Law, Metaphor, and the Encrypted Machine

The metaphors we use to imagine, describe, and regulate new technologies have profound legal implications. This article offers a critical examination of the metaphors we choose to describe encryption technology and aims to uncover some of the normative and legal implications of those choices. The article begins with a basic technical backgrounder and reviews the main legal and policy problems raised by strong encryption. Then it explores the relationship between metaphor and the law, demonstrating that legal metaphor may be particularly determinative wherever the law seeks to integrate novel technologies into old legal frameworks. The article establishes a loose framework for evaluating both the technological accuracy and the legal implications of encryption metaphors used by courts and lawmakers—from locked containers, car trunks, and combination safes to speech, shredded letters, untranslatable books, and unsolvable puzzles. What is captured by each of these cognitive models, and what is lost

The Aleph Bet: Debating Metaphors for Information, Data Handling And the Right to be Forgotten

Court rulings in the European Union (EU) have now established that individuals may seek erasure of personal information posted online. Typically, this involves de-indexing a website from search results, and in some instances the removal of content from primary sources sites. This has, in turn, led to debate around both the logistics and the unintended consequences of removing information online, and subsequent discussions have grappled with a range of images and metaphors to map that new legal reality. This essay surveys that debate, the imagery it employs, and the various logics associated with these metaphors

Planet Netsweeper

Internet filtering technologies play a critical role in shaping access to information online. Whether we are connecting to the Internet from our homes, coffee shops, libraries, or places of work, software that inspects, manages, and/or blocks our communications has become commonplace. When used at the level of large, consumer-facing Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Internet filtering technologies can have significant human rights impacts. A growing number of governments employ Internet filtering systems at this scale in order to undertake national-level censorship of the Internet. Filtered content ranges from pornography, hate speech, and speech promoting or inciting violence, to political opposition websites, news websites, websites affiliated with various religions, and everything in-between. The growing responsibilities among network operators to filter content, either within private enterprises or on public networks, have given rise to a large and lucrative market. One industry report estimated the value of the web content filtering market at $3.8 billion USD by 2022. While network operators can manually configure their infrastructure to block specific websites or applications, the task can be time- consuming, complicated, and ineffective. Internet filtering companies provide professional services to ISPs and other clients to take care of this responsibility. Typically, Internet filtering companies dynamically categorize Internet resources and then let their clients choose pre-selected content categories or services that they wish to block. Customers can also add custom lists of their own to content that is filtered or blocked. In the hands of authoritarian regimes, such professional services can limit the ability of citizens to communicate freely and help impose opaque and unaccountable controls on the public sphere

Feasibility of trial procedures for a randomised controlled trial of a community based group exercise intervention for falls prevention for visually impaired older people: the VIOLET study

Background Visually impaired older people (VIOP) have a higher risk of falling than their sighted peers, and are likely to avoid physical activity. The aim was to adapt the existing Falls Management Exercise (FaME) programme for VIOP, delivered in the community, and to investigate the feasibility of conducting a definitive randomised controlled trial (RCT) of this adapted intervention. Methods Two-centre randomised mixed methods pilot trial and economic evaluation of the adapted group-based FaME programme for VIOP versus usual care. A one hour exercise programme ran weekly over 12 weeks at the study sites (Newcastle and Glasgow), delivered by third sector (voluntary and community) organisations. Participants were advised to exercise at home for an additional two hours over the week. Those randomised to the usual activities group received no intervention. Outcome measures were completed at baseline, 12 and 24 weeks. The potential primary outcome was the Short Form Falls Efficacy Scale – International (SFES-I). Participants’ adherence was assessed by reviewing attendance records and self-reported compliance to the home exercises. Adherence with the course content (fidelity) by instructors was assessed by a researcher. Adverse events were collected in a weekly phone call. Results Eighteen participants, drawn from community-living VIOP were screened; 68 met the inclusion criteria; 64 participants were randomised with 33 allocated to the intervention and 31 to the usual activities arm. 94% of participants provided data at the 12 week visit and 92% at 24 weeks. Adherence was high. The intervention was found to be safe with 76% attending nine or more classes. Median time for home exercise was 50 min per week. There was little or no evidence that fear of falling, balance and falls risk, physical activity, emotional, attitudinal or quality of life outcomes differed between trial arms at follow-up. Conclusions The intervention, FaME, was implemented successfully for VIOP and all progression criteria for a main trial were met. The lack of difference between groups on fear of falling was unsurprising given it was a pilot study but there may have been other contributory factors including suboptimal exercise dose and apparent low risk of falls in participants. These issues need addressing for a future trial

Prognostic model to predict postoperative acute kidney injury in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery based on a national prospective observational cohort study.

