The Devil in the Data

Description

Legal Futures Research’s project LawTech Collider teamed up with the Public Record Office of NI to hold a one-day conference ‘The Devil in the Data: Civic Freedom and the Meaning and Safety of Data in the Public and Commercial Realms’ on 16th May 2025.

The conference was a response to the exhibition ‘User Content?’ on display in PRONI during April and May 2025. Its aims were to elaborate on the origin and rationale of the exhibition and to explore dilemmas and sensitive issues related to data governance in the public and corporate spheres.

Dr Katherine Nolan, formerly of School of Law, Ulster University and now Technological University Dublin, started the day with a presentation titled ‘Modes of data governance – corporate models versus public stewarding.’ She presented arguments for why data governance matters, explained how the law balances freedom of expression with protecting citizens and described the different legal landscapes that govern public and corporate data control. She highlighted a major concern over data surveillance, particularly of fertility and pregnancy data collated by commercial apps, and the corporate amassing of vast silos of data, which were both stimuli for the artwork in the exhibition User Content?

Expanding on the collisions between data governance law and creative practice displayed in the exhibition User Content?, we heard from the contributing artists: Dr Emma Campbell, Dr Laura O’Connor, Dr Kyle Boyd & Daniel Philpott, all of Ulster University; and the contributing legal scholars Dr Anna Pathé-Smith, The Open University and Dr Katherine Nolan. Chaired by Dr Adam Buick, the artists revealed their inspiration and process and everyone commented on their positive experience of working in an interdisciplinary team. Ideas for future collaborations included inviting students to the collision process to explore how the other discipline works and frames the issues in the spotlight, developing alternative formats for presenting Terms & Conditions for data protection to users of apps and developing further artistic work to engage the public.

The first three afternoon sessions explored the challenges and benefits of the technical aspects of data management by the public archive. Janet Hancock and Gráinne Loughran presented on ‘PRONI and the Digital Public Record.’ Janet discussed the processes that surround the digitisation of public records to preserve their authenticity, security and traceability, while Gráinne described the preservation process for the digital records and the sophisticated digital tools for scanning metadata, validating, analysing the integrity of digital records and reducing them for storage. Graham Jackson, also of PRONI, took us through the delicate act of judging when the right to know and access records is outweighed by the right to privacy and need for national security resulting in the need to redact records. The use of redaction necessarily errs on the side of caution to ensure the release of records does no harm.

The presentations ended with Maria Andrews, a PhD candidate at the National Portrait Gallery & Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, who took us on a visual journey to explore the elusive nature and surprises of working closely with a private archive to piece together the story of the life of Harry Diamond, an East End of London photographer in the 1950s & 60s. There followed a panel discussion on the four afternoon papers, chaired by Prof. Eugene McNamee.

The broad interest in the topic from speakers and audience alike indicated to the organisers an appetite for further discussions on the nature and responsibilities of the public record and archives and the concerns associated with public understanding of how our data are used. For the LawTech Collider project, this means there are plenty more collisions between the law of digital technology and art to explore.

Period	16 May 2025
Event type	Conference
Location	Belfast, Northern IrelandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National