Paper by Lex Gill: “The metaphors we use to imagine, describe and regulate new technologies have profound legal implications. This paper offers a critical examination of the metaphors we choose to describe encryption technology in particular, and aims to uncover some of the normative and legal implications of those choices. Part I provides a basic description of encryption as a mathematical and technical process. At the heart of this paper is a question about what encryption is to the law. It is therefore fundamental that readers have a shared understanding of the basic scientific concepts at stake. This technical... (More >)
The Algorithm Game
Paper by Jane R. Bambauer and Tal Zarsky: “Most of the discourse on algorithmic decision-making, whether it comes in the form of praise or warning, assumes that algorithms apply to a static world. But automated decision-making is a dynamic process. Algorithms attempt to estimate some difficult-to-measure quality about a subject using proxies, and the subjects in turn change their behavior in order to game the system and get a better treatment for themselves (or, in some cases, to protest the system.) These behavioral changes can then prompt the algorithm to make corrections. The moves and counter-moves create a dance... (More >)
Could the open government movement shut the door on Freedom of Information
Suzanne J. Piotrowski, Alex Ingrams and Daniel Berliner in The Conversation: “For democracy to work, citizens need to know what their government is doing. Then they can hold government officials and institutions accountable. Over the last 50 years, Freedom of Information – or FOI – laws have been one of the most useful methods for citizens to learn what government is doing. These state and federal laws give people the power to request, and get, government documents. From everyday citizens to journalists, FOI laws have proven a powerful way to uncover the often-secret workings of government. But a potential... (More >)
Your Data Is Crucial to a Robotic Age. Shouldn’t You Be Paid for It?
Eduardo Porter at The New York Times: “The idea has been around for a bit. Jaron Lanier, the tech philosopher and virtual-reality pioneer who now works for Microsoft Research, proposed it in his 2013 book, “Who Owns the Future?,” as a needed corrective to an online economy mostly financed by advertisers’ covert manipulation of users’ consumer choices. It is being picked up in “Radical Markets,” a book due out shortly from Eric A. Posner of the University of Chicago Law School and E. Glen Weyl, principal researcher at Microsoft. And it is playing into European efforts to collect tax... (More >)
Data-Driven Regulation and Governance in Smart Cities
Chapter by Sofia Ranchordas and Abram Klop in Berlee, V. Mak, E. Tjong Tjin Tai (Eds), Research Handbook on Data Science and Law (Edward Elgar, 2018): “This paper discusses the concept of data-driven regulation and governance in the context of smart cities by describing how these urban centres harness these technologies to collect and process information about citizens, traffic, urban planning or waste production. It describes how several smart cities throughout the world currently employ data science, big data, AI, Internet of Things (‘IoT’), and predictive analytics to improve the efficiency of their services and decision-making. Furthermore, this paper... (More >)
No One Owns Data
Paper by Lothar Determann: “Businesses, policy makers, and scholars are calling for property rights in data. They currently focus particularly on the vast amounts of data generated by connected cars, industrial machines, artificial intelligence, toys and other devices on the Internet of Things (IoT). This data is personal to numerous parties who are associated with a connected device, for example, the driver of a connected car, its owner and passengers, as well as other traffic participants. Manufacturers, dealers, independent providers of auto parts and services, insurance companies, law enforcement agencies and many others are also interested in this data.... (More >)
Do Academic Journals Favor Researchers from Their Own Institutions?
Yaniv Reingewertz and Carmela Lutmar at Harvard Business Review: “Are academic journals impartial? While many would suggest that academic journals work for the advancement of knowledge and science, we show this is not always the case. In a recent study, we find that two international relations (IR) journals favor articles written by authors who share the journal’s institutional affiliation. We term this phenomenon “academic in-group bias.” In-group bias is a well-known phenomenon that is widely documented in the psychological literature. People tend to favor their group, whether it is their close family, their hometown, their ethnic group, or any... (More >)
Online Political Microtargeting: Promises and Threats for Democracy
Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius et al in Utrecht Law Review: “Online political microtargeting involves monitoring people’s online behaviour, and using the collected data, sometimes enriched with other data, to show people-targeted political advertisements. Online political microtargeting is widely used in the US; Europe may not be far behind. This paper maps microtargeting’s promises and threats to democracy. For example, microtargeting promises to optimise the match between the electorate’s concerns and political campaigns, and to boost campaign engagement and political participation. But online microtargeting could also threaten democracy. For instance, a political party could, misleadingly, present itself as a different one-issue... (More >)
Data journalism and the ethics of publishing Twitter data
Matthew L. Williams at Data Driven Journalism: “Collecting and publishing data collected from social media sites such as Twitter are everyday practices for the data journalist. Recent findings from Cardiff University’s Social Data Science Lab question the practice of publishing Twitter content without seeking some form of informed consent from users beforehand. Researchers found that tweets collected around certain topics, such as those related to terrorism, political votes, changes in the law and health problems, create datasets that might contain sensitive content, such as extreme political opinion, grossly offensive comments, overly personal revelations and threats to life (both to... (More >)
Just and Unjust Leaks: When to Spill Secrets
Michael Walzer at Foreign Affairs: “All governments, all political parties, and all politicians keep secrets and tell lies. Some lie more than others, and those differences are important, but the practice is general. And some lies and secrets may be justified, whereas others may not. Citizens, therefore, need to know the difference between just and unjust secrets and between just and unjust deception before they can decide when it may be justifiable for someone to reveal the secrets or expose the lies—when leaking confidential information, releasing classified documents, or blowing the whistle on misconduct may be in the public... (More >)
