Chapter 6 reconstructs the technology-specific legal contours of freedom of expression in the Internet age, presenting empirical evidence of the growing importance of technology for legal practice and regulation. Since data-processing technology is a prerequisite for free speech, the starting point is privacy law. An important distinction is made between data integrity and network integrity and the discussion on net neutrality and the open Internet is revisited. The case law of the ECtHR on Article 10 ECHR is also examined to see if there is a tendency to recognise an independent ‘right to transmit’. Moreover, the activities of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) can be seen to produce technology-related standards relevant to the freedom of expression. ICANN, which is responsible for routing data packets to their destination, controls the ‘master key’ to the entire global Internet and can thus influence the conditions under which freedom of communication is possible. Finally, the chapter addresses the technical standards for the Internet developed by the independent Internet Architecture Board and the Internet Engineering Task Force, which are also crucial for the freedom of expression.

Chapter 6 looks at the failures of educational innovation during the Covid-19 crisis. As schools scrambled to adapt to remote learning, remote proctoring technologies rapidly expanded. They implemented surveillance systems that violated student privacy and disproportionately harmed vulnerable students. Despite claims of maintaining academic integrity, remote proctoring created a stressful, punitive environment that prioritized monitoring over genuine educational support while failing to do nearly enough to address the inequalities at the heart of accessing and using digital resources. Sadly, the rush to innovate missed crucial opportunities to upgrade core educational infrastructure and truly support students during a time of unprecedented challenge. As if this wasn’t bad enough, some schools continue to use remote proctoring software. A pandemic problem has thus become the new normal.

Chapter 5, “The Failed Promise of Covid Innovation,” presents the pandemic as a crucial case study of how innovative thinking let us down at a time of great vulnerability. Simply put, the early days of massive fatalities made COVID-19 a health crisis. But those days also can be seen as a powerful lens for understanding high-tech failure. From contact tracing apps to thermal imaging cameras and digital vaccine passports, there was a fever pitch of government and corporate enthusiasm for innovative solutionism that was predestined to be unreliable and, thus, in context, dangerous. While we acknowledge remarkable breakthroughs like the rapid development of mRNA vaccines, we also make the case that additional effective responses could have come from upgrading existing systems rather than trying to do things entirely new.

Chapter 3 dives deep into the beating heart of cryptocurrency, the paradoxical technology that has made early adherents billions, while adding nothing of real value to society. By any measure, crypto has failed at its stated goal: creating a better financial system. Looking to Bitcoin, we show how the core innovation – a distributed encrypted database – makes a terrible payment system, with slow, expensive, uncorrectable transactions. But crypto enthusiasts ignore more than a decade of failure, doubling down on grandiose claims about solving everything from financial inclusion to corporate governance while ignoring the far easier, low-tech solutions to these very real needs. We include an interview with an early supporter of the massive crypto currency Ethereum, who came to see how crypto became “just a tool for the wealthy to become wealthier” rather than fulfilling its promise of financial inclusion for the world’s 1.7 billion unbanked people.

Chapter 4 critically examines the fact that sometimes innovations not only fail to solve crucial problems, but are the problem itself. Specifically, it explains why Ring doorbell exemplifies the threat of home surveillance innovation. The billion-dollar Amazon subsidiary sold millions of Americans on the promise of security via surveillance without any credible evidence that its system works. But rather than encouraging people to adopt proven security upgrades, such as better locks and secure package drops, Ring wins customers by making its digital innovation seem essential amid a climate of rising fear. By fighting against boring yet effective alternatives, Ring’s anxiety-inducing features have further normalized intensive networked surveillance and helped turn innocuous neighborly interactions into potential threats.

Inter-Asian Law is starkly absent from constitutional accounts of reproductive rights in Asia. Instead, Asian jurisdictions tend to draw from the Global North, with the United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade occupying norm status. To explicate the potential of Inter-Asian Law in transforming reproductive rights, an act of imagination is required, suspending Roe as the central comparative frame and introducing alternate, hypothetical referents from Asia. This chapter conducts this task at two stages. First, it develops imagination as a method of comparative constitutional law. Second, applying the imaginative method, it hypothesizes what reproductive rights might look like if Nepal served as a referent for India and India as a referent for Bangladesh. In documenting explicit shifts in the constitutional construction of these rights, the chapter cements the place of Inter-Asian Law.

