IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020 - 15

Last year the U.K. ranked fifth [2]
in the European Commission's
Digital Economy and Society
Index (DESI), which tracks each
country's digital performance
and competitiveness using five
key ra n k i ngs: con ne ctiv it y,
human capital, use of Internet
services, integration of digital
technology, and digital public
services. The EC is encouraging
all countries to improve their
performance in these areas to be
able to compete more actively in
a global environment.

stakeholders in the development of
There are two ways to address this:
new technologies. These developthe government can either try to
ments have been accompanied by
build the surveillance infrastructure
a change to the process of procurethemselves, or the government can
ment from a " request for proposals "
outsource the transaction tracking to
(RFP) model to a " platform " model.
data harvesting businesses. This convenient delegation means
they can achieve their aims
concerning the tracing but
also abdicate responsibility,
including accountability to
Technological determinism is a
the public, for developing the
required surveillance inframyth; there are always underlying
structure to do so. This outeconomic motivations for
sourcing is more effective
when the service providers
emergence of new technologies.
capture a dominant position in the marketplace, so
governments that take this
In other words, there is now an
approach have a reason to further
expectation for things to be ready
weaken regulations that preserve
made in advance as opposed to
competition.
being built to meet specifically statWhy Do You Think the
ed requirements. As a result, there
Regulation is So Weak When
is now an expectation that public
it Comes to Surveillance
initiatives follow the development of
private platforms. Again, Shoshana
Capitalism? Do You Think
Zuboff [3] explains this well in her
There's A Lack of Incentive
book. Separately, I would also add
to Enforce the Current
Regulations?
that Uber or Airbnb are examples
GG: Follow the money. E i t he r
of platforms whose proliferation has
taxes are too low, or they are not
depended upon exploiting ambigucollected effectively. This usually
ous or poorly enforced rules to
flows through a logical progression,
undercut prevailing gatekeepers.
from a foundation that includes
valid premises that are unsound
In the case of Uber or Airbnb, the
at the system level, which leads to
regulators were unable to keep
intermediate effects in the form
up the pace of change of the platof policies and practices, and ultiform, so the regulations lagged
mately unintended consequences.
behind its development, but they
For example, globalization of techare catching up now, albeit slowly.
nology wherein different parts are
Under What Conditions, if Any,
manufactured or maintained in
Do You Think a Government,
different regions leads to regulaor a Gatekeeper Like a
tory arbitrage that results in insufRegulator, Might be Able to
ficient tax levels to fund government
Address These Issues Before
functions. Another example starts
the Platform Becomes Prolific?
with the premise that subsidizing
GG: This is difficult because, if a politor incentivizing founders is a good
ical party advocated a program of
way to entice them to operate in a
reformation and regulation, the platparticular jurisdiction, which leads
form owners could harness business
to insufficient involvement of key

There are Advantages to
Encouraging Countries
to Develop Their Digital
Economies, But Do you
Think There are Any Risks of
Countries Misusing or Abusing
It as they Develop?
GG: One of the major risks is surveillance capitalism. It persists for a
number of reasons. First, it is profitable. Wealthy interests want for
nothing but to manipulate behavior
of populations cheaply and at scale,
and they will pay dearly for it. The
economic motivations are explained
well by Shoshana Zuboff [3]. Second,
government bureaucracies are often
too weak to stop it. The regulation
is weak in many countries, and for
transnational businesses there is an
exploitable lack of clarity on how to
enforce rules that vary across jurisdictions or do not cover activities
that span boundaries. Third, government bureaucracies benefit from
surveillance capitalism. For example, we know that money laundering
regulations have been interpreted
to require financial intermediaries
to identify the counterparties to all
transactions and link them to real
persons. In the pursuit of fraud,
governments might seek to collect,
aggregate, and analyze such data
about individuals and their activities to identify anomalous behavior.
DECEMBER 2020

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IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020

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