Cost Action 19121 Good Brother
GoodBrother aims to increase the awareness of the ethical, legal, and privacy issues associated with audio- and video-based monitoring and to propose privacy-aware working solutions for assisted living
The European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) is a funding organisation for the creation of research networks, called COST Actions (CA). These networks offer an open space for collaboration among scientists across Europe (and beyond) and thereby give impetus to research advancements and innovation. The eLaw Center for Law and Digital Technologies participates actively in the CA19121 - Network on Privacy-Aware Audio- and Video-Based Applications for Active and Assisted Living, also called GoodBrother.
Europe faces crucial challenges regarding health and social care due to the demographic change and current economic context. Active and Assisted Living (AAL) are a possible solution to face them. AAL aims at improving the health, quality of life, and wellbeing of older, impaired, and frail people. AAL systems use different sensors to monitor the environment and its dwellers. Cameras and microphones are being more frequently used for AAL. They monitor an environment and gather information, being the most straightforward and natural way of describing events, persons, objects, actions, and interactions. Recent advances have given these devices the ability to ‘see’ and ‘hear.’ However, their use can be seen as intrusive by some end users (assisted persons and professional and informal caregivers.)
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) establishes the obligation for technologies to meet data protection principles by design and data protection by default. Therefore, AAL solutions must consider privacy-by-design methodologies in order to protect the fundamental rights of those being monitored.
GoodBrother aims to increase the awareness of the ethical, legal, and privacy issues associated with audio- and video-based monitoring and to propose privacy-aware working solutions for assisted living by creating an interdisciplinary community of researchers and industrial partners from different fields (computing, engineering, healthcare, law, sociology) and other stakeholders (users, policymakers, public services), stimulating new research and innovation. GoodBrother will offset the “Big Brother” sense of continuous monitoring by increasing user acceptance, exploiting these new solutions, and improving market reach.
Prof. B. H. M. Custers and Dr. E. Fosch Villaronga are Members of the Committee of GoodBrother and will actively contribute to Work Package 1 on Social responsibility: Ethical, legal, social, data protection and privacy issues.
More information can be found on Twitter @goodbrotherCOST, or on Linkedin.
Funding
Sept 2021 - Sept 2024
Outputs
Ake-Kob, A., Blazeviciene, A., Colonna, L., Cartolovni, A., Dantas, C., Fedosov, A., Fosch-Villaronga, E. ... & Tamo-Larrieux, A. (2021). State of the art on ethical, legal, and social issues linked to audio-and video-based AAL solutions. Working Group 1. Social responsibility: Ethical, legal, social, data protection and privacy issues at H2020 Cost Action Good Brother, 1-56
GoodBrother-State-of-the-art-on-ethical-legal-and-social-issues-linked-to-audio-and-video-based-AAL-solutions.pdfThis publication is based upon work from COST Action GoodBrother – Network on Privacy-Aware Audioand Video-Based Applications for Active and Assisted Living, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. Our Actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. This boosts their research, career and innovation.
Aleksic, S., Colonna, L., Dantas, C., Fedosov, A., Florez-Revuelta, F., Fosch-Villaronga, E., Jevremovic, A., Msakniç, H. G., Ravi, S., Rexha, B., & Tamò-Larrieux, A. (2022) State of the art in privacy preservation in video data. Working Group 2. Privacy-by-design in audio and video data at H2020 Cost Action Good Brother, 1-56.
GoodBrother-State-of-the-art-in-privacy-preservation-in-video-data.pdf28 June 2022, Zagreb, Croatia
The current pandemic has, even more, increased the need to invest in Active and Assisted Living (AAL) technologies. Thanks to their high potential in enabling remote care and support, AAL has the potential to improve the European healthcare system. However, the success of such technologies highly depends on their trustworthiness and ability to process information in a privacy-friendly manner.
The conference on ‘Privacy-friendly and trustworthy technology for society’, aims to advance the knowledge on critical ethical concepts such as privacy, trust, and transparency of (AAL) technologies, contributing particularly by extending emerging concepts and themes such as privacy-by-design, overtrust, transparency-by-design, and personalized transparency. Moreover, it explores links, overlaps, and solutions between current proposed regulations such as the AI Act and other enforced regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation and the Medical Device Regulation. We invite interdisciplinary approaches spanning the social sciences, legal scholarship, ethics, and research in computing and engineering.
The conference will select extended abstracts to be presented in sessions organized by topics. We welcome and encourage interdisciplinary research and collaborations among researchers active in different working groups. The presentations will be short (10-15 min), followed by a brief Q&A. The focus will rest on the discussions among participants and establishing potential links among ongoing research activities within the COST Action and beyond. The conference will end with a workshop session where participants will be encouraged to draft research agendas for important topics that are currently not well explored. Please note that the conference will take place in a hybrid format, with participants and keynote speakers on-site and online – the organizers will ensure that remote participants will be able to ask questions and provide inputs during the workshop session.
This workshop is organised by the GoodBrother COST Action (CA19121) on Privacy-Aware Audio- and Video-Based Applications for Active and Assisted Living.
You can access the proceedings following this link or here below in the pdf.
Proceedings GoodBrother Conference Zagreb 2022.pdf