In a digitalised world, consumers are in demand not only as active buyers but also as passive suppliers of data. This data has become the raw material and currency of the "digital economy".

Dr.
Deputy Director
Walter Peissl holds a PhD in social and economic sciences and is an enthusiast in the field of technology assessment. His focus is on information and communication technologies.
Born in 1959 and raised in Graz, he studied economics and sociology at the University of Graz, where he received his diploma in 1985. In 1992 he completed his doctoral thesis on the sociology of white collar workers.
From 1984 to 1988, Peissl dealt with consumer protection issues in the Federal Ministry for Family, Youth and Consumer Protection and the Austrian Consumer Association. In 1988 he was one of the first scientific employees at the ITA's predecessor institution.
The focus of his work is in the field of the information society, the protection of privacy and on methodological issues of technology assessment. He has also been involved in or even led projects in virtually all subject areas of the ITA. He has been deputy director of the ITA since 1990.
His long list of publications includes several books and numerous articles on a wide range of topics. Most recently, the anthology "Technology Assessment in a Globalized World - Facing the Challenges of Transnational Technology Governance" was published.
Traditionally, expert-based forward looking has been applied to anticipate future challenges, solutions and strategic decisions, but limitations to this approach have become obvious – especially when considering long term perspectives – e.g. failing to include a comprehensive array of opinions. Aiming at producing sustainable strategies for responsible socio-technical change, research funding can benefit from combining forward looking and public participation to elicit socially robust knowledge from consulting with multi-actors, including citizens. In this paper, we give insights into the EU project CIMULACT – Citizen and Multi-Actor Consultation on Horizon 2020. In CIMULACT, more than 4500 citizens, stakeholders and experts from 30 European countries engaged online and offline to co-create research topics. These are supposed to serve as input for the next round of calls in Horizon 2020, national research agendas as well as the ninth framework programme in the making. We investigate key results of this transdisciplinary process focussing on the topic “democratic education” with regard to two levels: What issues concerning the topic were raised? Can we find a common European imaginary for “democratic education”? Our analysis shows that the results contribute to defining and describing challenges for the currently prevailing imaginary of democratic education in Europe.
Current governance structures are increasingly showing inability to address complex issues such as the Grand Challenges. Dealing with these highly interrelated, cross cutting, extensive and potentially open ended issues requires research, development and innovation to be oriented towards societal needs and demands. Here, developing and applying sustainable long term strategies for socio-technical change on the basis of socially robust knowledge seems inevitable and using the tools of anticipatory governance—forward looking and participation—is essential in order to govern innovation actively and responsibly. Yet, expert-based forward looking has its limits, especially when considering long term perspectives, and may fail to include all necessary opinions. Thus, stakeholder engagement has become a norm over the last decades, but including laypeople into forward looking science, technology and innovation (STI) governance is underexplored. Here, strategy and policy programme development may be well suited to function as early entry point for public needs and values into the innovation process. This paper will briefly review the theoretical basis for transdisciplinary forward looking and provide first insights into an ongoing highly deliberative and reflexive foresight and co-creation process engaging science, society and policy makers, CIMULACT—Citizen and Multi-Actor Consultation on Horizon2020. We will especially focus on the role of technology within a collective visioning exercise that allowed for shared explorations of desirable futures, thereby collecting tacit knowledge as well as social needs and values. Integrating these with stakeholders’ and experts’ knowledge serves for co-creating socially robust knowledge for orienting policy and strategy programming towards needs based science, technology and innovation.
The whole of Europe is getting more closely connected and, with the rapid technological development, there seems to be a need for establishing networks and knowledge bases in a cross-European manner. This can be advantageous for both the national and regional levels of policy making as well as for the European one. This paper discusses the past, present and future of cross-European work going on in the field of parliamentary technology assessment (PTA). The main questions to be dealt with will be: What did we learn from past cross-European projects? What is the additional value provided by cross-European TA? And how can cross-European TA be structurally established in the long term? To answer them, we analyse the existing framework conditions for cross-European projects, compare ten cases of previous cross-European projects and draw some lessons. In the final part we present conclusions and recommendations for fostering cross-European cooperation within the TA community.
