Digital platforms are now penetrating almost all aspects of our lives. After having built immense walled gardens without conceiving privacy as a core design value, they are now making bolder privacy claims and implementing privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) in different settings. By way of example, Google and Apple have been developing local differentially private techniques for services such as web browsing and maps or federated learning techniques to reduce the processing of behavioral data for marketing purposes. Google and Apple have also partnered to create an exposure notification system in service of privacy-preserving contact tracing. In this panel, CLSR brings together lawyers, computer scientists and regulators to discuss the benefits and limits of a value-by-design approach and its instrumentalization by digital platforms, which are primarily focused upon strengthening their market and information powers.
• Are digital platforms at the forefront of privacy innovation?
• What do these PETs really achieve?
• How do/could digital platforms use these PETs to strengthen their market position & information power?
• What is the role of a supervisory authority in this context and what could be done to counter-balance excessive centralization of power in the hands of digital platforms?
