Science and Technology Law Commons^™

The Road To Artificial Super-Intelligence: Has International Law A Role To Play?, J.-G. Castel, Matthew E. Castel

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Part I of this article deals with the road to artificial general super-intelligence.

Part II addresses the controls, if any, that should be exercised over the production and use of partially or fully autonomous machines of artificial intelligence before and after they become super-intelligent. More particularly, should there be legal and ethical limits to their use and to what extent should international law play a role in this connection?

Book Review: Jonathan Clough, Principles Of Cybercrime, 2nd Ed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), Christopher D. Ram

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The past decade has seen an enormous explosion of scholarship on the subject of cybercrime, as technologies and offenders pose new challenges and law enforcement, government and academic experts struggle to keep up. The new, second edition of Professor Jonathan Clough’s book occupies a fairly substantial, but specific niche in this increasingly diverse and complex landscape. Principles of Cybercrime contains only a cursory review of the history and criminology of cybercrime, it does not deal at all with IT security, investigative or enforcement matters, and discussion of cybercrime as a global issue is limited to brief discussions of the 2001 …

Flying Robots And Privacy In Canada, Paul D.M. Holden

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Drones have been a hot topic in recent years particularly when used in war and in domestic police operations. Drones have also attracted attention because of highprofile plans to use them for package delivery, among other things. While the glamourous and future uses of drones catch media attention, drones are already being used in the private sector for more mundane purposes including surveying, infrastructure inspection and real estate sales promotion. While the privacy threats of military and police drones are widely discussed, privacy concerns of private drones have attracted much less consideration.

This paper looks at the privacy risks of …

Un Nouveau Code Pour Une Procédure Technologique: Mémento Pour Le Pr@Ticien, Antoine Guilman

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Table des matières

Introduction.................................................................................................. 18

I. La transmission technologique des actes de procédure ................................. 22

(a) Le dépôt technologique des actes de procédure ................................... 23

(i) Un régime légal inédit : les dispositions du NCPC...................... 23

(ii) Un régime réglementaire inexistant : l’exemple de la Cour fédérale ...................................................................................... 26

(b) La signification technologique des actes de procédure ......................... 28

(i) Le principe : la signification de main à main .............................. 29

(ii) L’exception : la signification technologique................................. 30

(c) La notification technologique des actes de procédure..........................35

(i) La notification par un moyen technologique .............................. 35

(ii) La notification par …

Minding The Gap: Why Or How Nova Scotia Should Enact A New Cyber-Safety Act - Case Comment On Crouch V. Snell, Jennifer Taylor

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Nova Scotia’s Cyber-safety Act was meant to fill a gap in the law. Where criminal charges and civil claims like defamation were unavailable or undesirable, the Act, it was hoped, would contain a substantive definition of cyberbullying, set out when it was actionable, and provide procedures for victims to obtain remedies. But the statute that was ultimately passed was too blunt a tool to address the problem, from both a substantive and a procedural perspective.

That helps explain why Justice McDougall of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia struck down the entire statute as unconstitutional, in the recent case of …

Protecting The Privacy Of Canadians' Health Information In The Cloud, Adrian Thorogood, Howard Simkevitz, Mark Phillips, Edward S. Dove, Yann Joly

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article presents results from a year-long research project reviewing health privacy issues in the cloud, funded by the Contributions Program of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC). Section I provides a brief primer on cloud computing and its applications in data-centric health research and health care. Section II reviews Canadian privacy and health privacy laws and how they apply to CSPs. Section III identifies privacy risks arising from the technological, organizational, and jurisdictional complexity of cloud computing. Section IV argues that Canadian health privacy laws fail to address difficulties custodians face in balancing responsibilities with CSPs, …

Fmri And Lie Detection, Anthony D. Wagner, Richard J. Bonnie, Bj Casey, Andre Davis, David L. Faigman, Morris B. Hoffman, Owen D. Jones, Read Montague, Stephen J. Morse, Marcus E. Raichle, Jennifer A. Richeson, Elizabeth S. Scott, Laurence Steinberg, Kim Taylor-Thompson, Gideon Yaffe

Faculty Scholarship

Some studies have reported the ability to detect lies, with a high degree of accuracy, by analyzing brain data acquired using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). But is this new technology ready for its day in court?

This consensus knowledge brief from the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience takes a closer look at the potential and pitfalls of fMRI lie detection techniques, providing insight into the areas of the brain involved in lying, the impact of memory on deception, how countermeasures may foil our efforts to detect lies, and factors that can create cause for concern about …

Talking Foreign Policy: The Iran Nuclear Accord, Paul Williams, Milena Sterio, Avidan Cover, Mike Newton

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Protecting Products Versus Platforms, Jacob S. Sherkow

Articles & Chapters

Patents have long been the most important legal assets of biotech companies. Increasingly, however, biotech firms find themselves on one side of a divide: as either traditional product companies or platform companies. Given the differences between these two types of business models, the merits of intellectual property (IP) protection vary between them. This article explores how those differences relate to biotech startups and entrepreneurs seeking to protect their inventions.

