Client: Strelka KB (Moscow)
Location: N/A (workshop and talk)
Year: 2019–2020
Sector: Data Ethics · GDPR · Thought Leadership
A workshop and talk laying out SPIN Unit’s own rules for handling urban and behavioural data responsibly — built from real examples across its own project portfolio.
Every SPIN Unit project runs on social media, mobility, and behavioural data — which raises the obvious question of where the ethical lines are. Rather than treat this as a compliance afterthought, the team turned its own internal data-ethics practice into a paid workshop and talk for Strelka KB.
Delivered as a two-part paid workshop (a full-day review of past-project data practices and law, followed by a full-day hands-on project data audit) and an accompanying 78-slide talk, both for Strelka KB, the same Moscow consultancy SPIN Unit had worked with on several other engagements.
Built around a five-step ethics protocol SPIN Unit applies to its own work — rigorous method, public publication of findings, deliberately limited data collection, an internal ethics review before every project, and transparent funding sources — paired with practical GDPR guidance (consent, breach reporting, anonymisation limits) and real case studies drawn from SPIN Unit’s own past projects.
- A recurring principle: “anonymous may not be enough” — combining location, geolocated traces, images, and purchase behaviour can re-identify individuals even from data that looks anonymised.
- Presented a four-point manifesto for data-driven development: data belongs to citizens; digital inclusion must always be addressed; digital cities must be built on trust; human empowerment must grow alongside traditional democratic processes.
- Used a real legal dispute — a Russian court case over social-media data scraping for credit-scoring — as a cautionary example of platform/community data-use conflict.
- Grounded the whole talk in SPIN Unit’s own project history (Helsinki mobility mapping, Tallinn density studies, the Narva/Ivangorod border study), turning the studio’s back catalogue into a teaching tool.
A thought-leadership piece as much as a delivered project — positioning SPIN Unit’s own data practices as a model worth teaching to other consultancies and clients.