Law and Emerging Technologies

The paper addresses the issue of the impact of neuroscientific research and techniques on moral and legal responsibility in a methodological perspective and using the method of the conceptual analysis. It contains a discussion of some philosophical and legal problems – the foundation of the concepts of capacity and person, the conceptual link between capacity and responsibility, the legal doctrine of “irresistible impulse”, the problem of automatism and the issue of the psychopath’s responsibility. Its aim is to show what the sciences of the mind cannot do. They cannot put in jeopardy beliefs the justification of which don’t depend on empirical facts, insofar as they are part of the basic conceptual structure through which a complete and consistent description and understanding of the world is possible – that there exist macroscopic objects like persons, that responsibility is compatible with the causal explanations of human behaviour, that the mind and the will are capacities and not mechanical objects, that it is possible to exercise certain abilities without being self-conscious, and that the limits of the participation to a moral community are not defined according to one’s adherence to its norms, but through the general ability of rule-following.

Video exploring the topic of the Blockchain and public administration, with Primavera de Filippi and Rachel O'Dwyer. Note: All Procomuns videos feature simultaneous translation, please switch from left to right channels to change languages. This plenary was filmed at PROCOMUNS, a 3 day event which was held in Barcelona in March, 2016 to discuss commons-oriented approaches to public policy, peer production and the commons collaborative economy. Key goals included proposing public policies and providing technical guidelines to build software platforms for collaborative communities. You can find more Procomuns material on the P2P Foundation blog, compiled under this tag.

Fuelled by accelerating digitization, increased global interconnectivity, and transparency (coupled with shifting overarching political agendas, altered user expectations, and technological advances), the legal industry faces unprecedented change across its entire value chain. Within this quadriga, the following two forces are the chief drivers of the chariot of change: The frst driver is the emergence of stable technological solution-ecosystems which will string together
the current impressive but isolated technological breakthroughs. These
ecosystems offers both vertical, purpose-built applications and horizontal platform solutions. What initially had appeal only for an early-adopter niche audience will become acceptable for those commanding signi􀂿cant market share. The second driver is the manifestation of future needs and expectations of the demand-side which as we have observed once before with the initial rise of General Counsels may lead to dramatic re-drawing of lines and re-shaping of the industry.
But is it really disruption we will see or evolution? The importance of the
advent of new technological solutions, especially as we enter the age of exponential technologies with their prospect of hyper-acceleration of change supports the mantra that the legal industry will face disruption. This would eventually mean the passing on of dominance from established players to the successful promoters of new technology-based dominant designs as heralded by many LegalTech advocates. To try to determine the answer in an informed way, it is useful to first revisit the underlying key concepts of invention, innovation, diffusion, and disruption. Therefore, the frst three sections in this chapter provide a summary of the essential research and theory by leaders in the field including Joseph Schumpeter, James Utterback, Everett Rogers and
Michael Porter. Utilizing their theories on the trajectory of innovation, the last two sections then provide some predictions about how the law marketplace will have to adapt and evolve in the future. This chapter concludes on a positive note. Although legal professionals may need to put on «new suits», the future represents an enormous opportunity to reinvent what it means to be a lawyer and how we add value for our clients.

A new powerful military weapon has appeared in the skies of world and with it a new form of warfare has quickly emerged bringing with it a host of pressing ethical questions and issues. This book brings together some of the best scholars currently working on these questions and provides timely and important arguments on many of the most significant and previously unexplored areas of this recent debate. Essays range from broad theoretic questions regarding the moral permissibility of killing by drones to specific examinations of particular uses of unmanned weapons such as their role in counterinsurgency operations, humanitarian interventions, and their controversial use in “targeted killings.” Some scholars engage remarkably vexing issues such as what happens to classic military virtues such as bravery for the warriors who fly remotely controlled drones from complete safety, half a world away from the combat in which they operate. Others wrestle over the future of such technology and...