Background: Acute illness, existing co-morbidities and surgical stress response can all contribute to postoperative acute kidney injury (AKI) in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery. The aim of this study was prospectively to develop a pragmatic prognostic model to stratify patients according to risk of developing AKI after major gastrointestinal surgery. Methods: This prospective multicentre cohort study included consecutive adults undergoing elective or emergency gastrointestinal resection, liver resection or stoma reversal in 2-week blocks over a continuous 3-month period. The primary outcome was the rate of AKI within 7 days of surgery. Bootstrap stability was used to select clinically plausible risk factors into the model. Internal model validation was carried out by bootstrap validation. Results: A total of 4544 patients were included across 173 centres in the UK and Ireland. The overall rate of AKI was 14·2 per cent (646 of 4544) and the 30-day mortality rate was 1·8 per cent (84 of 4544). Stage 1 AKI was significantly associated with 30-day mortality (unadjusted odds ratio 7·61, 95 per cent c.i. 4·49 to 12·90; P < 0·001), with increasing odds of death with each AKI stage. Six variables were selected for inclusion in the prognostic model: age, sex, ASA grade, preoperative estimated glomerular filtration rate, planned open surgery and preoperative use of either an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor or an angiotensin receptor blocker. Internal validation demonstrated good model discrimination (c-statistic 0·65). Discussion: Following major gastrointestinal surgery, AKI occurred in one in seven patients. This preoperative prognostic model identified patients at high risk of postoperative AKI. Validation in an independent data set is required to ensure generalizability

Law, Metaphor, and the Encrypted Machine

The metaphors we use to imagine, describe, and regulate new technologies have profound legal implications. This article offers a critical examination of the metaphors we choose to describe encryption technology and aims to uncover some of the normative and legal implications of those choices. The article begins with a basic technical backgrounder and reviews the main legal and policy problems raised by strong encryption. Then it explores the relationship between metaphor and the law, demonstrating that legal metaphor may be particularly determinative wherever the law seeks to integrate novel technologies into old legal frameworks. The article establishes a loose framework for evaluating both the technological accuracy and the legal implications of encryption metaphors used by courts and lawmakers—from locked containers, car trunks, and combination safes to speech, shredded letters, untranslatable books, and unsolvable puzzles. What is captured by each of these cognitive models, and what is lost

Bots at the Gate: A Human Rights Analysis of Automated Decision-Making in Canada’s Immigration and Refugee System

The report finds that use of automated decision-making technologies to augment or replace human judgment threatens to violate domestic and international human rights law, with alarming implications for the fundamental human rights of those subjected to these technologies.This report would not be possible without the generous support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Honourable William C. Graham, and the Ford Foundation. The IT3 Lab at the University of Toronto provided significant intellectual leadership, funding, and advisory support for the report

Shining a Light on the Encryption Debate: A Canadian Field Guide

Critical analysis and insight that navigates the complex implications of ongoing encryption debates.John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundatio

Towards Digital Constitutionalism? Mapping Attempts to Craft an Internet Bill of Rights

The idea of an “Internet Bill of Rights” is by no means a new one: in fact, serious efforts to draft such a document can be traced at least as far back as the mid-1990s. Though the form, function and scope of such initiatives has evolved, the concept has had remarkable staying power, and now — two full decades later — principles which were once radically aspirational have begun to crystallize into law. In this paper, we propose a unified term to describe these efforts using the umbrella of “digital constitutionalism” and conduct an analysis of thirty initiatives spanning from 1999 to 2015. These initiatives have great differences, and range from advocacy statements to official positions of intergovernmental organizations to proposed legislation. However, in their own way, they are each engaged in the same conversation, seeking to advance a relatively comprehensive set of rights, principles, and governance norms for the Internet, and are usefully understood as part of a broader proto-constitutional discourse. While this paper does not attempt to capture every facet of this complex political behavior, we hope to offer a preliminary map of the landscape, provide a comparative examination of these diverse efforts toward digital constitutionalism, and — most importantly — provoke new questions for further research and study. The paper proceeds in four parts, beginning with a preliminary definition for the concept of digital constitutionalism and a summary of our research methodology. Second, we present our core observations related to the full range of substantive rights, principles and themes proposed by these initiatives. Third, we build on that analysis to explore their perceived targets, the key actors and deliberative processes which have informed their character, and the changes in their substantive content over time. Finally, we look forward, identifying future directions for research in this rapidly changing policy arena and for the broader Internet governance community

Government’s Defence of Proposed CSE Act Falls Short

In this post, we evaluate the Government’s explanation of some of the more problematic elements of Bill C-59 in its briefing notes. We ultimately conclude that while the government’s briefing material provides insight into some of the ways that the CSE might act following the passage of the CSE Act, the material itself does not resolve our concerns with the CSE Act