Looking back on the many prophets who tried to predict the future as if it were predetermined, at first sight any forward-looking activity is reminiscent of making predictions with a crystal ball. In contrast to fortune tellers, today’s exercises do not predict, but try to show different paths that an open future could take. A key motivation to undertake forward-looking activities is broadening the information basis for decision-makers to help them actively shape the future in a desired way. Experts, laypeople, or stakeholders may have different sets of values and priorities with regard to pending decisions on any issue related to the future. Therefore, considering and incorporating their views can, in the best case scenario, lead to more robust decisions and strategies. However, transferring this plurality into a form that decision-makers can consider is a challenge in terms of both design and facilitation of participatory processes. In this paper, we will introduce and critically assess a new qualitative method for forward-looking activities, namely CIVISTI (Citizen Visions on Science, Technology and Innovation; www.civisti.org), which was developed during an EU project of the same name. Focussing strongly on participation, with clear roles for citizens and experts, the method combines expert, stakeholder and lay knowledge to elaborate recommendations for decision-making in issues related to today’s and tomorrow’s science, technology and innovation. Consisting of three steps, the process starts with citizens’ visions of a future 30–40 years from now. Experts then translate these visions into practical recommendations which the same citizens then validate and prioritise to produce a final product. The following paper will highlight the added value as well as limits of the CIVISTI method and will illustrate potential for the improvement of future processes.
Modern societies are vulnerable. We have known this long before the attacks of September 11, but they made it clear to everyone. The second lesson learned was that it is impossible to foresee such events. Although these attacks to the real world were “low-tech”, now there are attempts around the globe to control especially the electronic or virtual world. However, does more surveillance really lead to more security? If so, what will be the price we have to pay? This paper gives an overview over what happened on a governmental level after September 11 in the EU, in some EU-member states and in the USA. Apart from political actions, we already face even direct socio-economic implications as some anonymizer services were shut down. They empowered Internet users to protect their right of privacy, and they were the first targets of investigation and suspicion. Shutting down these services reduces the potential room of users to protect their privacy by using privacy enhancing technologies (PETs). This is an indicator for a serious societal problem: democracy already has changed. In a second part this paper analyses the relationship between surveillance and security. It is argued that, the international over-reactions will not lead to the intended effects. Rather, they will have long-term implications for the respective societies.
The authors give a case-based state-of-play account of cross-European TA cooperation in service of national parliaments as well as the European Parliament. Most TA units have formed their role around the specific needs of their national or regional parliaments and other national or regional target groups, making it challenging to shift focus and create new roles for themselves in a European sphere. This article presents recommendations on how cross-European TA can be done in the future with a focus on three aspects of cross-European TA: (1) the added value of cross-European work and lessons from past experiences; (2) the identification of effient and credible modes of cooperation to conceptualize cross-European TA; (3) the identification of relevant target groups and addressees and the bringing about of impact on the European level.
This volume examines the relationship between privacy, surveillance and security, and the alleged privacy–security trade-off, focusing on the citizen’s perspective.
Recent revelations of mass surveillance programmes clearly demonstrate the ever-increasing capabilities of surveillance technologies. The lack of serious reactions to these activities shows that the political will to implement them appears to be an unbroken trend. The resulting move into a surveillance society is, however, contested for many reasons. Are the resulting infringements of privacy and other human rights compatible with democratic societies? Is security necessarily depending on surveillance? Are there alternative ways to frame security? Is it possible to gain in security by giving up civil liberties, or is it even necessary to do so, and do citizens adopt this trade-off? This volume contributes to a better and deeper understanding of the relation between privacy, surveillance and security, comprising in-depth investigations and studies of the common narrative that more security can only come at the expense of sacrifice of privacy. The book combines theoretical research with a wide range of empirical studies focusing on the citizen’s perspective. It presents empirical research exploring factors and criteria relevant for the assessment of surveillance technologies. The book also deals with the governance of surveillance technologies. New approaches and instruments for the regulation of security technologies and measures are presented, and recommendations for security policies in line with ethics and fundamental rights are discussed.
This book will be of much interest to students of surveillance studies, critical security studies, intelligence studies, EU politics and IR in general.
Im vorliegenden Buch werden die Beiträge der vom ITA veranstalteten Konferenz „Privacy – Ein Grundrecht mit Ablaufdatum?“ vom 11.11.2002 in Wien dokumentiert. Die Konferenz bot WissenschafterInnen aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen sowie Praktikern aus Politik und Zivilgesellschaft ein Forum zum Dialog. Die vorliegenden Beiträge ausgewiesener ExpertInnen beleuchten das Grundrecht auf Privatsphäre dem entsprechend aus völlig unterschiedlichen Blickwinkeln. Ausgehend von der philosophischen Betrachtung der Privatheit und ihres Wertes für liberale Gesellschaften spannt sich der Bogen über eine Entwicklungsgeschichte der Grundrechte zur Diskussion der Persönlichkeitsrechte als Wirtschaftsgut. Die internationale Perspektive wird in einem Politikvergleich unter dem Titel Global Assumptions and International Governance eingebracht. Darüber hinaus finden sich in diesem Band soziologische Analysen zur Überwachung, Vorschläge wie Datenschutz durch Technik gewährleistet werden könnte und ein Beitrag zu Datenschutz als Verbraucherschutz. Abschließend wird auf aktuelle Entwicklungen in Österreich eingegangen.
