Inferring Accountability from Trust Perceptions

Opaque communications between groups of data processors leave individuals out of touch with the circulation and use of their personal information. Empowering individuals in this regard requires supplying them — or auditors on their behalf — with clear data handling guarantees. We introduce an inference model providing individuals with global (organization-wide) accountability guarantees which take into account user expectations and varying levels of usage evidence, such as data handling logs. Our model is implemented in the IDP knowledge base system and demonstrated with the scenario of a surveillance infrastructure used by a railroad company. We show that it is flexible enough to be adapted to any use case involving communicating stakeholders for which a trust hierarchy is defined. Via auditors acting for them, individuals can obtain global accountability guarantees, providing them with a trust-dependent synthesis of declared and proven data handling practices for an entire organization.