There are few issues more emotional and divisive than what has become known as “the right to die.” One camp advocates the “death with dignity” approach, according to which the patient is an autonomous being who can form his or her own judgment on the timing and process of dying. The other camp advocates the sanctity of life approach, in which life is intrinsically valuable and should be sustained as long as possible. Is
there a right answer?
    In The Right to Die With Dignity, Raphael Cohen-Almagor takes a balanced approach in analyzing this emotionally charged debate, viewing the dispute uniquely from public policy and international perspectives. This book offers an interdisciplinary, compelling study in medicine, law, religion and ethics. It is, arguably, the most comprehensive book yet to be written on the fascinating question of whether physician-assisted suicide should be allowed. Cohen-Almagor delineates the distinctions between active and passive euthanasia and discusses some of the legal measures that have been invoked in the United States and abroad. He outlines the reasons non-blood relatives should be given a role in deciding a patients’ last wishes. He examines euthanasia policies in the Netherlands and the 1994 Oregon Death with Dignity Act, suggesting improvements to each. Finally, he makes a circumscribed plea for voluntary physician-assisted suicide.

Every generation, it is said, finds new reason for the study of natural law -Heinrich A. Rommen
The above assertion underscores enduring nature of the running battle between natural law and positive law. From the beginning of the organized society, natural law theorists and legal positivists have differed in their opinion of what is law.
The arguments has always centered on the validity or the legitimacy of a law.The questions have always been; what makes a valid law? What is a legitimate source of law? Of what effect is the content of a law to its validity, and, or general acceptance?Or posing the question more directly; which is more important to the question of legitimacy of a law; its source? its content? or its effect? 
This term paper will attempt a comparison of the two theories of law, explain and differentiate between positivism and natural law and how these schools of thoughts perceived the meaning, function and purpose of law and ascertain whether there exist any points of convergence.

The Future of Legal Services (2016) identified 'Tech and Process Innovation' as one of the five key drivers of change in the legal services market; it also noted the importance of innovation in helping firms to differentiate  their services and remain competitive moving forward. Capturing Technological Innovation explores some of the ways that law firms have utilised technology to respond to the call to change. In so doing it raises questions around the law firm model, clients and their needs, services and the role of technology in designing agile business models for the future.

Within the coming decade, the deployment of artificial intelligence ('AI') appears likely to have a disruptive impact on global affairs. What will such 'globally disruptive' AI imply for the form, function and viability of international law? I briefly sketch the long history of technological innovation driving, shaping and destroying international law. Drawing on scholarship on the relation between new technologies and international law, I argue that new technology changes legal situations both directly, by creating new entities or enabling new behaviour, and indirectly, by shifting incentives or values. I argue that development of increasingly more disruptive AI may produce three types of global legal impacts. The first is 'legal development' (patching); the second is 'legal displacement' (substitution); the third is 'legal destruction' (erosion). I discuss the potential impact of AI in all three modalities, and the implications for international relations. I argue that many of the challenges raised by AI could in principle be accommodated in the international law system through legal development, and that while AI may aid in compliance enforcement, the prospects for legal displacement-a shift towards an 'automated international law'-look slim. However, I also conclude that technical and political features of the technology will in practice render AI destructive to key areas of international law: the legal gaps it creates will be hard to patch, and the strategic capabilities it offers chip away at the rationales for powerful states to engage fully in, or comply with, international law regimes. This suggests some risk of obsolescence of distinct international law regimes. CONTENTS

We have stepped into the second decade of the twenty-first century and technology has led to exciting, yet disruptive, changes in the way the world functions-socially, politically and legally. The impacts of technology have been felt in all the legal profession, from legal education to government to the practice of law. Within courts, federal agencies and other executive bodies, the government has made technology an essential part of creating efficiency, promoting access to justice and easing monitoring, reporting, communicating and processing requirements. Law firms have quickly learned the competitive advantage of adding technically based services to their practices and meeting the expectations of their technology savvy clients. § 5.02 Technology Is Reshaping the Legal Field

The book features a discussion on the modernisation of law and legal change, focusing on the key concepts of "innovation" and "transition". While innovation is increasingly appearing in the present day as being the category in which one looks at the modernisation of law, the concept of transition also seems to be the privileged place of occurrence for such dynamics. The group of Italian and Brazilian scholars contributing to this volume intends to investigate such problems through an interdisciplinary prism. It includes points of view both internal to legal studies - such as the legal history, legal theory, constitutional law, private law and commercial law - and external, such as political philosophy and history of justice and political institutions.

La conformité des usages de la technologie de reconnaissance faciale au droit à la vie privée est fonction de ces critères techniques (authentification v. identification notamment), mais aussi des juges appelés à l’évaluer. La présente contribution évalue la conformité des déploiement à l'état de droit français et européen. Si la jurisprudence constitutionnelle française apparaît une digue fragile au développement de la surveillance – ciblée, comme de masse – (I), celle des cours européennes offre, à défaut d’un obstacle insurmontable, la perspective de solides limites à cette évolution (II).

