Mobile Networks and Conflict Management: Farewell to Privacy?

This paper presents a general overview of the recent rise of mobile networks and their related applications, focusing on the particular case of mobile networks and technologies applied to the early detection and management of emergencies, crisis, and conflict events. It then raises the question of how these new developments could endanger the privacy and security of their end users and briefly reviews some of the state-of-the art proposed solutions. The paper concludes by stressing the need to articulate privacyfriendly technologies to harness the full potential of mobile networks in dealing with conflict events. The Rise of Mobile Networks With roughly four billion cellular subscriptions in use by 2009, mobile phones are a success story. No other technology has reached a similar penetration rate throughout the planet in a ten-year time span. Moreover, our hand-held devices are increasingly becoming mobile sensor hubs: built-in cameras, microphones, or GPS can collect images, sound, and GPS data. Tiny microscopes can be assembled to mobile phones to collect, diagnose and send geolocated images of blood samples possibly infected with malaria or tuberculosis, and then track the spread of the diseases (Breslauer et al. 2009). In the social sphere, the number of people who use mobile-only social networks is growing very fast. MocoSpace—a favorite in the US— Mig33—increasingly popular in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (25 million users)—or Peperonity are among the new crop of mobile social networks (Swartz 2009). They all offer the usual social-networking tools: chat, instant messaging, photo and video sharing, etc. In a similar way, several initiatives have been developed within the last few years with the purpose of providing accessible mobile software applications for data collection in the areas of early warning, situational awareness, emergencies and crisis response, human rights, health, or environment. Most of the initiatives come from nonprofit organizations, advocacy institutions, and relief agencies operating on the field in many developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Some other initiatives come from international communities of researchers, such as the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) community (Nieuwenhuis 2007). While different in scope and focus, their ultimate goal is to facilitate the collection and aggregation of crowdsourced, real-time information from local environments to support decision making in emergency situations such as disease outbreaks, natural or human-made disasters, or political events such as malpractices and violence in elections. As a result of these nascent technologies, massive amounts of personal data will go mobile and flow over mobile networks. Without proper privacy-enhancing technologies and protocols, individuals reporting violent events or violations of human rights in hot spots could be exposed to repression and see their lives at risk. This paper addresses the need to develop privacy-friendly technologies for mobile networks to guarantee not only the protection of personal data, but also the identity and the anonymity of people supplying those data in contexts of deadly conflict. In doing so, some recent examples of mobile, open source platforms focusing on management of crisis and conflict events are presented, together with new approaches to privacy-friendly software applications for mobile networks. Mobile Technologies for Conflict