Big data’s impact on corporate human rights risks

John Morrison, chief executive of the Institute for Human Rights and Business, talks to Innovation Forum’s Ian Welsh about some of the human rights challenges emerging for business from big data.

They debate what companies need to be aware of when they use data, particularly aggregated data, and the human rights risks they now run, and how the moves towards transparency in supply chains, for example, can have unintended privacy consequences for small suppliers and individuals. Morrison argues that there is a potential backlash looming for companies about the data they hold unless they properly engage with stakeholders on the data they hold and how they use it.