Expanding Perspectives on Data Privacy: Insights from Rural Togo

TL;DR

This paper explores the privacy concerns of rural Togolese residents affected by digital development policies, revealing differing perspectives from experts and suggesting more inclusive privacy policies.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the privacy perceptions of experiential experts in low-income settings, highlighting the need for policies that consider local perspectives.

Findings

Privacy concerns differ between local residents and domain experts

Digital cash transfer programs raise specific privacy fears

Implications for more inclusive privacy policies

Abstract

Passively collected "big" data sources are increasingly used to inform critical development policy decisions in low- and middle-income countries. While prior work highlights how such approaches may reveal sensitive information, enable surveillance, and centralize power, less is known about the corresponding privacy concerns, hopes, and fears of the people directly impacted by these policies -- people sometimes referred to as experiential experts. To understand the perspectives of experiential experts, we conducted semi-structured interviews with people living in rural villages in Togo shortly after an entirely digital cash transfer program was launched that used machine learning and mobile phone metadata to determine program eligibility. This paper documents participants' privacy concerns surrounding the introduction of big data approaches in development policy. We find that the privacy concerns of our experiential experts differ from those raised by privacy and development domain experts. To facilitate a more robust and constructive account of privacy, we discuss implications for policies and designs that take seriously the privacy concerns raised by both experiential experts and domain experts.