Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs)
(Brazil)

Overview

Open Loop is launching a new policy prototyping program intended to guide and enable companies in Brazil to leverage and apply privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to help deidentify data and mitigate privacy-related risks, including in AI systems and in the context of the metaverse.

The program will follow the policy prototyping methodology developed by Open Loop. In particular, the Open Loop consortium will test an operational playbook for providing guidance to companies and policymakers in Brazil on the potential role of PETs in mitigating privacy risks, including the risk of reidentification, while also incentivizing companies in the region and beyond to develop and adopt PETs. Through this methodological approach we will gather the experience of participants receiving, handling and implementing the policy prototype, while testing its clarity, effectiveness and actionability.

The policy prototyping program consists of three modules:

  1. Capacity building sessions that will (a) explain how different PETs function and are able to preserve the value of data while mitigating privacy risks; (b) analyze the technical and regulatory challenges in the adoption of PETs; and (c) discuss possible ways to scale up the adoption of PETs by businesses, including the role that regulatory incentives could play.
  2. The testing of an operational guidance (or playbook) on PETs that guides startups on conducting a risk assessment in which different PETs mitigate different privacy risks, and helps them select and apply a PET or multiple PETs that are appropriate for different use cases. Through prototype tasks that companies will be asked to go through in order to implement PETs according to the technical playbook and its risk assessment procedure. The aim is to provide guidance on the operationalization of privacy by design principles through PETs, incentivizing their adoption by the industry.

  3. A future scenarios workshop that will focus on the challenges and opportunities of PETs in the context of the metaverse, based on the findings of the testing with companies.

     

The findings of this policy prototyping program will be analyzed and synthesized in one report that will include actionable and evidence-based policy recommendations for policymakers and regulators in Brazil.

This policy prototyping program will:

  • Train companies on the state of the art of PETs techniques, tools, challenges and opportunities.
  • Help companies identify privacy-related risks that can be mitigated by appropriate PETs through a specific risk assessment procedure.
  • Test new and more nuanced ways to understand and operationalize key data protection and PETs related techniques such as: Differential privacy, Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC), Federated Learning and Federating Analytics, Trusted Execution Environments, Anonymization Techniques, Cryptographic Techniques, Homomorphic encryption and Synthetic Data.
  • Explore and extrapolate how the policy prototype, namely its guidance regarding risk assessment and application of PETs, would operate and perform in a metaverse context.

About the consortium

The policy prototype program engages start-ups providing B2C & B2B products and services in Brazil, from the following sectors, including Health, Finance, Social Media, and Education. The inception phase with start-ups will start in November and will run until April 2023.

This program is led by Meta’s Open Loop team and a multidisciplinary research team within the Instituto Liberdade Digital of Brazil, in collaboration with the Brazilian Data Protection Authority – ANPD and the Executive Secretariat of the National AI Strategy – EBIA (at the Ministry of ICTs) as observers, and with the support of the WEF’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Brazil – C4IR.

Partners

C4IR

UEPB

In collaboration with the Brazilian Data Protection Authority – ANPD and the Executive Secretariat of the National AI Strategy – EBIA (at the Ministry of ICTs) as observers.

Participating companies

Neoron