Examined Lives: Informational Privacy and the Subject as Object

In the United States, proposals for informational privacy have proved enormously controversial. On a political level, such proposals threaten powerful data processing interests. On a theoretical level, data processors and other data privacy opponents argue that imposing restrictions on the collection, use, and exchange of personal data would ignore established understandings of property, limit individual freedom of choice, violate principles of rational information use, and infringe data processors\u27 freedom of speech. In this article, Professor Julie Cohen explores these theoretical challenges to informational privacy protection. She concludes that categorical arguments from property, choice, truth, and speech lack weight, and mask fundamentally political choices about the allocation of power over information, cost, and opportunity. Each debate, although couched in a rhetoric of individual liberty, effectively reduces individuals to objects of choices and trades made by others. Professor Cohen argues, instead, that the debate about data privacy protection should be grounded in an appreciation of the conditions necessary for individuals to develop and exercise autonomy in fact, and that meaningful autonomy requires a degree of freedom from monitoring, scrutiny, and categorization by others. The article concludes by calling for the design of both legal and technological tools for strong data privacy protection

Contracts Ex Machina

Smart contracts are self-executing digital transactions using decentralized cryptographic mechanisms for enforcement. They were theorized more than twenty years ago, but the recent development of Bitcoin and blockchain technologies has rekindled excitement about their potential among technologists and industry. Startup companies and major enterprises alike are now developing smart contract solutions for an array of markets, purporting to offer a digital bypass around traditional contract law. For legal scholars, smart contracts pose a significant question: Do smart contracts offer a superior solution to the problems that contract law addresses? In this article, we aim to understand both the potential and the limitations of smart contracts. We conclude that smart contracts offer novel possibilities, may significantly alter the commercial world, and will demand new legal responses. But smart contracts will not displace contract law. Understanding why not brings into focus the essential role of contract law as a remedial institution. In this way, smart contracts actually illuminate the role of contract law more than they obviate it

The political philosophy of surveillance : from historical roots to COVID-19

Many theorists have argued that surveillance has become the dominant organizing method of social activities in late modernity. Given the increased prevalence and employment of surveillance systems around the world, this thesis seeks to trace and contextualize the developments in surveillance, both theoretically and practically, that have led to its current extent and nature. We begin by analyzing the philosophical theories that provide the normative frameworks which condone, recommend, limit and make it meaningful. This comprises Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon,” Michel Foucault’s “Disciplinary Societies” and “Panopticism,” Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s “Scientific Management,” and Gilles Deleuze’s “Societies of Control.” Next, we describe the difference that digital technologies make to surveillance systems, namely that the former greatly enhance the latter’s ubiquity. As we shall see, COVID-19 is an important subject of analysis regarding surveillance since it has triggered an acceleration of technological development and influence. This second chapter will hence examine surveillance on three levels, describing the contexts in which surveillance has developed in each level, and how it is developing as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first concerns surveillance on a National Level, with a focus on government surveillance. The second involves surveillance on a City Level, including smart city operations and workplace surveillance, and the third assesses surveillance on a Personal Level, covering social media surveillance and smart home technology. In the final chapter, we underscore certain aspects of modern surveillance practices where either Bentham, Foucault, Taylor, or Deleuze’s principles are implicit. For social media surveillance, we also draw from Shoshana Zuboff’s concept of “surveillance capitalism”. Lastly, the inherent differences and impact of surveillance operations for the current geopolitical and social order are highlighted, drawing from accounts that shed light on Autocracy’s empowerment with such technology, on Democracy’s increased potential for misuse, and on the likely repercussions of politically and socially employing surveillance systems. The conclusion then argues that surveillance, as it stands, has major potential to inherently and permanently alter the global political and social landscape

The existence of Roma in youth justice discourses

Critical scholars have repeatedly emphasised the importance of how various categories become constructed. This paper discusses the ‘existence’ of ‘the other’ in youth justice discourses. Drawing on qualitative analysis of police, prosecution, youth court and social services discourses, this paper discusses the positioning of migrant youths, referred to youth court on suspicion of having committed an offence. The talk particularly focuses on Czech and Slovak Roma in two legal departments in Belgium. I discuss in what types of cases and discourses the case of Roma (i.e. references to ethnicity and popular images of the ‘Roma culture’) exists and in what instances it seizes to exist. Particular attention is directed to the constitutions, circularity and contexts of ethnicising discourses throughout youth justice trajectories, as well as their performative nature