Publication parue au Dalloz IP/IT / 309 / Juin 2021.

From the book "The Big Analytics (Leaders Collaborative Book Project) - For, Of, and By the Data Analytics Leaders and Influencers".
Please go to page 252 to read my piece. In it I discuss the impact Artificial Intelligence will (very) soon have in legal practice. A disruptive technology indeed! But also a tremendous opportunity for savvy lawyers who want to offer 21st century legal services to their clients.

The second roundtable brought together policy makers, the judiciary, financial regulators including the Central Bank of Uganda, financial supervisors, the police, cryptocurrency businesses and academia in critical discourse on the complex legal, socio cultural and policy issues of regulating crypto currencies and the implications of regulation for the wider meanings of currency.

Participants agreed a number of recommendations and the need for principled guidance in line with the commitment of policy makers and regulators to promote technological neutrality, co-regulatory approaches, socio-cultural legitimacy, consumer protection and ethical practices that were fair, non-discriminatory and non-deceptive, and were underpinned by the principle of legality.  To make it relevant to Uganda’s emergent tech enabled economy, the principles would be integrated into existing policies like the monetary policy, into strategies like the digital strategy, and into awareness-raising measures.

The internet and social media have revolutionized activism. In response, governments seeking to curb opposition have recently learned to target the very same technologies that gave rise to activist empowerment in the first place. This article challenges the accepted framework for discussing these efforts by governments, focused on surveillance and privacy. It argues, first, that governments’ actions should be evaluated in the aggregate and understood as measures of digital domination, whose harm extends beyond the harm to individual privacy. Applying the republican concept of freedom as non-domination, the article suggests that the core harm resulting from governments’ actions is to activists’ freedom. Since activism is a check on the government, these measures also have devastating consequences for the freedom of the citizenry as a whole. Second, the article argues that governments’ reliance on digital militias allows them to sidestep the limits of their legitimate authority, therefore posing a grave threat to the rule of law. Finally, third, the article underscores that governments deploy digital measures of control beyond surveillance. Rather, they (1) gather information on activists; (2) disrupt communication channels; (3) flood online conversation to drown out the opposition; (4) deploy the state’s coercive power based on information gathered, and (5) mobilize digital militias to bully activists online. The article therefore proposes a new conceptual framework: rather than discuss political freedom through the lens of privacy, we ought to retain appreciation of privacy’s importance but refocus the discussion around individual freedom. Similarly, rather than subsume government control measures under the category of surveillance, we ought to recognize the much broader set of tools employed by them.

The advent of the GDPR brings about a new period in data protection history; it strengthens and shores up the rights of data subjects, with the aim of enabling greater control over their own personal data. However, the regulation was conceived of in light of increasing power held by centralized data processing entities. The hype surrounding the decentralized nature of blockchain technology does not sit well with the GDPR, and many have discussed the various irreconcilable tensions between the inherent structure and ideology of the technology, and the provisions contained within the regulation. This article argues however, that such a pronouncement is premature, and that an in-depth analysis of the GDPR’s application to blockchain technology (and considering its surrounding governance mechanisms) could reveal a more optimistic story. Further, given the novelty and recency of the blockchain phenomenon, it provides data protection regulators with an opportunity to collaborate with players in the industry, and facilitate the realization of the potential of blockchain technology to fulfill the aims of the GDPR.

“Tomorrow's Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future”, segunda edição (2017), de Richard Susskind, alude acerca da intervenção das tecnologias emergentes nas profissões jurídicas, sobretudo a advocacia, asseverando o autor que “o mercado jurídico mudará mais nos próximos 20 anos do que nos dois últimos séculos”, oportunidade em que pondera as causas e consequências de seu prognóstico, articulando críticas e conselhos aos profissionais e futuros profissionais que desejam usar as tecnologias em seu proveito.

