Silicon Valley and Wall Street need to accept as much accountability as they impose on others. An intelligible society would assure that key decisions of its most important firms are fair, nondiscriminatory, and open to criticism. Demanding transparency is only the first step. Even after billions of dollars of fines have been levied, underfunded regulators may have only scratched the surface of this troubling behavior.įrank Pasquale exposes how powerful interests abuse secrecy for profit and explains ways to rein them in. Frank Pasquale is a professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, and the author of The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information (2015, Harvard). Self-serving and reckless behavior is surprisingly common, and easy to hide in code protected by legal and real secrecy. But leaks, whistleblowers, and legal disputes have shed new light on automated judgment. This is a review of Frank Pasquales Black Box Society, seen from an Arendtian perspective and grounded in a concrete administrative experience in the European Commission. Shrouded in secrecy and complexity, decisions at major Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms were long assumed to be neutral and technical.

Hidden algorithms can make (or ruin) reputations, decide the destiny of entrepreneurs, or even devastate an entire economy. But who connects the dots about what firms are doing with this information? The Black Box Society argues that we all need to be able to do so-and to set limits on how big data affects our lives.

The data compiled and portraits created are incredibly detailed, to the point of being invasive. On WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, listen to Frank Pasquale discuss why we need much stricter regulation of how personal data is stored and used:Įvery day, corporations are connecting the dots about our personal behavior-silently scrutinizing clues left behind by our work habits and Internet use.

Frank pasquale the black box society