Foto: BB.LV / человек с лупой
The fresh report concludes that Estonia is not a society of total surveillance; however, the growing ability of the state to collect, aggregate, and utilize data about individuals carries a number of risks characteristic of such a society. According to the authors, the transparency of data usage and independent oversight of this process are not keeping pace with the development of technological capabilities. The report does not contain calls for dismantling the digital state or abandoning databases. The question is how to preserve the advantages of the e-state in conditions where the capabilities for data aggregation and analysis are rapidly increasing. One of the problems highlighted by the authors is the cumulative impact of various databases. Individual registries may serve justified data collection tasks, but when this information is combined, it can create a very detailed and comprehensive portrait of a person. At the same time, regulation and oversight are largely tied to specific registries, and there is a lack of clear accountability for the cumulative use of data from different sources. According to Ott Lumi, one of the leaders of Põhimõtte Koda, the use of state data should be viewed as a matter of political accountability, and more clearly than before. "In the era of artificial intelligence, the volume of data available to the state and the ease of its use are changing very rapidly. The more data about a person the state collects, the clearer the boundaries of using that knowledge should be, and the more understandable the oversight of compliance with those boundaries should be. Secrecy may be necessary in some cases, but it cannot mean a lack of oversight. The digital state relies on trust, and trust must be verifiable." The authors also believe that oversight of the secret collection of information by security agencies needs to be strengthened. The report raises the question of whether the procedure for issuing permits, documentation, and independent oversight of activities that most infringe upon fundamental human rights and freedoms is reliable enough in Estonia. Furthermore, it is proposed to introduce a more unified procedure for justifying and documenting requests for sensitive data, expand individuals' ability to see requests made about them, enhance independent oversight, and make aggregate statistics on the use of state data more accessible to the public. The main recommendation of the report is to move towards a model of "verifiable trust" in Estonia's digital state: the state should have the ability to use data to fulfill public tasks, but individuals must be assured that such use has a clear purpose, justification, and oversight.