In 2009 the South Australian Government introduced significant changes to the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 1988 (SA) (the Act). Changes to the Act came into effect on 1 September 2010. To ensure that those changes were evaluated over time, the Government included a requirement that the operation and effectiveness of the Act be reviewed after the fifth anniversary of the changes to the Act. The Minister for Health appointed Associate Professor Sonia Allan, an expert in the regulation of assisted reproductive technologies and donor conception, to conduct a review into the Act. The review focused on the operation and effectiveness of the Act in relation to the regulatory model adopted; the requirement that the welfare of any child born as a consequence of assisted reproductive treatment (ART) is to be treated as being of paramount importance, and accepted as a fundamental principle, in respect of the operation of the Act, as well as in the provision of assisted reproductive treatment; amending eligibility for access to ART services; allowing for the establishment of a donor conception register; and provisions for record keeping and confidentiality.

At the dawn of the 21st century, the European Union committed to the development and deployment of responsible, inclusive, and humane technology. On the ongoing debate over so-called high-risk technologies for surveillance in public spaces, facial recognition technology (FRT) is a typical case for European scrutiny. The assessment of the experiments already conducted in cities helps to clarify the contemporary stakes and offers the first answers. This study defines FRTs, discusses current experiments, catalogues the applicability of European law, and concludes with recommendations.

https://futurium.ec.europa.eu/en/urban-agenda/security-public-spaces/library/action-3-final-report-facial-recognition-technology-frt

En el escrito se intenta hacer una reflexión crítica del contenido del proyecto de Código de Conducta Profesional que el Secretariado de la Conferencia Judicial de Puerto Rico preparó y sometió recientemente ante la consideración del Tribunal Supremo de Puerto Rico, conforme a la encomienda que a tales fines le dirigiera nuestro Más Alto Foro. Dicho análisis toma como vectores los procesos que vienen operándose a escala planetaria, así como en nuestro País, impulsados concretamente por la Globalización y las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación, a fin de constatar cuán adaptado, a nuestro modo de ver, está el contenido propuesto del proyecto de Código para habilitar a los abogados y abogadas a abordar eficazmente, y de forma ética, los desafíos que dichos fenómenos les plantean en el Puerto Rico del Siglo 21. A tales efectos, se pasa revista de las disposiciones específicas del proyecto de Código que inciden sobre los apuntados procesos, con miras a evaluar su idoneidad para responder a tales retos, para lo cual, cuando así lo amerita, se brindan sugerencias concretas de enfoque y contenido. Igualmente se comparten algunas recomendaciones prácticas para los abogados y abogadas, dirigidas a que éstos y éstas logren procurar que las nuevas manifestaciones de la práctica de la profesión, en las que indudablemente comenzarán a incursionar -cada vez con mayor fuerza- por impulso de los vectores expuestos, se desarrollen de forma compatible con los imperativos éticos, así como en línea con los reclamos de servicio y de acceso a la justicia que demanda la ciudadanía puertorriqueña.

Este trabajo busca mostrar las dificultades de configurar una perspectiva ética en la Inteligencia Artificial (IA). Se plantea evaluar las ventajas y desventajas de la implementación del Utilitarismo del acto como una ética configurable en los sistemas inteligentes. A través de ejemplos como los vehículos autónomos, autómatas militares y justicia algorítmica, se observarán las tareas que se plantean al Derecho si se opta por esta solución.

The first two decades of the twenty-first century have seen a simultaneous proliferation of new technological threats to and opportunities for international human rights. New advances – not only the Internet, social media, and artificial intelligence but also novel techniques for controlling reproduction or dealing with climate change – make clear that scientific and technological innovations bring both risks and benefits to human rights. Efforts to protect and promote human rights have to take seriously the ways in which these technologies, and the forms of knowledge creation, production, and dissemination they enable, can create harms and be exploited to violate rights. At the same time, human rights practitioners must continue to seek creative ways to make use of new technologies to improve the human condition.

This dichotomy is the central tension that animates both this volume and the emerging field of human rights technology. The overriding purpose of the volume, and of the University of Connecticut workshop that launched it, is to encourage human rights institutions, experts, and practitioners to take seriously the risks and opportunities of technology for the promotion and protection of human rights. The volume uses diverse case studies to examine how the dynamic of intertwined threat and opportunity plays out in a range of contexts. Case studies focus on assisted reproductive technologies, autonomous lethal weapons, climate change technology, the Internet and social media, and water meters. Considering the relationship between technology and human rights across these diverse areas reveals areas of both continuity and discontinuity in terms of how technology affects the enjoyment of human rights.

