Walking on the edge. Cooperation and data sharing between academic researchers and journalists while investigating crimes and other deviant behaviors

by Michele Riccardi (Crime&tech e Transcrime – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore)

Chapter 3: technical challenges and summary

Technical challenges

The legal challenges above illustrated are mirrored in a number of technical challenges. In summary, it is necessary to address three needs.

First, the need to preserve personal data protection of both users (i.e. journalists and researchers) and data subjects (those on which academics produce research, or journalists do stories). This means that technical safeguards should be employed which do not allow this information to become publicly available, neither because intentionally disclosed by some user (for example, by a ‘unlawful’ journalist), nor because some third party would be able to access unlawfully this data (e.g. through a cyber-attack).

Second, the need to preserve integrity and quality of the information. This means that the data cannot change and cannot be violated in its integrity. For example, if researchers or journalists collect a list of firms participating in a public procurement to be employed in research or investigations, they shall be able to preserve this data and access it back, let’s say, after two years, and do it in a secure way, finding the same information. This is because in the meantime the information may have changed (for example, the owners of a firm may have been replaced). This need requires each piece of information to be associated with a certain time-stamp which becomes, therefore, unalterable.

Finally, the need to guarantee access to information. This means many different things: (a) first, the possibility for non-technical users (as journalists and in general ‘citizen scientists’ often are) to access and employ the data in an user-friendly manner; (b) second, the possibility that journalists or researchers can employ the information as evidence to be included in research publications or media stories; (c) third, the possibility for readers (of both journalists and researchers, but especially of journalists, i.e. the general public) to access easily – in the sense of understand – the information and the data. This possibility obviously depends on the nature of the media, and on the ability of journalists to process, digest and ‘tell the story’, but also on how the information was originally made available to the users; (d) fourth, finally, accessibility can be read in the sense of becoming ‘FAIR’, i.e. findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable by future researchers or future journalists. How is it possible to make, technically speaking, this information a public good which could be employed in the future by other journalists, other academics and other citizens?

In summary : legal and technical challenges

In summary, while neither the regulation, nor the jurisprudence, clarify in a univocal manner the conditions under which information shall or may be processed by journalists and researchers in crime-related research, and be exchanged between them, it is clear that the principles of proportionality and necessity – which inspire the whole EU personal data protection regulatory framework, and are aligned with the so-called ‘data minimisation’ principle – play a pivotal role. As far (a) the ‘public interest’ is satisfied by investigative journalists or researchers in exchanging certain information, or in using certain tools or data, and (b) the processing is proportionate (and its level of intrusion is, ceteris paribus, minimized), the employment of personal data may be, generally speaking, lawful and object of a legitimate interest in both research and journalism.

This is particularly true for journalistic investigations in the crime prevention domain, and more specifically in the realm of anti-corruption and anti-money laundering given that, as stated by the Council of Europe, “misuse of public office, improper use of public money” are explicitly mentioned as areas of ‘public interest’.

In this sense, researchers and journalists – and generally speaking all ‘citizen scientists’ – should first see at the principles of proportionality and necessity not as a constraint, but as a way to better perimeter their action field. By leveraging on the relevant regulation – first of all the GDPR and the national laws – and guidelines (e.g. those issued by the Council of Europe) – it is possible for these actors to understand to what extent their activity falls under a legitimate interest and, more specifically, may accomplish a public interest. Obviously, more specific measures (and countermeasures), of both legal, organizational and technical nature shall be designed and employed. These are discussed in the second chapter of this blog post.

Photo by The Climate Reality Project on Unsplash

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