This book is based on contributions to an international conference held in Vienna on November 11th 2002. The conference entitled "Privacy – a basic right with expiring date?" was a forum for an interdisciplinary dialog of experts from academia as well as politicians and representatives from civilian society. The papers in this book argue that privacy is an indispensable value in liberal societies, present an overview on the development of basic rights from the past to the present and discuss the impact of personal rights seen as economic goods. Global assumptions and international governance of information privacy are discussed in another paper. A further paper deals with the surveillance and sociological implications of sorting and integrating personal data. Technical approaches are available to overcome some of the problems mentioned above, which are presented in a co
Seit ihren Anfängen war eines der Hauptanliegen von Technikfolgen- Abschätzung, einen Beitrag zu leisten, das Informationsdefizit der Legis- lative gegenüber der Exekutive zu verkleinern. Seit einiger Zeit erlebt die Technikfolgen-Abschätzung in Europa einen Aufschwung, der in dieser Dimension kaum absehbar war. Der größte Teil der Aktivitäten findet sich allerdings im wissenschaftlichen Bereich, finanziert von der Verwaltung – ein Beitrag zum Ungleichgewicht. An etlichen europäischen Parlamenten gibt es aber Einrichtungen, deren Aufgabe es ist, PTA, also Technikfolgen- Abschätzung für das oder mit dem Parlament zu betreiben. Wie das jeweilige Parlament damit umgeht, welche Besonderheiten die einzelnen Einrichtungen aufweisen, in welchem Zusammenhang diese mit der Struktur des parlamentarischen und allgemein politischen Systems stehen, war Gegenstand eines Forschungsprojekts des Instituts für Technikfolgen-Abschätzung der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissen- schaften. Anstoß hierzu gaben einerseits der erste Versuch einer parla- mentarischen Technikfolgen-Abschätzung im österreichischen Parlament und der zaghafte Beginn einer Diskussion über eine möglich Institutio- nalisierung von PTA in Österreich. Andererseits läßt sich die Tendenz feststellen, daß PTA immer mehr zu einer internationalen Angelegenheit wird, eine Entwicklung, die etwa zur Gründung des European Parliamen- tary Technology Assessment Networks (EPTA) führte.
Im Rahmen dieser Untersuchung wurde ein internationales Symposion mit Vertretern der bestehenden nationalen PTA-Einrichtungen und Parlamentariern durchgeführt, die Mitglieder der jeweiligen Leitungs- ausschüsse sind. Die Einzelbeiträge dieses Bandes stützen sich weitgehend auf die zu diesem Anlaß vorgetragenen Referate. Die unterschiedlichen Sichtweisen derer, die PTA betreiben, und ihrer Klienten, den Politikern, erzeugen ein plastisches Bild der europäischen Szene. In einem abschließenden Analyseteil wird versucht,
Endbericht zum ITA-Projekt A63 – Aktuelle Fragen der Geodaten-Nutzung auf mobilen Geräten (AK5)
Zwei Entwicklungen der letzten Jahre haben zu einem Problem geführt, dem bisher noch kaum Beachtung geschenkt wird: Die Analyse und Ausbeutung von Geodaten, die durch die zunehmende Ausstattung mobiler Geräte mit GPS-Sensoren ermöglicht werden, und die steigende Durchdringung des Marktes mit Smartphones, deren Funktionsumfang mit Apps erweitert werden kann.
Die heute selbstverständliche Verfügbarkeit von Geodaten sowie die genaue Zuordenbarkeit der einzelnen Geräte zu bestimmten Personen ermöglichen Werbetreibenden eine neue Dimension der Profilerstellung, die hohe Profite für die nächsten Jahre verspricht. Während NutzerInnen sich dessen bzw. der Folgen dieser Profiling-Prozesse kaum bewusst sind, und das Grundrecht auf Privatsphäre oft als vernachlässigbares Gut in Frage stellen, entledigen sich Hersteller und Service-Anbieter ihrer Verantwortung, und Datenschutzeinrichtungen sind oftmals nicht in der Lage, bestehendem Recht zur Durchsetzung zu verhelfen, was aber auf Grund der nationalen Zuständigkeiten, der unübersehbaren Menge an Apps und der hohen Dynamik in diesem Feld kaum gefordert werden kann.