We begin by laying out the principles that animate the project. These principles have been derived chiefly from international human rights law and practice, and also draw on the scholarly study of science, technology, and the law. Based on these principles, we define a “human rights” approach to the study of technology. Finally, we identify and analyze the cross-cutting themes that unite the book – power and justice, accountability, and the role of private authority – to chart a road map for further study of the relationship between technology and human rights.

This report presents the outcomes of the Open Loop policy prototyping program on Automated Decision Impact Assessment (ADIA) in Europe. Open Loop (www.openloop.org) is a global program that connects policymakers and technology companies to help develop effective and evidence-based policies around AI and other emerging technologies.

In this particular case, Open Loop partnered with 10 European AI companies to co-create an ADIA framework (policy prototype) that
those companies could test by applying it to their own
AI applications. The policy prototype was structured into
two parts: the prototype law, which was drafted as legal text, and the prototype guidance, which was drafted as a playbook. The latter provided participants with additional guidance on procedural and substantive aspects of performing the ADIA through:
- A step-by-step risk assessment methodology;
- An overview of values often associated with AI applications;
- A taxonomy of harms;
- Examples of mitigating measures.

The prototype was tested against the following three
criteria: 1) policy understanding; 2) policy effectiveness; 3) policy costs.The goal was to derive evidence-based recommendations relevant to ongoing policy debates around the future of AI regulation.

Based on the results of the prototyping exercise and the feedback on the prototype law and playbook, the report advises lawmakers formulating requirements for AI risk assessments to take the following recommendations into account:

- Focus on procedure instead of prescription as a way to determine high-risk AI applications;
- Leverage a procedural risk assessment approach to determine what is the right set of regulatory requirements that apply to organisations deploying AI applications;
- Provide specific and detailed guidance on how to implement an ADIA process, and release it alongside the law;
- Be as specific as possible in the definition of risks within regulatory scope;
- Improve documentation of risk assessment and decision-making processes by including justifications for mitigation choices;
- Develop a sound taxonomy of the different AI actors involved in risk assessment;
- Specify, as much as possible, the set of values that may be impacted by AI/ADM and provide guidance on how they may be in tension with one another;
- Don’t reinvent the wheel; combine new processes with established ones, improving the overall approach.

The Declaration consolidates the recommendations of the first and the second Round Tables to develop principled guidance that promotes the fundamental principles and rights enshrined in the international, regional and national laws and regulatory frameworks, and integrates the Resolutions of the First Round Table on cryptocurrency regulation.

In search of both fairness and efficiency, justice systems are increasingly employing Artificial Intelligence (AI) based automated decision-making tools  at every procedural  stage in  criminal trials.  The  most  prominently  utilized  formulation  being  the  Recidivism  Assessment  Software(RAS), used to make decisions about bail, sentencing, pardons and parole. RAS usage demonstrates the age old problem of the law being disproportionately overtaken by scientific events.  As a consequence, this  paper interrogates whether using RAS to enhance judicial efficiency in criminal trials complies with the International Human Rights Law (IHRL) on fair trial and equality before the courts. Prima facie, the study finds that RAS usage raises concerns firstly on ethics and secondly on due process.  The study concludes  that  RAS  egregiously offends  the  accused  person’s  right  to  a  fair  trial  .RAS data is arbitrary, biased and inaccurate , it simply cannot be relied upon to make judicial decisions in criminal trials. RAS usage undermines the defendant’s IHRL fundamental guarantees including but not limited to a fair hearing, a sound reasoned judgment, equality and non-discrimination, trial by an independent and impartial tribunal and the presumption of innocence. Current trends show no promise of eliminating all the intrinsic inadequacies of the technology to perform its appointed task without violating the right to fair trial. The only way forward is to stop the practice forthwith. Regrettably neither the author no anyone else can provide the requisite magic wand to sever the wool that developers have over the state’s eyes. Nonetheless, States must discontinue the use of RAS in criminal trials pending the necessary reform required for full compliance .At an international level, an IHRL-sensitive framework for the regulation of AI is long overdue and ought to be created expediently.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing our lives. However, it seems to be a solution and a problem at the same time. In order to understand opportunities and risks, to evaluate promises and warnings, we should ask the right questions and choose the right frame of analysis. It is time to think and talk about AI in terms of sustainable development.