Thus far, we have largely considered technologies that are capable of changing persons’ mental states. However, today, a range of technologies are also being developed that can gain insight into the mental realms of others. One example is the measurement of brain activity, which has enabled researchers to make inferences about individual mental states and faculties. In particular, fMRI and EEG can measure brain activity in a way that allows for inferences about what a person remembers, recognises, thinks or feels. EEG has been used, for example, to identify concealed memories about a criminal offence; and fMRI has been used to reveal sexual orientation, political ideology or a person’s craving for cocaine. Recently, various research groups used neurotechnology together with emerging forms of artificial intelligence (AI) to decode mental content from brain activity, with some interesting first results. According to Brownsword, with the development of these kinds of “brain-reading” technologies, “researchers have a window into the brains and, possibly, into a deeper understanding of the mental lives of their participants”.

This chapter provides an introduction to the concepts of privacy, such as privacy-by-design and provides specific challenges related to privacy in HCI such as personally identifiable information, personal health data, personal genetic data, and location data. The chapter discusses Federal and state laws, as well as case law related to privacy of information, and how interfaces may enhance privacy or confuse users.

This chapter continues to study social media platforms but with a focus on the relationship between citizens and companies, particularly the co-production of data that serves as an important company instrument in the state–company partnership. It reveals inequalities in data production among citizens, systematically varying in terms of geographical distribution, privacy concerns, motivations, and choice. It differentiates different types of user behavior – discussing (producing political content and metadata) and lurking (producing metadata). Based on the China Internet Survey (CIS) 2018, it finds that Chinese users have similar motivations to users in other contexts, thus contributing to data production as privacy concerns remain less important compared to other motivations. This conceptualization of co-production rests not only on user participation on platforms, but also on the role of platform architecture and technological infrastructure that afford users’ choices. Through examining the role of the Great Chinese Firewall, the chapter finds that only about 12 percent of internet users jump the firewall to seek political information. A comparison of the three most popular platforms regarding their technological design show that Weibo and Baidu Tieba facilitate the production of political content more effectively compared to WeChat.

Machine-readable humanity is an evocative idea, and it is this idea which Hanley et al. spell out and critically discuss in their contribution. They are interested in exploring the technological as well as the moral side of the meaning of machine-readability. They start by differentiating between various ways to collect (and read) data and to develop classification schemes. They argue that traditional top-down data collection (first the pegs and then the collection according to the pegs) is less efficient than more recent machine readability, which is dynamic, because of the successive advances of data and predictive analytics (“big data”), machine learning, deep learning, and AI. Discussing the advantages as well as the dangers of this new way to read humans, they conclude that we should be especially cautious vis-à-vis the growing field of digital biomarkers since in the end they could not only endanger privacy and entrench biases, but also obliterate our autonomy. Seen in this light, apps (like AdNauseam) that restrict data collection as a form of protest against behavioral profiling also constitute resistance to the inexorable transformation of humanity into a standing reserve: humans on standby, to be immediately at hand for consumption by digital machines.

Cohen adapts the doughnut model of sustainable economic development to suggest ways for policymakers to identify regulatory policies that can better serve the humans who live in digital spaces. She does this in two steps. First, she demonstrates that a similarly doughnut-shaped model can advance the conceptualization of the appropriate balance(s) between surveillance and privacy. Second, she demonstrates how taking the doughnut model of privacy and surveillance seriously can help us think through important questions about the uses, forms, and modalities of legitimate surveillance.

The Human Rights Act requires courts to decide cases in conformity with the rights protected by the European Convention on Human Rights in so far as possible. Employees must bring a claim under UK employment law and then the rights, whether at common law or under statute, should conform to the Convention rights such as the right to respect for private life, freedom to manifest a religion, and freedom of expression.

This chapter examines the development of a right to privacy against the press in Article 8 ECHR and the legal principles that apply in such cases. It considers the obligations that Article 8 imposes in respect of the activities of private actors, the criteria for balancing competing rights, and the role of the margin of appreciation and the ECtHR in that process. The chapter then considers the impact of Articles 8 and 10 on domestic law and the development of the tort of misuse of private information. This offers important insight into the ways in which the Convention rights and the HRA have shaped the common law. Finally, the chapter concludes with observations on prospects for the future and proposals to limits privacy rights.

Many of the psychological topics we have discussed have focused on the mind of the individual, but humans are a fundamentally social species. Recently, the nature of our social interactions has transformed, through our new abilities to connect with people online. This chapter discusses psychological principles of social networks, and how to quantify social networks via graph theory. The chapter examines the small-world phenomenon and the role of social ties via these graph theory measures. We then look at the case of online social networks, what can be learned about you from your profile, and how their use impacts psychological measures. The chapter concludes by showcasing findings on social network representations in the brain, and touching on ethical questions related to social media privacy concerns and AI-based social interactions.