A Non-standard Society Is Getting New Clothes: Evidencing Knowledge Gaps with C-K Design Innovation Theory

Emergence of post-industrial societies is found on knowledge as a primary resource. The paper evidences changes from previous society’s phases of functioning and shows ways for centering knowledge in post-industrial times. Concepts are reformulated with C-K design innovation Theory, fostering the way towards transdisciplinarity.The case of generating co-working spaces illustrates knowledge absorption and networkbased intensities, opening avenues for altering working paradigms that shift collaborative experiences. This is core to the advent of fully-fledged Knowledge societies (KS) where ternary models develop, socio-economic molds spiral up qualitative growth, thus departing from past dual fragmentations

NEW TECHNOLOGIES: GAINS AND LOSSES* * This paper is a new version of an article published in the Journal Psihoterapija, vol. 31, 2017. In order to distinguish the two papers, I will put in italics the part that has already been printed.

This paper is a continuation of an article published in 2017 in the Journal Psihoterapija (vol. 31). Clinical case material from the conference organized by Therapy 2.0 in Zagreb has been added to illustrate limits and opportunities offered by new technologies to our discipline. The author is concerned with how the shift to the virtual dimension as in video sessions via Skype can be helpful or cause damage. The author refers to the experience of being alone in the presence of another (Winnicott) and wonders how the virtual dimension can affect the perception of being safely contained. The importance of body language in a traditional session setting is considered paramount, especially with patients whose suffering is anchored to pre-oedipal phases. The new European laws attach great importance to the protection of privacy but the Snowden revelations in 2013 demonstrated that global digital communications can be easily intercepted. There is an ethical dimension to consider when patients are encouraged to share their most intimate thoughts and fantasies online in a context where it is not possible to guarantee confidentiality of the communication. The author is further concerned with the issue of whether loss is still a core concept in our changing world and in our therapeutic endeavours. She further underlines the importance of carefully evaluating the inherent risks of new technologies in psychotherapy along with the opportunities to broaden outreach

DIGITISING AGRIFOOD Pathways and Challenges. November 2019

As climate change increasingly poses an existential risk for the Earth, scientists and policymakers turn to agriculture and food as areas for urgent and bold action, which need to return within acceptable Planet Boundaries. The links between agriculture, biodiversity and climate change have become so evident that scientists propose a Great Food Transformation towards a healthy diet by 2050 as a major way to save the planet. Achieving these milestones, however, is not easy, both based on current indicators and on the gloomy state of global dialogue in this domain. This is why digital technologies such as wireless connectivity, the Internet of Things, Arti cial Intelligence and blockchain can and should come to the rescue. This report looks at the many ways in which digital solutions can be implemented on the ground to help the agrifood chain transform itself to achieve more sustainability. Together with the solution, we identify obstacles, challenges, gaps and possible policy recommendations. Action items are addressed at the European Union both as an actor of change at home, and in global governance, and are spread across ten areas, from boosting connectivity and data governance to actions aimed at empowering small farmers and end users

The Law and Big Data

In this Article we critically examine the use of Big Data in the legal system. Big Data is driving a trend towards behavioral optimization and personalized law, in which legal decisions and rules are optimized for best outcomes and where law is tailored to individual consumers based on analysis of past data. Big Data, however, has serious limitations and dangers when applied in the legal context. Advocates of Big Data make theoretically problematic assumptions about the objectivity of data and scientific observation. Law is always theory-laden. Although Big Data strives to be objective, law and data have multiple possible meanings and uses and thus require theory and interpretation in order to be applied. Further, the meanings and uses of law and data are indefinite and continually evolving in ways that cannot be captured or predicted by Big Data. Due to these limitations, the use of Big Data will likely generate unintended consequences in the legal system. Large-scale use of Big Data will create distortions that adversely influence legal decision-making, causing irrational herding behaviors in the law. The centralized nature of the collection and application of Big Data also poses serious threats to legal evolution and democratic accountability. Furthermore, its focus on behavioral optimization necessarily restricts and even eliminates the local variation and heterogeneity that makes the legal system adaptive. In all, though Big Data has legitimate uses, this Article cautions against using Big Data to replace independent legal judgmen