Denise McKenzie works as a consultant, these days mostly at the Benchmark Initiative, having developed the Locus Charter, an open set of guidelines promoting the ethical use of location data. We talk ethics, policy making and the role of education quite broadly.
Welcome to the 3rd episode of Minds Behind Maps!
As I mention in the episode intro, Denise was one of the first people I wanted to talk to when starting this podcast. I hope you enjoy this conversation!
Denise's social media's:
Links towards topics of discussion:
- Locus Charter: https://ethicalgeo.org/locus-charter/
- Benchmark Initiative: https://benchmarkinitiative.com/
- Strava reveals location of US military bases: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracking-app-gives-away-location-of-secret-us-army-bases
- Elaine Ball's Get Kids Into Survey: https://www.getkidsintosurvey.com/
- Andrew Zolli, from Planet: https://twitter.com/andrew_zolli
- Book recommendation: Bill Gates': 'How to Avoid a Climate Disaster'
And some time stamps:
3:00 : Episode Starts, Denise presenting herself
5:20 : Why is location data ethics important?
7:35 : Public involvement & outreach
9:05 : The Locus Charter
13:35 : How would applications & companies share their experiences
19:05 : Response to the Locus Charter
21:40 : Covid increasing the public's' interest in location data
29:50 : How do we decide what is ethical?
35:00 : Laws / Policies
39:05 : Denise's early career path
45:05 : The term "geospatial"
49:15 : Education in geospatial (& geography)
55:25 : Data Trusts
61:15 : Difference between Locus Charter & Data Trust
1:02:55 : The data take of open source
1:08:15 : The Non-for-Profit scene
1:14:45 : Book recommendations!
For those who do check these show notes, and if you feel like it, you can reach out to me ;)
Most importantly though, thanks for listening :)