Abstract: This conversation aims at offering a transdisciplinary gaze on the phenomenon of wireless community networks: an emerging typology of local wireless infrastructures, which is built by activists as political and technological statement to face the hierarchical governance of the Internet and the issues of surveillance and control over digital networks. By a transdicliplinary gaze – emerging from the dialogue between science and technology studies (STS), legal studies, and computer science – this conversation focuses on the multi-modal ways and perspectives that can be adopted to study CNs; it also offers a reflection on challenges and opportunities arising from trasndisciplinary scientific work. In the field of STS, a growing body of literature has addressed CNs as an emblematic case study to analyse the engagement of activists and lay people in the emergence of socio-technical infrastructures and technologies. From a computer science perspective, community networks represen...

Video exploring the topic of the Blockchain and public administration, with Primavera de Filippi and Rachel O'Dwyer. Note: All Procomuns videos feature simultaneous translation, please switch from left to right channels to change languages. This plenary was filmed at PROCOMUNS, a 3 day event which was held in Barcelona in March, 2016 to discuss commons-oriented approaches to public policy, peer production and the commons collaborative economy. Key goals included proposing public policies and providing technical guidelines to build software platforms for collaborative communities. You can find more Procomuns material on the P2P Foundation blog, compiled under this tag.

Trust and trustworthiness are key concepts in the ethics of digital technologies. However, they do not appear in the international law on digital technologies. This surprising absence is the point of departure of this paper. On the basis of a survey of philosophical and empirical scholarship on trust in the context of digital technologies (especially AI), the article proceeds by identifying relevant norms in international law which can be considered to operationalize relevant dimensions of trust and trustworthiness. By clustering these norms, a technical conception of trust appears. This technical conception is focused on securing the trustworthiness of an AI system. This conception is based on the framing of an AI system as an agent and on the premise that the role of the law is to promote the uptake of technologies. The paper will go on to argue that this technical conception of trust should be enriched by way of three relevant extensions, each addressing in turn: the responsibility of developers, the power relations between users and designers of AI systems, and the benefits associated with the use of AI systems. This extended conception of trust also extends the realm of relevant legal norms that can be used to address AI-powered actions. The article connects different scholarship on trust and advances a critical discussion on the use of trust and trustworthiness as legal categories. It delivers a timely contribution to the framing and function of international legal norms on digital technologies.

8th International Conference on Signal Processing (SP 2022) will provide an excellent international forum for sharing knowledge and results in theory, methodology and applications of Signal and Image Processing. The Conference looks for significant contributions to all major fields
of the Signal and Image Processing in theoretical and practical aspects. The aim of the conference is to provide a platform to the researchers and practitioners from both academia as well as industry to meet and share cutting-edge development in the field.

The paper starts with the analysis of the two recent decisions of the Court of Justice of the European
Union on the Google/CNIL and Facebook cases, also in the light of the GDPR.
The digital revolution is giving one of the greatest transformations to the world since the era of the industrial revolution and is equally aware that we must be ready for the ever-greater penetration of new technologies into our lives. With specific regard to the right to be forgotten, the real problem lies in the fact that personal data become substantially indelible once they have been published online and the only possibility is to think
about a possible balance between innovation and the protection offundamental rights.
For this reason, this paper highlights how both the legislator and the Courts do not pay the due attention to the new technologies behind the law, suggesting a technological approach to law as a way to better protect
fundamental rights in the digital age.

On 9 March 2017, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAS) of Qatar issued regulations covering registration requirements and permissible uses of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), commonly known as drones (hereafter referred to as the Drone Regulations). The Drone Regulations aim to strike a balance among concerns of safety, privacy, and the highly-valued utility of drones.

Drones and drone-mounted sensors have a multitude of potential uses for local authorities and municipalities. While early-adopters have piloted and tested the use of drones for specific scenarios, widespread adoption and implementation requires appropriate planning and development of relevant governance, oversight, and controls to ensure that data protection rights and other fundamental rights are respected, and data protection laws complied with in the gathering and processing of data using drone-mounted sensors and associated technologies. This article provides an overview of the evolution of drone use scenarios and a snapshot of the current state of the art in respect of the balancing of the utility of dronemounted sensors against the data protection and privacy impacts of these technologies. We set out a taxonomy of use case scenarios for drones and drone mounted sensors. It is recommended that this taxonomy is developed as a structure framework to support scalable and repeatable processes for assessing and mitigating data protection risks in the operation of drones and drone-mounted sensors.

