This chapter scrutinizes the operation of public sector privacy and data protection laws in relation to AI data in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, to assess the potential for utilizing these laws to challenge automated government decision-making. Government decision-making in individual cases will almost inevitably involve the collection, use, or storage of personal information, and may also involve drawing inferences from data already collected. At the same time increased usage of automated decision-making encourages the large-scale collection and mining of personal data. Privacy and data protection laws provide a useful chokepoint for limiting discrimination and other harms that arise from misuses of personal information.

The emergence of “FemTech”, a term used to describe technologically based or enabled applications serving women’s health needs, as a driver of capital investment in the past decade, is a notable development in advancing women’s health. Critics have raised important concerns regarding the pitfalls of FemTech, with privacy concerns being chief among them. This private market, however, should be integrated into creation of systemwide corrections of problems that plague women of color. To do so a derivate FemTech framework (hereinafter the “Framework”) clear limitations must concurrently be overcome to realize its possibilities.

Over the years, businesses have been trying to identify ways to segment their customer base and engage in price discrimination. The objective is to provide different prices to different consumers based on a range of factors, such as age, location, income, and other demographic characteristics, which are considered capable of revealing the reserve price of buyers. With the increasing use of digital technology, this practice has become even more accurate and sophisticated, leading to the emergence of personalized pricing. This pricing approach utilizes advanced algorithms and data analytics to approximate the exact willingness to pay of each purchaser with greater precision.

In an unprecedented ruling, in 2018, the Brazilian Consumer Protection Authority applied a fine to a popular online travel company named Decolar.com for allegedly favouring foreign consumers over Brazilian residents during the 2016 Olympics held in Rio de Janeiro. The accusation was that Decolar.com had offered hotel reservations at different prices according to the consumer’s location as identified through their internet protocol address, or IP address.

To our knowledge, this is the only case thus far in Brazil that reviewed the practice of charging different prices from different consumers based on their specific characteristics.

Personalized pricing is a form of pricing where different customers are charged different prices for the same product depending on their ability to pay, based on the information that the trader holds of a potential customer. Pricing plays a relevant role in the decision-making process by the consumers, and a firm’s performance can be determined by the ability of the business entities to execute a pricing strategy accordingly. Further, pricing also determines the quality, value, and willingness to buy. Usually the willingness of a consumer depends on transparency and fairness.

Technological developments have enabled online sellers to personalize prices of the goods and services.

As the personalization of e-commerce transactions continues to intensify, the law and policy implications of algorithmic personalized pricing (APP) should be top of mind for regulators. Price is often the single most important term of consumer transactions. APP is a form of online discriminatory pricing practice whereby suppliers set prices based on consumers’ personal information with the objective of getting as close as possible to their maximum willingness to pay. As such, APP raises issues of competition, privacy, personal data protection, contract, consumer protection, and anti-discrimination law.

This book chapter looks at the legality of APP from a Canadian perspective in competition, commercial consumer law, and personal data protection law.

Lay people often are misinformed about what is a secure password, what are the various types of security threats to passwords or password-protected resources, and the risks of certain compromising practices such as reusing passwords and required password expiration. Expert knowledge about password security has evolved considerably over time, but on many points, research supports general agreement among experts about best practices. Remarkably, though perhaps not surprisingly, there is a sizable gap between what experts agree on and what lay people believe and do. The knowledge gap might exist and persist because of intermediaries, namely professionals and practitioners as well as technological interfaces such as password meters and composition rules. In this chapter, we identify knowledge commons governance dilemmas that arise within and between different communities (expert, professional, lay) and examine implications for other everyday misinformation problems.

There is no doubt that AI systems, and the large-scale processing of personal data that often accompanies their development and use, has put a strain on individuals’ fundamental rights and freedoms. Against that background, this chapter aims to walk the reader through a selection of key concerns arising from the application of the GDPR to the training and use of such systems. First, it clarifies the position and role of the GDPR within the broader European data protection regulatory framework. Next, it delineates its scope of application by delving into the pivotal notions of “personal data,” “controller,” and “processor.” Lastly, it highlights some friction points between the characteristics inherent to most AI systems and the general principles outlined in Article 5 GDPR, including lawfulness, transparency, purpose limitation, data minimization, and accountability.

This essay examines how nineteenth-century American literature paved the way for the modern exposure of private life in such disparate venues as the gossip column, social media, and reality television. In particular, this essay examines the sketch form, a popular nineteenth-century prose genre that has often been characterized as a minor form in comparison to the novel. In examining the history of the sketch form, this essay shows how the sketch conveyed reservations about the interiority and exposures central to the novel form. As practiced by Washington Irving, the earliest popularizer of this genre, the sketch advocated respectful discretion, the avoidance of private matters, and social stasis, the latter of which positioned the sketch in opposition to the social mobility characteristic of the novel. Irving presented the sketch as the genre of literary discretion, but its latter practitioner, Nathaniel Parker Willis, used the sketch to divulge confidences and violate social decorum. Willis adapted the sketch to become a precursor of the gossip column and to mirror the novel form in exposing private life.

Chapter 4 presents a review of the ISO 18000-63 protocol, including data encoding and modulation, and aspects of the transponder memory structure, security, and privacy, and presents real examples of reader–transponder transactions.

Adolescents’ ability to access health care depends on sharing accurate information about concerns, needs, and conditions. Parents and other adults serve as both resources and gatekeepers in adolescents’ ability to access and manage care. Understanding information sharing between adolescents and parents, adolescents and providers, and parents and providers is thus critical. This chapter distinguishes between adolescents’ routine and self-disclosure of information. The former refers to sharing information required for the partner to perform their role. The latter refers to voluntarily sharing more information than required. Because the roles of parent and provider are distinct relative to the adolescent, disclosure decisions can conflict. These differences are discussed in the context of communication privacy management theory and the literature on legitimacy of authority. A framework for understanding information sharing processes is developed that considers stage of care, type of care, stigma/privacy associated with the condition, and the age of the adolescent.

Design is integral to every part of our justice system: from the built spaces like courtrooms and the clerk’s office counter, to the paper and digital forms litigants submit, to the rules of procedure themselves. This chapter argues that good architectural design can make our justice system more just by enhancing participants’ sense of fairness and dignity, and more efficient by contributing to mindsets from which it is easier for parties to resolve conflict. We begin by discussing historical inspirations and manifestations of courtroom and courthouse design. We then look at some of the key stakeholders who make design decisions before highlighting a few modern efforts to use design to bring dignity to patrons of courthouses. We illustrate our position by referencing a 2018 collaboration among a graduate architecture studio course at Wentworth Institute of Technology, Northeastern University School of Law’s NuLawLab, and Massachusetts Housing Court in which architecture and law students and faculty tackled spatial interventions in Boston Housing Court.

Much of the internet of today is dominated by the big tech companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon that use it to amass profits. The chapter looks at three ways in which their pursuit of profit arbitrarily interferes with people’s access to and use of the internet. (1) Big Tech corporations operate a version of the internet that forces users to yield personal data in exchange for ‘free’ services. The chapter explains why this routine harvesting of personal data is morally problematic as it forces internet users to choose between two elements of minimally decent lives: their privacy and accessing the internet. (2) Social media platforms are among the dominant online services today. They have enhanced opportunities for exercising human rights, but their business practices also limit people in the enjoyment of these rights. The chapter suggests several ways for improving the situation. (3) Some businesses lobby for ending net neutrality. The chapter explains why net neutrality is crucial for keeping internet access free from arbitrary interferences, and argues for a version of net neutrality that allows some unequal treatment of data that does not diminish human rights.