News and Research articles on Government

Transnational collective actions for cross-border data protection violations

Federica Casarosa, European University Institute
PUBLISHED ON: 16 Sep 2020 DOI: 10.14763/2020.3.1498

Although the GDPR paves the way for a coordinated EU-wide legal action against data protection infringements, only a reform of private international law rules can enhance the opportunities of data subjects to enforce their rights.

Anchoring the need to revise cross-border access to e-evidence

Sergi Vazquez Maymir, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
PUBLISHED ON: 16 Sep 2020 DOI: 10.14763/2020.3.1495

The percentages and figures used in the impact assessment accompanying the European Commission’s e-evidence package strongly influence the analysis of the problem and limit the assessment of the problem of cross-border access to e-evidence to technical and efficiency considerations.

Regulatory arbitrage and transnational surveillance: Australia’s extraterritorial assistance to access encrypted communications

Monique Mann, Deakin University
Angela Daly, University of Strathclyde
Adam Molnar, University of Waterloo
PUBLISHED ON: 16 Sep 2020 DOI: 10.14763/2020.3.1499

This paper is part of Geopolitics, jurisdiction and surveillance, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by Monique Mann and Angela Daly. Introduction Since the Snowden revelations in 2013 (see e.g., Lyon, 2014; Lyon, 2015) an ongoing policy issue has been the legitimate scope of surveillance, and the extent to which individuals and groups can assert their fundamental rights, including privacy. There has been a renewed focus on policies regarding access to encrypted communications, which are part of a longer history of the ‘cryptowars’ of the 1990s (see e.g., Koops, 1999). We examine these provisions in the Anglophone ‘Five Eyes’ (FVEY) The FVEY partnership is a comprehensive …

Going global: Comparing Chinese mobile applications’ data and user privacy governance at home and abroad

Lianrui Jia, University of Toronto
Lotus Ruan, University of Toronto
PUBLISHED ON: 16 Sep 2020 DOI: 10.14763/2020.3.1502

This paper examines data and privacy governance by four China-based mobile applications and their international versions - including the role of the state. It also highlights the role of platforms in gatekeeping mobile app privacy standards.

Since Twitter labelled a tweet by Donald Trump as ‘potentially misleading’ and indicated that it was fact-checking the statement made, the US President signed an ‘Executive Order'. Amélie Heldt finds that far from being new, the situation illustrates how torn we are when it comes to intermediary immunity or rather liability.

Platform transience: changes in Facebook’s policies, procedures, and affordances in global electoral politics

Bridget Barrett, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Daniel Kreiss, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
PUBLISHED ON: 31 Dec 2019 DOI: 10.14763/2019.4.1446

This paper shows how platforms are transient in the policies, procedures, and affordances and details the implications for politics.

Focusing on whether data-intensive technologies used in political campaigning are accurate and effective misses the point about their larger role in politics. This piece briefly addresses the popular question of “Does it work?” and suggests a series of questions and provocations that aim to more holistically capture the extent of tech-led disruption in a time of creeping voter surveillance.   

This article identifies factors that could explain the increasing pressure to regulate Québec’s political parties’ uses of digital voter information.