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An overview of the social and legal challenges attending facial-recognition technology use by online social networks explores ways to govern the associated privacy implications, specifically from a European data protection perspective., JRC.J.3-Information Society

This deliverable presents the work developed by the IPTS eID Team in 2012 on the large-encompassing topic of electronic identity. It is structured in four different parts: 1) eID: Relevance, Le-gal State-of-the-Art and Future Perspectives; 2) Digital Natives and the Analysis of the Emerging Be-havioral Trends Regarding Privacy, Identity and Their Legal Implications; 3) The "prospective" use of social networking services for government eID in Europe; and 4) Facial Recognition, Privacy and Iden-tity in Online Social Networks., JRC.J.3-Information Society

Examining Board: Prof. Giovanni Sartor, EUI/Supervisor ; Prof. Miguel Poiares Maduro, EUI ; Prof. Yves Poullet, University of Namur ; Prof. Jon Bing, Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law Defence date: 24 February 2012 PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses This thesis presents a novel conceptualization of the right to personal identity: one that is adapted to the current technological environment in which we live, and that anticipates future technological developments. The study provides a comprehensive analysis of the right to personal identity, tracing its historical origins and main juridical developments from the Roman period to the present (and future) time. It also distinguishes the right to identity from other rights (such as the right to privacy and the right to data protection), thus contributing to the autonomy of this legal figure. This study puts forward a reconceptualization of the right to personal identity as a right that encompasses, controls and protects a series of different types of information related to or constitutive of our personal identity (digital, genetic, neural). Further to a right over information, the right to identity is presented as a right that regulates a series of identity movements and transformations between different ontological levels of “being” (possible real; actual virtual). Thus, the right to identity is the right to have one’s identity attributes registered (real possible), as well as the right to be recognized and identified (possible real) according to those defining features. The right to identity also encompasses the right to be represented as one wishes (virtual ?? actual) – that is, the right not to be misrepresented; the right to multiple identities (virtual actual) – that is, the right to create, control and uphold different identities in digital environments (such as pseudonyms and heteronyms); and the right to delete and recreate oneself (actual virtual), an identity movement that encompasses the right to be forgotten (and, consequently, the right to start again), as well as the eventual right to undergo genetic (post-human) and neural (memoryediting/ deletion) transformations. Following a postmodern conception of identity (as antiessentialistic, dynamic and multiple), the right to personal identity is defined as the right to be unique and different, not only from others but also from oneself. Further to this theoretical framework, the thesis also presents the foundations for an identity-regulatory system that grants the individual with the necessary and operational means to manage, control, change or delete his or her identity(ies).

Questo articolo introduce e descrive due aspetti relativi alla protezione dei dati, uno di natura tecnologica e l’altro di carattere giuridico. Entrambi gli aspetti costituiscono due importanti sfide alla privacy: la reidentificazione dei dati anonimi e il trattamento dei dati personali per ulteriori finalità. Le due possibilità, curiosamente, non hanno ricevuto finora la meritata attenzione dalla dottrina specializzata, rimanendo in un 'limbo' giuridico che potrà portare dei seri problemi alla difesa della privacy. Alcuni recenti sviluppi tecnologici riguardanti la re-identificazione dei dati anonimi hanno richiamato l’attenzione su uno dei concetti fondamentali della protezione dei dati: la loro tassonomia. Infatti, la possibilità di deanonimizzazione dei dati insieme alla grande offerta di dati personali risultante dal 'Data Mining' hanno non soltanto creato una nuova categoria - 'Big Data', ma hanno anche cambiato l’approccio al concetto di dato anonimo o statistico, richiedendo il cambiamento della natura di alcuni degli strumenti e istituti ormai classici nella protezione dei dati.

This article analyses the metaphorical imaginative discourse created around the various inventions and technical breakthroughs in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), focussing namely in the Internet. By examining such technologies in their physical and metaphorical components, the article explains how the former has been perceived, understood and even shaped by the images and representations of the latter. The paper, by emphasizing the intrinsic cognitive, prospective and creative characteristics of metaphors, aims at demonstrating how the powerful, imaginative and self-enforcing metaphorical terminology (composed by visions and imagined concepts such as "giant brains", "information highways", "metaverse", "cyberspace" and "ambient intelligence") has been not only accompanying but also driving the incessant pace of technology, contributing to its social acceptance and implementation. In this way, the metaphorical terminology enterprise keeps re-inventing itself, providing continuously additional terms and notions to express the new realities that the emerging technological machinery is fabricating. Within the historical and the future evolution of the Internet (as well as of its metaphorical counterpart cyberspace) proposed by this article, the latter introduces the next technological scenario in the pipe-line - the so-called Ambient Intelligence (AmI) space - and announces the emergence of a new "wave" of metaphors and images that are being created to capture the prospective realities promised by the novel generation of ICTs.

