of data processing, and efforts are being made to reduce the risks for the individual and to mitigate social and ethical implications. Sustainable personal data processing is embedded throughout the organisation and ensures ethical accountability in the short, medium and long term. An organisation’s accountability should also apply to subcontractor’s and partners’ processing of data.

Equality

Democratic data processing is based on an awareness of the societal power relations that data systems sustain, reproduce or create. When processing data, special attention should be paid to vulnerable people, who are are particularly vulnerable to profiling that may adversely affect their self-determination and control or expose them to discrimination or stigmatisation, for example due to their financial, social or health related conditions. Paying attention to vulnerable people also involves working actively to reduce bias in the development of self-learning algorithms.

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