This paper discusses means for promoting artificial intelligence (AI) that is designed to be safe and beneficial for society (or simply " beneficial AI "). The promotion of beneficial AI is a social challenge because it seeks to motivate AI developers to choose beneficial AI designs. Currently, the AI field is focused mainly on building AIs that are more capable, with little regard to social impacts. Two types of measures are available for encouraging the AI field to shift more towards building beneficial AI. Extrinsic measures impose constraints or incentives on AI researchers to induce them to pursue beneficial AI even if they do not want to. Intrinsic measures encourage AI researchers to want to pursue beneficial AI. Prior research focuses on extrinsic measures, but intrinsic measures are at least as important. Indeed, intrinsic factors can determine the success of extrinsic measures. Efforts to promote beneficial AI must consider intrinsic factors by studying the social psychology of AI research communities. 1. Introduction The challenge of building technologies that are safe and beneficial for society is really two challenges in one. There is the technical challenge of developing safe and beneficial technology designs, and there is the social challenge of ensuring that such designs are used. The two challenges are interrelated. Motivating technologists to pursue safe and beneficial designs is itself a social challenge. Furthermore, motivating people to use safe and beneficial designs is made easier when the designs also have other attractive features such as low cost and ease of use; creating these features is a technical challenge. This paper is concerned with the social challenge. Specifically, the paper examines a range of approaches to motivating technologists to pursue safe and beneficial technology designs. The paper focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including both near-term AI and the proposed future " strong " or " superintelligent " AI that some posit could bring extreme social benefits or harms depending on its design. Much of the paper's discussion also applies to other technologies. That AI has significant social impacts is now beyond question. AI is now being used in finance, medicine, military, transportation, and a range of other critical sectors. The impact is likely to grow over time as new technologies are adopted, such as autonomous vehicles and lethal autonomous weapons (unless the latter are banned or heavily restricted). The prospects for strong AI are controversial; this paper takes the position that the stakes are sufficiently high that it warrants careful attention even if the probability of achieving it appears to be low. Regardless, while the paper is motivated in part by the risk of strong AI, the insights are more general. 1 For brevity, the paper uses the term " beneficial AI " to refer to AI that is safe and beneficial for society. It also uses the term " promoting beneficial AI " to refer to efforts to encourage technologists to design and build beneficial AI, or to have them avoid designing and building AI that is not beneficial. The technologists include AI researchers/designers/developers (the paper uses these terms more or less interchangeably) as well as adjacent personnel in management, business development, etc.

On 9 March 2017, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAS) of Qatar issued regulations covering registration requirements and permissible uses of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), commonly known as drones (hereafter referred to as the Drone Regulations). The Drone Regulations aim to strike a balance among concerns of safety, privacy, and the highly-valued utility of drones.

The internet and social media have revolutionized activism. In response, governments seeking to curb opposition have recently learned to target the very same technologies that gave rise to activist empowerment in the first place. This article challenges the accepted framework for discussing these efforts by governments, focused on surveillance and privacy. It argues, first, that governments’ actions should be evaluated in the aggregate and understood as measures of digital domination, whose harm extends beyond the harm to individual privacy. Applying the republican concept of freedom as non-domination, the article suggests that the core harm resulting from governments’ actions is to activists’ freedom. Since activism is a check on the government, these measures also have devastating consequences for the freedom of the citizenry as a whole. Second, the article argues that governments’ reliance on digital militias allows them to sidestep the limits of their legitimate authority, therefore posing a grave threat to the rule of law. Finally, third, the article underscores that governments deploy digital measures of control beyond surveillance. Rather, they (1) gather information on activists; (2) disrupt communication channels; (3) flood online conversation to drown out the opposition; (4) deploy the state’s coercive power based on information gathered, and (5) mobilize digital militias to bully activists online. The article therefore proposes a new conceptual framework: rather than discuss political freedom through the lens of privacy, we ought to retain appreciation of privacy’s importance but refocus the discussion around individual freedom. Similarly, rather than subsume government control measures under the category of surveillance, we ought to recognize the much broader set of tools employed by them.

Calendar course description Legal responses to challenges of the information society. Topics may include privacy, surveillance and monitoring, access to information, freedom of expression, control of objectionable content, Charter and human rights issues, and security.