Describing Drugs: A Response To Professors Allison And Ouellette, Jacob S. Sherkow

Articles & Chapters

Profs. Allison and Ouellette’s Article, How Courts Adjudicate Patent Definiteness and Disclosure, 65 Duke L.J.609 (2015), on courts’ adjudication of certain patent disputes presents some surprising data: pharmaceutical patents litigated to judgment fare substantially worse on written-description analyses if they are not part of traditional pioneer-generic litigation. This Response engages in several hypotheses for this disparity and examines the cases that make up Allison and Ouellette’s dataset. An analysis of these cases finds that the disparity can be best explained by technological and judicial idiosyncrasies in each case, rather than larger differences among pharmaceutical patent cases. This finding contextualizes …

Fourth Amendment Time Machines (And What They Might Say About Police Body Cameras), Stephen E. Henderson

Faculty Articles

When it comes to criminal investigation, time travel is increasingly possible. Despite longstanding roots in traditional investigation, science is today providing something fundamentally different in the form of remarkably complete digital records. And those big data records not only store our past, but thanks to data mining they are in many circumstances eerily good at predicting our future. So, now that we stand on the threshold of investigatory time travel, how should the Fourth Amendment and legislation respond? How should we approach bulk government capture, such as by a solar-powered drone employing wide-area persistent stare technology? Is it meaningfully different …

False Rubicons, Moral Panic & Conceptual Cul-De-Sacs: Critiquing & Reframing The Call To Ban Lethal Autonomous Weapons, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Casting into the indeterminate future and projecting visions of so-called killer robots, The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots (The Campaign) has incited moral panic in an attempt to stimulate a discussion and ultimately a ban on lethal autonomous weapons (LAWS). Their efforts have been superficially successful but come at a self-defeating substantive cost. In the hope of shifting the dialogue from the hyperbolic to a constructive dialogue on the interaction between human and machine abilities in both current and future weapon systems, this article explores the conceptual paradox implicit in The Campaign and proposes an alternative.

Having provoked the international …

Can Dna Be Speech?, Jorge R. Roig

Scholarly Works

DNA is generally regarded as the basic building block of life itself. In the most fundamental sense, DNA is nothing more than a chemical compound, albeit a very complex and peculiar one. DNA is an information-carrying molecule. The specific sequence of base pairs contained in a DNA molecule carries with it genetic information, and encodes for the creation of particular proteins. When taken as a whole, the DNA contained in a single human cell is a complete blueprint and instruction manual for the creation of that human being. In this article we discuss myriad current and developing ways in which …

Publication Of Government-Funded Research, Open Access, And The Public Interest, Julie L. Kimbrough, Laura N. Gasaway

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Public access to government-funded research is an issue of tremendous importance to researchers, librarians, and ordinary citizens around the world. Based on the notion that taxpayers finance research through their tax dollars, research data should be available to them. Rapid, unfettered access to research publications provides access to medical research to patients, encourages further exploration and inquiry by other researchers, informs citizens, and advances scientific research.

Scientists typically write articles that divulge the results of their government-funded research. Prior to the open access movement, these articles were published in commercially produced journals. Subscriptions to these journals are expensive, and cost …

“Big Data” And The Risk Of Employment Discrimination, Allan G. King, Marko Mrkonich

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Crowdwork, Corporate Social Responsibility, And Fair Labor Practices, Miriam A. Cherry, Winifred R. Poster

Faculty Publications

Crowdwork, in which large numbers of workers find and perform paid tasks through online platforms, is a paradox. It can make job-matching and production processes more efficient, but it can also lead to a decline in labor standards. We seek to link ethical labor practices in virtual work with well-established notions of corporate social responsibility, that include concerns for worker well-being and fair treatment. We present a typology of trends in labour, and argue that the new phase of ‘crowdwork’ is distinct from previous eras of ‘industrial’ and ‘digital’ employment. The chapter then outlines three best practices for crowdwork. First …

Data Privacy And Inmate Recidivism, Chad Squitieri

Scholarly Articles

Private companies are awarded contracts to provide Internet technologies within jails and prisons. These correctional contractors often argue that their services can reduce recidivism rates by, for example, providing inmates with access to video messaging services where inmates can communicate with loved ones who are otherwise unable to travel to communicate in person. A close examination of the privacy policies offered by correctional contractors, however, reveals how efforts to reduce recidivism rates are undermined.

