Human Rights Responsibilities In The Digital Age

This book examines the tangled responsibilities of states, companies, and individuals surrounding human rights in the digital age. Digital technologies have a huge impact – for better and worse – on human lives; while they can clearly enhance some human rights, they also facilitate a wide range of violations. States are expected to implement efficient measures against powerful private companies, but, at the same time, they are drawn to technologies that extend their own control over citizens. Tech companies are increasingly asked to prevent violations committed online by their users, yet many of their business models depend on the accumulation and exploitation of users' personal data. While civil society has a crucial part to play in upholding human rights, it is also the case that individuals harm other individuals online. All three stakeholders need to ensure that technology does not provoke the disintegration of human rights. Bringing together experts from a range of disciplines, including law, international relations, and journalism, this book provides a detailed analysis of the impact of digital technologies on human rights, which will be of interest to academics, research students and professionals concerned by this issue.

The digital age began in 1939 with the construction of the first digital computer. In the sixty-five years that have followed, the influence of digitisation on our everyday lives has grown steadily and today digital technology has a greater influence on our lives than at any time since its development. This book examines the role played by digital technology in both the exercise and suppression of human rights. The global digital environment has allowed us to reinterpret the concept of universal human rights. Discourse on human rights need no longer be limited by national or cultural boundaries and individuals have the ability to create new forms in which to exercise their rights or even to bypass national limitations to rights. The defence of such rights is meanwhile under constant assault by the newfound ability of states to both suppress and control individual rights through the application of these same digital technologies. This book gathers together an international group of experts working within this rapidly developing area of law and technology and focuses their attantion on the specific interaction between human rights and digital technology. This is the first work to explore the challenges brought about by digital technology to fundamental freedoms such as privacy, freedom of expression, access, assembly and dignity. It is essential reading for anyone who fears digital technology will lead to the 'Big Brother' state.

This book examines the tangled responsibilities of states, companies, and individuals surrounding human rights in the digital age. Digital technologies have a huge impact – for better and worse – on human lives; while they can clearly enhance some human rights, they also facilitate a wide range of violations. States are expected to implement efficient measures against powerful private companies, but, at the same time, they are drawn to technologies that extend their own control over citizens. Tech companies are increasingly asked to prevent violations committed online by their users, yet many of their business models depend on the accumulation and exploitation of users' personal data. While civil society has a crucial part to play in upholding human rights, it is also the case that individuals harm other individuals online. All three stakeholders need to ensure that technology does not provoke the disintegration of human rights. Bringing together experts from a range of disciplines, including law, international relations, and journalism, this book provides a detailed analysis of the impact of digital technologies on human rights, which will be of interest to academics, research students and professionals concerned by this issue.

This book explores the concept of a fourth industrial revolution as an expression of the current technological, economic, and social changes sparked by the growing interconnectivity and intelligent automation that have emerged in the 21st century. It seeks to identify and explain the legal challenges posed by this phenomenon in four main areas: content, economy, security, and people.Part I, Content, considers e.g. the problems posed by new uses of protected works in the digital environment, and the new rules on liability for intermediary services contained in the Digital Services Act.Part II, Economy, is particularly concerned with the regulation of Big Tech in the EU’s Digital Markets Act, ecommerce and EU consumers’ rights, the taxation of online platforms, and digital advertising.Part III, Security, addresses the European Union Strategy for Cybersecurity, the use of biometric data systems and facial recognition technologies for law enforcement purposes, and the security implications of the Proposal for an EU Regulation on Artificial Intelligence, as well as the challenges entailed by the European Union’s positioning itself as a major cyber defence actor.Part IV, People, discusses the Data Protection Litigation System under the GDPR, the right to disconnect from work, the proposed EU Catalogue of Fundamental Digital Rights, the countering of terrorist propaganda online through the TERREG and the DSA, and AI and Fundamental Rights.

Provides a roadmap for understanding the relationship between technology and human rights law and practice. This title is also available as Open Access.

Globalization, along with its digital and information communication technology counterparts, including the Internet and cyberspace, may signify a whole new era for human rights, characterized by new tensions, challenges, and risks for human rights, as well as new opportunities. Human Rights and Risks in the Digital Era: Globalization and the Effects of Information Technologies explores the emergence and evolution of ‘digital’ rights that challenge and transform more traditional legal, political, and historical understandings of human rights. Academic and legal scholars will explore individual, national, and international democratic dilemmas--sparked by economic and environmental crises, media culture, data collection, privatization, surveillance, and security--that alter the way individuals and societies think about, regulate, and protect rights when faced with new challenges and threats. The book not only uncovers emerging changes in discussions of human rights, it proposes legal remedies and public policies to mitigate the challenges posed by new technologies and globalization.

This book examines the role of international law in securing privacy and data protection in the digital age. Driven mainly by the transnational nature of privacy threats involving private actors as well as States, calls are increasingly made for an âinternationalâ privacy framework to meet these challenges. Mapped against a flurry of global privacy initiatives, the book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the extent to which and whether international law attends to the complexities of upholding digital privacy. The book starts by exploring boundaries of international privacy law in upholding privacy and data protection in the digital ecosystem where threats to privacy are increasingly transnational, sophisticated and privatized. It then explores the potential of global privacy initiatives, namely Internet bills of rights, universalization of regional systems of data privacy protection, and the multi-level privacy discourse at the United Nations, in reimagining the normative contours of international privacy law. Having shown limitations of global privacy initiatives, the book proposes a pragmatic approach that could make international privacy law better-equipped in the digital age.

The growing presence of digital technologies has caused significant changes in the protection of digital rights. With the ubiquity of these modern technologies, there is an increasing need for advanced media and rights protection. Media Law, Ethics, and Policy in the Digital Age is a key resource on the challenges, opportunities, issues, controversies, and contradictions of digital technologies in relation to media law and ethics and examines occurrences in different socio-political and economic realities. Highlighting multidisciplinary studies on cybercrime, invasion of privacy, and muckraking, this publication is an ideal reference source for policymakers, academicians, researchers, advanced-level students, government officials, and active media practitioners.