Privacy, technology law and religions across cultures

The freedom to receive and impart information, privacy and the freedom from discrimination on grounds of religious belief are universally recognised as fundamental human rights and, as such, also form part of the basic values of democratic societies. These rights have, in the main, only been adequately articulated and increasingly protected at the international level after the Second World War, relatively very late in more than seven thousand years of civilization In contrast, the values promoted by religions have often been recognised as such for millennia. Where do the values of privacy law and religions conflict and where do they converge, especially in a world where information technology is ubiquitous? The paper examines the debate over privacy from various perspectives, identifying those areas where religions appear to have confronted issues of human rights and where lawyers have been joined in the debate by philosophers within the rapidly developing field of information ethics. It concludes by listing a minimum ten areas where religions may possibly contribute to the intercultural debate on privacy in the Information Society.peer-reviewe

Foam sclerotherapy : the Maltese experience

Objectives: To describe demographics and outcomes of a new sclerotherapy service – Foam sclerotherapy (FS), for venous disease at Mater Dei Hospital, Malta Methods: The data of a consecutive series of patients undergoing FS were prospectively entered into a database and the results analysed. Medical notes of patients were also reviewed. Patients underwent detailed venous duplex scanning before and after each intervention and at follow-up visits. Results: 121 patients underwent a total of 204 FS procedures between November 2008 and October 2011. 22% were male and 78% of the procedures were done in female patients. 151 (74%) of procedures were done in patients above the age of 50 years. 74(37%) interventions were for recurrent varicose veins and 113(55%) for chronic venous insufficiency (CEAP4-6). 77 (38%) patients had active or healed venous ulceration as the indication for treatment. 83% of ulcers healed after foam sclerotherapy during the follow up period. 88.3% (143/162) of veins treated were completely occluded while 11.7% (19/162) were partially occluded. In the majority (64%) only one treatment session was required. One patient sustained an anaphylactic reaction to the sclerosant. No deep vein thromboses, cardiovascular events, pulmonary embolism or other major complications were reported. Skin staining was reported in 21.5% of cases. Conclusions: Foam sclerotherapy is a safe and cheap treatment modality resulting in high rates of venous ulcer healing and successful venous occlusion and a very low complication rate. The success rate of foam sclerotherapy in Malta is comparable to that reported in the literature.peer-reviewe

Lex personalitatis & technology-driven law

The Reidenberg approach was both profound and practical: it took the trans-jurisdictional needs of medieval Europe which led to the birth of Lex Mercatoria and argued that the Internet requires as broad a sweep with the deliberate creation of a Lex Informatica. Without necessarily disagreeing with much of what Reidenberg and his followers have proposed, I would like, in this short contribution, to go one step further, and invite attention to an emerging field of law which I shall, for the sake of convenience, dub Lex Personalitatis. By this I mean the “Law of Personality” relating to personality rights in a much wider way than that understood by most common law-based commentators. The latter tend to divide personality rights into two broad camps: that of rights over commercial exploitation of image, name etc. and privacy rights….By proposing a composite concept of Lex Personalitatis I am seeking to go deeper and also encompass the underlying reasons for both image/identity-related rights and privacy-related rights. In essence, I am suggesting that we should be looking to a supreme value, the individual’s fundamental right to unhindered (or free) development of his/her own personality. In this sense Lex Personalitatis is closer in conceptual definition to the German Persönlichkeitsrecht, and can be viewed as both a fundamental right (ius personalitatis) underpinning much of, and an integral component of, Lex Informatica. I would also suggest that legal cultural and language barriers have prevented much of the world from understanding the depth and value of German legal thinking on the matter over the past 50 years. The primary raison d’être of such complex legal provision is not however to permit the use of informatics for trade or leisure. The latter is more likely to be an intended by-product. Certainly “informatica” is important, indeed essential for “commercium” and hence Lex informatica is certainly very important, but I submit that the raison d’etre of the hierarchical structure in Romania just outlined above goes beyond Lex Informatica. It is the realisation that the supreme value at law is that of the right of dignity and free development of personality, i.e. the ius personalitatis that inspires and underpins such law. It is not unnatural for the post-communist countries to use their experience of systemic abuse of personal information in 50 years of pre-digital communism to nurture a more profound appreciation of why the flow of information in society is so important and consequently why its regulation must be subservient to the individual’s right to the unhindered development of one’s personality. In doing so in the Information Age, they are helping to develop a Lex Personalitatis the scope of which is broader than that encapsulated by the term “personality rights” in the Anglo-Saxon legal world.peer-reviewe

Computer applications and the Maltese legal professions

Samuel Gardner is not a computer salesman. He is Chief Judge of Detroit's Recorder's Court, the city' s criminal court which handles 12,000 felony cases a year. It is hardly surprising however that he should have been the source of the above comment. Within four feet of his bench, Gardner has, like each of the court's 29 judges, a terminal which gives access to an IBM System 38 Computer. Available at the touch of a button are appointment details for any lawyer or judge which are consulted in order to avoid scheduling conflicts and unnecessary adjournments, as well as information on 72,000 cases heard during the last six years. Not only has the computer helped to dispense with a backlog, which in 1977 stood at 7 ,000 cases, but the docket management system that it provides ensures that half the court's cases are disposed of within 30 days. Defendants charged with a non capital crime can expect a trial in 60 days and those charged with crimes such as murder or rape usually go to trial within 90 days. No wonder that Gardner claims that "It would be impossible to manage the court without it". Docket management is but one facet of the application of computers by legal professions outside Malta. It falls, in fact, within the second of two main categories of application, the local development of which will form a basis for discussion in this paper: Legal Information Retrieval (LIR) and Administrative/Management Automation (AMA). Before considering the computer's utility in these two fields however, a basic question must be examined: Can a lawyer or law student afford to indulge in computer illiteracy?peer-reviewe

Proprietary rights in computer programs : copyright protection and Malta

Interest in the relationship between law and technology has been growing steadily (albeit slowly) over recent years. This is perhaps inevitable in a society which is increasingly dependent on novel and constantly evolving technologies which are absorbed at an incredibly fast rate into our every-day lifepeer-reviewe