This paper analyses an overlooked tension between the right to personal identity and the collective right to human identity in the context of human rights law as it applies to prospective human genetic modification. While the right to personal identity may justify a valid interest in the modification of one’s individual genome, the collective right to identity defends a global interest in the preservation of the human genome. Taking this tension into account, the article identifies a number of contradictions and problematic issues in the current international legal regulation of the human genome that undermine the right to personal identity. These are the cases of the notion of the human genome as common heritage of humanity and the unfounded idea of species integrity, among others. The article also argues that the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (UDHGHR) and the Oviedo Convention, together with the UNESCO Bioethics Committee, adopt a “geneticist-identity framework” which favours a conception of human identity solely based on genetic components. By prohibiting any change to the constitution of that shared genetic inheritance, those international legal instruments place an unjustified brake on the possibility for human genetic modification. This, as the article explains, is at odds with the “personality-identity framework” of the European Convention on Human Rights Law (ECHR), which privileges a narrative and developmental idea of individual identity.

Whilst advances in biotechnology and information technology have undoubtedly resulted in better quality of life for mankind, they can also bring about global problems. The legal response to the challenges caused by the rapid progress of technological change has been slow and the question of how international human rights should be protected and promoted with respect to science and technology remains unexplored. The contributors to this book explore the political discourse and power relations of technological growth and human rights issues between the Global South and the Global North and uncover the different perspectives of both regions. They investigate the conflict between technology and human rights and the perpetuation of inequality and subjection of the South to the North. With emerging economies such as Brazil playing a major role in trade, investment and financial law, this book examines how human rights are affected in Southern countries and identifies significant challenges to reform in the areas of international law and policy. -- Preface -- Introduction -- Part I: General Legal and Philosophical Aspects of the Interaction between Human Rights and New Technologies 1. Human rights in the information society: utopias, dystopias and human values, Giovanni Sartor 2. Knowledge and new technologies: from ethics to politics and law, Maria da Glória F.D.P. Garcia. -- Part II: Freedom of Expression in the Online Environment 3. To block or not to block European approaches to content regulation, and implications for freedom of expression, Yaman Akdeniz. -- Part III Intellectual Property, Competition Rules and New Technologies 4. Intellectual property and human rights: Northern and Southern perspectives, Ana E. Santos 5. (Right to) development and international transfer of technology: a competition law perspective, Lúcio Tomé Féteira. -- Part IV Biobanks, Bioethics and Human Rights 6. Prometheus, Golem & Co: bioconstitution and bodiliness in a ‘(world) risk society’, João Carlos Loureiro 7. Protecting persons v. protecting humans in biobanks, Judit Sándor. -- Part V Reproductive Technologies and Human Dignity 8. Human reproduction and human dignity as a constitutional concept, Miguel Nogueira de Brito 9. The constitutional debate on stem cell research, human rights and dignity: the law and a recent court ruling in Brazil, Luiz Edson Fachin. Part VI Balancing Privacy and Security 10. Angels and demons: data protection and security in electronic communications, Pedro Ferreira 11. Privacy, security and new technologies: a Brazilian approach to privacy issues in the public security field, Mario Viola de Azevedo Cunha and Danilo Doneda. -- Part VII Emerging Issues 12. Proposing a right to identity within the international framework of human rights: issues and prospects, Norbert Nuno Gomes de Andrade and Paul De Hert 13. Legal implications of the privatization of cyber warfare, Lucas Lixinski 14. Internet content filtering in Latin America: reasons and impacts on freedom of expression, Joana Varon Ferraz, Carlos Affonso Pereira de Sousa, Bruno Magrani and Walter Britto 15. Nanotechnology, human rights, patent law and the global South: a brief overview, Ana Nordberg -- Index.

Proceedings of the conference 'The future of law and information technology', held at the European University Institute in Florence on 28 and 29 October 2008. Perspective analysis are particularly important in the ICT-law domain, since ICTs have known the most accelerated development in the last decades, and the deepest social effects (determined the passage from the industrial society to the social formation labelled by us information, knowledge or network society), matched by pervasive legal change (from data protection, to intellectual property, to internet law). As ICT development and the ICT driven social evolution are still accelerating their steps, it is necessary that the law does not remain confined to current problems and established outcomes: it needs to look into the future scenarios for capturing the sense of dynamics now underway and for preparing adequate legal response.