Data Sovereignty

Another embarrassing lesson for the ICT and Digital industry when working with the New Zealand government. If you don’t consider Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti with digital projects you could unintentionally discriminate against Māori, Treaty and in this case legislation that protects and enhances the Māori Language. The New Zealand Covid app provided by the Ministry … Read more

Update: All Māori Data Sovereignty posts have been combined and updated into a Compendium of Māori Data Sovereignty – https://www.taiuru.co.nz/compendium-of-maori-data-sovereignty/  In today’s modern society, Māori need to consider the impacts of colonialism upon all aspects of life, including Digital and Māori Data. The definition of Data is taken from “Data is a Taonga” . “Data that … Read more

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, is leading the design of a new initiative called Solid. The project aims to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in true data ownership as well as improved privacy. Solid could have positive benefits for Indigenous Peoples of the world. The World Wide Web … Read more

Voice recognition of te Reo Māori and automated Maori translations via a computational device is colonisation and commercialisation no matter if by Māori or by tauiwi. Our traditional stories warn us of such recordings of the voice. Hence, I believe the reason why our learned old people shied away from recordings of the person and … Read more

This research shows that there is a lack of access to Internet and infrastructure by Indigenous Peoples of Alaska, New Mexico and Hawai’i and proves that the Internet is a digital Terra Nullius where colonizers have systemically obstructed access and denied equitable representation to Sovereign nations of: Alaska, New Mexico and the Indigenous Peoples of … Read more

One of the most remote Māori communities in Aotearoa gets broadband Internet says Te Karere. I suspect this will have a number of cultural implications that has yet to be considered. Ruatahuna is not unique for this as it has happened numerous times in rural and urban areas by non Māori organisations and government pushing technology into … Read more

Recently I was asked what my long term vision of Māori Data Sovereignty would look like. Interestingly this was asked at a Māori Data Sovereignty hui where: Facebook is used to promote the group, despite Facebook claiming all IP and ownership of anything you share on it 1. By using Facebook, all New Zealand laws … Read more

Update: All Māori Data Sovereignty posts have been combined and updated into a Compendium of Māori Data Sovereignty – https://www.taiuru.co.nz/compendium-of-maori-data-sovereignty/  Data sovereignty is: The concept that information/Data which has been converted and stored in digital form is subject to the laws of the country in which it is located. A person’s right to control access to, … Read more

Section 5 of the new Twitter Terms of Service state that Twitter users are now bound to giver full worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute any information you tweet. Twitter stops short of claiming any copyright or intellectual property rights … Read more

Google Doodle published (in New Zealand only) on Dec 09 2015 Dame Whina Cooper which was a significant cultural step forward raising awareness of Māori land issues. A  definition of a Google Doodle “Doodles are the fun, surprising, and sometimes spontaneous changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of … Read more

Here are some of my ramblings of Digital Colonialism and issues of Indigenous knowledge on the Internet. When I have time, i will expand on these more. Digitising  Traditional Knowledge is like mining the earth for precious metals. With every scoop of earth there is a void. Eventually there will be no mana or tapu … Read more

Free services such as Google, Microsoft Office 365, Facebook, Cloud, web hosting etc, are risking Indigenous Data Sovereignty issues and ownership of their own data and knowledge. Wherever your digital information is stored, it is subject to the laws, or legal jurisdiction, of the country in which it resides. The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, … Read more

Digital colonialism deals with the ethics of digitizing Indigenous data and information without fully informed consent. Digital colonialism is the new deployment of a quasi-imperial power over a vast number of people, without their explicit consent, manifested in rules, designs, languages, cultures and belief systems by a vastly dominant power (Renata Avila, 2017).  A new … Read more

Introduction A review and comparison of Māori with Native American Indian rights, based on the award winning research “Uncharted Domains and the New Land Rush: Indigenous Rights to Top-Level Domain”; Miss Lucy Yan, accessed via http://www.law.asu.edu/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=67fmPnuMWEY%3d&tabid=803 . Background information about the author and her research here Yan discusses the colonisation of the Internet Domain Name … Read more

The National Library is archiving New Zealand web sites without your permission and with little or no consultation with Maori? The project is called New Zealand Web Harvest 2010. It is now seeking comments on past issues that have been raised by mainly the technical community. I see no Maori concerns or consideration. Web Harvest … Read more

After wide spread protest over FaceBook’s new Terms of Use claiming perpetual ownership of all information you place on FaceBook.com, they have reverted their Terms of use as can be seen in their latest updated below. In a recent Mashable poll  56% of users were unhappy with the new Terms of Use. Now if our politicians … Read more