Human Enhancing Technologies and Individual Privacy Right

Author(s):  
Joanna Kulesza

This chapter provides a legal perspective on the application of Human Enhancing Technologies (HET), in particular on Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs), emphasizing threats they bring to individual privacy. The author discusses the geographical, political, and cultural differences in understanding the individual right to privacy, as granted by human rights treaties and customary international law, and confronts them with the threats brought about by HET. The era of globalized services rendered by transnational companies necessitates an answer to the question on the possible and desired shape of effective individual protection of human rights from the threats brought about by advancing HET. Be it biomedical or geolocalisation data, when fueled through the Big Data resources available online, individual data accompanying the HET becomes a powerful marketing tool and a significant national and international security measure. The chapter aims to identify the privacy threats brought about by the HET and proposes a business-ethics based solution.

2015 ◽  
pp. 1393-1407
Author(s):  
Joanna Kulesza

This chapter provides a legal perspective on the application of Human Enhancing Technologies (HET), in particular on Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs), emphasizing threats they bring to individual privacy. The author discusses the geographical, political, and cultural differences in understanding the individual right to privacy, as granted by human rights treaties and customary international law, and confronts them with the threats brought about by HET. The era of globalized services rendered by transnational companies necessitates an answer to the question on the possible and desired shape of effective individual protection of human rights from the threats brought about by advancing HET. Be it biomedical or geolocalisation data, when fueled through the Big Data resources available online, individual data accompanying the HET becomes a powerful marketing tool and a significant national and international security measure. The chapter aims to identify the privacy threats brought about by the HET and proposes a business-ethics based solution.


2015 ◽  
pp. 36-51
Author(s):  
RUDOLF DUR SCHNUTZ

The recent move towards the individual access to constitutional justice is a progress for protection of human rights in Europe. The explicit purpose of these efforts is to settle human rights issues on the national level and to reduce the number of cases at the Strasbourg Court. Such individual complaints have to be designed in a way that makes them an effective remedy which has to be exhausted before a case can be brought before the European Court of Human Rights. This paper points out the current state of these improvements on the national level in a difficult context on the European level and the recommendations of the Venice Commission in this regard.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheshadri Chatterjee ◽  
Sreenivasulu N.S.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the human rights issue. This study has also examined issues with AI for business and its civil and criminal liability. This study has provided inputs to the policymakers and government authorities to overcome different challenges. Design/methodology/approach This study has analysed different international and Indian laws on human rights issues and the impacts of these laws to protect the human rights of the individual, which could be under threat due to the advancement of AI technology. This study has used descriptive doctrinal legal research methods to examine and understand the insights of existing laws and regulations in India to protect human rights and how these laws could be further developed to protect human rights under the Indian jurisprudence, which is under threat due to rapid advancement of AI-related technology. Findings The study provides a comprehensive insight on the influence of AI on human rights issues and the existing laws in India. The study also shows different policy initiatives by the Government of India to regulate AI. Research limitations/implications The study highlights some of the key policy recommendations helpful to regulate AI. Moreover, this study provides inputs to the regulatory authorities and legal fraternity to draft a much-needed comprehensive policy to regulate AI in the context of the protection of human rights of the citizens. Originality/value AI is constantly posing entangled challenges to human rights. There is no comprehensive study, which investigated the emergence of AI and its influence on human rights issues, especially from the Indian legal perspective. So there is a research gap. This study provides a unique insight of the emergence of AI applications and its influence on human rights issues and provides inputs to the policymaker to help them to draft an effective regulation on AI to protect the human rights of Indian citizens. Thus, this study is considered a unique study that adds value towards the overall literature.


Author(s):  
Ipsen Knut

This chapter examines the regulation of combatant status in treaty law and the many challenges for combatant status in recent armed conflicts. The primary status under international law of persons in an international armed conflict will be one of two categories of persons: ‘combatants’ and ‘civilians’. Combatants may fight within the limits imposed by international law applicable in international armed conflict, that is, they may participate directly in hostilities, which members of medical or religious personnel and ‘non-combatants’ may not do because they are excluded—by international law and by a legal act of their party to the conflict—from the authorization to take a direct part in hostilities. The chapter then discusses ‘unlawful combatants’, or what may be considered the better term: ‘unprivileged belligerents’. The term ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ was particularly used after 11 September 2001, to introduce a third category of persons which under existing law may be either combatants or civilians, but are denied such status as not fulfilling essential conditions. To use this third category in order to reduce the individual protection below the minimum standard of human rights is under no circumstances legally acceptable.


Author(s):  
Steven Wheatley

Chapter 4 examines the core United Nations human rights treaties. It shows how we can think of these as complex systems, the result of the interactions of the states parties and the treaty bodies. The work first explains the regime on opposability and denunciation, which establishes the binding nature of the conventions, before considering the law on reservations, noting how this differs from the scheme under general international law. The chapter then turns to the interpretation of convention rights, detailing the distinctive pro homine (‘in favour of the individual’) approach applied to human rights treaties. The law on interpretation also requires that we examine the subsequent practice of states parties, as well as the pronouncements of the treaty bodies. The doctrine of evolutionary interpretation explains how the ‘ordinary meaning’ of treaty terms can evolve with developments in technical and scientific knowledge, changes in societal understandings, and wider modifications in regulatory approaches outside of the human rights treaty system.


Author(s):  
Nigel Rodley

This chapter considers the background to, and current developments concerning the manner in which international law has engaged with the protection of human rights, including both civil and political rights and economic, social, and cultural rights. It looks at historical, philosophical, and political factors which have shaped our understanding of human rights and the current systems of international protection. It focuses on the systems of protection developed by and through the United Nations through the ‘International Bill of Rights’, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN human rights treaties and treaty bodies, and the UN Special Procedures as well as the work of the Human Rights Council. It also looks at the systems of regional human rights protection which have been established.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-192
Author(s):  
Kate Fox Principi

Abstract The United Nations human rights treaty bodies are independent bodies of experts tasked with monitoring the implementation by states parties of human rights treaties. These bodies monitor the implementation of treaties, inter alia, by making decisions on allegations of individual human rights violations under the individual complaints procedures (these decisions are officially referred to as ‘Views’). The number of complaints to the treaty bodies has increased exponentially since the first complaint was examined by the Human Rights Committee in 1977 and is expected to continue to rise. At the same time, a backlog in cases has increased, as resources have never matched the rise in cases to be considered. In addition, decisions in which the treaty bodies find violations of human rights are not always implemented—that is, states do not necessarily grant the victim of the violation the remedy prescribed by the treaty body examining the case. This current situation is taking place against a global backdrop of increased criticism of human rights: a global pushback against human rights, including from states which have been heretofore human rights supportive. Surely, the response from supporters of human rights should be to reinforce the importance and universality of the treaties as the foundation of human rights norms. This article seeks to demonstrate one way to do so by focusing on implementation of treaty body decisions in individual cases.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Brune

What is the responsibility of corporations in terms of human rights? This question is of concern to academia, the public and also currently to businesses. The UN Framework for Business and Human Rights suggests that companies should respect human rights as much as possible in their business activities, while states are obliged to protect human rights. In practice, this theoretical division of labour leads to problems, in particular, in areas where institutional protection of human rights is not guaranteed, i.e. states do not fulfil their protection obligations. At the same time, due to globalisation-related developments, transnational companies are in a good position to negotiate with states, which makes them a kind of political actor. If these companies operate in contexts where human rights are not institutionally protected, does their responsibility go beyond respecting human rights?


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