As this Essay will explain, correctional contractors collect sensitive data about inmates and the loved ones with whom they communicate. If this data is stolen or …

Technological Opacity, Predictability, And Self-Driving Cars, Harry Surden, Mary-Anne Williams

Publications

Autonomous or “self-driving” cars are vehicles that drive themselves without human supervision or input. Because of safety benefits that they are expected to bring, autonomous vehicles are likely to become more common. Notably, for the first time, people will share a physical environment with computer-controlled machines that can both direct their own activities and that have considerable range of movement. This represents a distinct change from our current context. Today people share physical spaces either with machines that have free range of movement, but are controlled by people (e.g. automobiles) or with machines that are controlled by computers, but highly …

Environmental Law, Big Data, And The Torrent Of Singularities, William Boyd

Publications

How will big data impact environmental law in the near future? This Essay imagines one possible future for environmental law in 2030 that focuses on the implications of big data for the protection of public health from risks associated with pollution and industrial chemicals. It assumes the perspective of an historian looking back from the end of the twenty-first century at the evolution of environmental law during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The premise of the Essay is that big data will drive a major shift in the underlying knowledge practices of environmental law (along with other areas …

Investment Accelerators, Brad Bernthal

Publications

This Article documents and explains the legal and extralegal dimensions of Investment Accelerator (IA) systems. Accelerators are a new class of institution that supports entrepreneurs and early stage startups. Investment Accelerators take an ownership stake in companies that participate in an intensive, time-limited program. Interviews reveal the surprising extent to which parties in many Investment Accelerators exchange economic value in the absence of formal agreement. Startups share proprietary information with highly accomplished mentors who, in turn, contribute their time and connections without direct compensation. This under-contracted and informal arrangement raises concerns about opportunism. Data from an original investigation presents a …

Young Adulthood As A Transitional Legal Category: Science, Social Change, And Justice Policy, Elizabeth S. Scott, Richard J. Bonnie, Laurence Steinberg

Faculty Scholarship

In the past decade, much attention has focused on developmental brain research and its implications for the regulation of crime. Public and policy interest has been directed primarily toward juveniles. In light of recent research, courts and legislatures increasingly have rejected the punitive response of the 1990s and embraced a developmental approach to young offenders. Of particular importance in propelling this trend has been the framework offered by the U.S. Supreme Court in a series of Eighth Amendment opinions that have rejected harsh adult sentences for juveniles. These decisions, supported by adolescent brain research, rested on two empirically based principles: …

Challenges To Fingerprint Identification Evidence: Why The Courts Need A New Approach To Finality, Sarah Lucy Cooper

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Policing Criminal Justice Data, Wayne Logan, Andrew Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article addresses a matter of fundamental importance to the criminal justice system: the presence of erroneous information in government databases and the limited government accountability and legal remedies for the harm that it causes individuals. While a substantial literature exists on the liberty and privacy perils of large multi-source data assemblage, often termed "big data," this article addresses the risks associated with the collection, generation and use of "small data" (i.e., individual-level, discrete data points). Because small data provides the building blocks for all data-driven systems, enhancing its quality will have a significant positive effect on the criminal justice …

The Internet Of Things And The Fourth Amendment Of Effects, Andrew Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

By 2020 there will be billions of “things” connected through the “Internet of Things.” These smart devices built within our homes, cars, smartphones, clothing, and accessories present new possibilities for technological surveillance for law enforcement. This network of smart devices also poses a new challenge for a Fourth Amendment built around “effects.” The constitutional language protecting “persons, houses, papers, and effects” from unreasonable searches and seizures must confront this change. This article addresses how a Fourth Amendment built on old-fashioned “effects” can address a new world when things are no longer just inactive, static objects, but objects that create and …

Why The Hurry To Regulate Autonomous Weapon Systems-But Not Cyber-Weapons?, Kenneth Anderson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Liability For Mobile Health And Wearable Technologies, Lindsay Wiley, Nicolas Terry

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Most of the legal commentary regarding mobile health has focused on direct regulation leveraging existing laws and regulators such as HIPAA privacy through HHS-OCR or device regulation by the FDA. However, much of the mobile health revolution likely will play out in lightly regulated spaces bereft of most of the privacy, security, and safety rules associated with traditional health care. This article examines the potential for common law liability models to bridge these gaps (even on a temporary basis). Part II of this paper provides an introduction to the terminology used, and presents a brief typology of the apps appearing …

Driverless Cars And The Much Delayed Tort Law Revolution, Andrzej Rapaczynski

Faculty Scholarship

The most striking development in the American tort law of the last century was the quick rise and fall of strict manufacturers’ liability for the huge social losses associated with the use of industrial products. The most important factor in this process has been the inability of the courts and academic commentators to develop a workable theory of design defects, resulting in a wholesale return of negligence as the basis of products liability jurisprudence. This article explains the reasons for this failure and argues that the development of digital technology, and the advent of self-driving cars in particular, is likely …