Vor allem die hohe Verbreitung von Smartphones und geodatenbasierten Services unter Jugendlichen ist bedenkenswert. Während man als Kind und JugendlicheR als nicht voll geschäftsfähig gilt, scheint diese Altersgruppe in Bezug auf die Smartphonenutzung dem Streben nach Überwachung und/oder Profitmaximierung verschiedener Unternehmen hilflos überlassen zu werden. Aber auch insgesamt, über alle Altersgruppen, hat die Zahl der SmartphonebesitzerInnen so stark zugenommen, dass es hier eine sehr große Zahl Betroffener gibt.
An Hand von Apps, wie bspw. „Paper Toss“, einem einfachen Spiel, das Geodaten gar nicht benötigen würde, den Standort der AnwenderInnen aber gemeinsam mit deren eindeutiger Telefon-ID an fünf internationale Werbenetzwerke überträgt, ode
-> Devices with digital assistants and voice control,
such as “smart speakers”, are becoming more
widespread in households where they are
potentially eavesdropping on buyers in their most
private spaces.
-> The devices collect personal data and send it to
the manufacturers. Non-transparent data analysis
exacerbates the imbalance between suppliers
and consumers.
-> In future, digital assistance systems could
manage the access to the (online) world.
-> The assessment of this business model raises
not only data protection issues, but also
sociopolitical questions.
-> Staus kosten die EU jährlich über 80 Milliarden Euro.
-> Alle großen europäischen Städte stehen aktuell vor der Herausforderung, Staus, Umweltverschmutzung und Unfälle zu reduzieren.
-> Derzeit gibt es in Österreich kein einheitliches Mobilitätspreissystem, sondern parallele Ansätze für verschiedene Verkehrsträger.
-> Mobilitätsverhalten kann nachhaltig gesteuert werden, indem die Preise für alle Verkehrsträger optimiert und auf gemeinsame Ziele ausgerichtet werden.
AutorInnen: Tanja Sinozic, Stefanie Peer, Mahshid Sotoudeh, Niklas Gudowsky
-> Today, social and economic processes are highly dependent on different technologies and their interaction.
-> Critical infrastructures are therefore the "main artery" of the digitally networked society and their functionality is essential for the provision of services of general interest.
-> System failures due to external risk factors, errors inherent to the system or unknown weak points can seriously impair the stability of societal processes.
-> The creation of effective security measures requires above all a greater awareness of the previously underestimated problem of system dependencies.
-> Gesellschaftliche und wirtschaftliche Prozesse sind heute hochgradig von verschiedenen Technologien und deren Zusammenspiel abhängig.
-> Kritische Infrastrukturen sind damit die „Hauptschlagader“ der digital vernetzten Gesellschaft, deren Funktionsfähigkeit wesentlich für Daseinsvorsorge und Grundversorgung ist.
-> Systemausfälle durch externe Risikofaktoren, systemimmanente Fehler oder unbekannte Schwachstellen können diese Funktionsfähigkeit gravierend beeinträchtigen.
-> Die Schaffung wirksamer Sicherheitsmaßnahmen erfordert vor allem mehr Bewusstsein für die bislang unterschätzte Problematik von System-Abhängigkeiten.
-> Online-Gaming ist beliebt und weit verbreitet.
-> Ob am Smartphone, auf der Konsole oder am PC – beinahe jedes moderne Computerspiel ist vernetzt.
-> Der Datenschutz wird bisher wenig beachtet.
-> Das Verhalten in Spielen sagt viel über die
SpielerInnen aus.
-> Regulierungen seitens der Hersteller und der Politik, sowie die Aufklärung der NutzerInnen sind notwendig.
-> Online gaming is popular; the sector is growing continuously.
-> Almost every modern video game can be played online – on a PC, console or a mobile device.
-> The way gamers behave is a source of lots of information.
-> Up until now, the topic of data protection has been neglected.
-> Governance by game producers and regulation by governments is required, as is greater awareness on the side of the consumer.
Tel.: +43 (0)1 515 81-6584
Fax: (+43-1-) 51581-6570
Bäckerstraße 13, 1010 Wien
wpeissl(at)oeaw.ac.at