From algorithms used in policing and the judicial system, to numerous social welfare fraud detection cases, examples of implementation of algorithms in public governance amass in recent years. Algorithmic governance can rely on surveillance, for instance in cases of spatial crime forecasting, or on censorship, such as when used for repression of protests. In this…

  Water does not know boundaries, it ebbs and flows between people, communities, states, time and generations. Globally, water is deeply connected to place, people, history, spirituality, daily life, basic needs, human rights, movement, recreation, sovereignty, industry, economy, and power. Upstream and downstream states are unavoidably interconnected. There is a significant amount of water on…

Note: This is a cross-post of a blog originally published on the The Digital Constitutionalist   Excerpt: The initial Commission proposal for the AI Act focused on establishing requirements and safeguards applicable to the various operators of AI systems but lacked individual rights and remedies for persons on the receiving end of such systems. In…

Deze blog is een cross-post. Zie hier voor de oorspronkelijke tekst. In 1848 pleitte J.R. Thorbecke al in zijn werk ‘Bijdrage tot de herziening der Grondwet’ voor een systeem van ‘Teugels en Tegenwichten’ (‘checks and balances’) in het Nederlandse constitutionele systeem, waarbij diverse staatsorganen elkaar in evenwicht hielden. Volgens deze visie, waarbij rechters en wetgevers…

In our article, ‘The future of data driven investigations in light of the Sky ECC operation’, we examine whether or not, and on what terms, there is a future for data driven criminal investigations.  To answer the research question, we identified the main characteristics and legal criteria for data driven investigations. We use the Sky…

Recently, Israeli constitutional law outlined the vulnerability of the Israeli legal system to systematic constitutional threats by the religious right-wing government led by re-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This exposes Israel’s legal system to rule of law and human rights backsliding – what is it all about, and why is it happening now? In this blog,…

Scholars, lawyers and activists around the world have recently embraced the idea of granting legal personality and subjective rights to rivers, landscapes and other natural entities. In view of the climate crisis and other environmental problems, such an expansion of legal personhood and rights is widely understood as a revolution that could save the world….

Jurgen Goossens De wisselkoersen van cryptovaluta zijn tegenwoordig een gangbaar gespreksonderwerp en verschijnen geregeld in het nieuws. Er is echter minder aandacht voor de mogelijkheden en beloftes die de onderliggende technologie, namelijk blockchain, biedt. Toch verkennen veel organisaties, waaronder ook verschillende Nederlandse overheidsorganen, de inzet van blockchain. Zij verkennen de mogelijkheden die blockchain kan bieden…

Like other countries, Indonesia grapples with violence against women resulting from patriarchal institutions and compounded by gaps in the justice system. The UN Committee monitoring Indonesia’s implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) highlighted this issue as one of the main points of concern in their 2021…

In the EncroChat operation, French law enforcement authorities collected over 120 million messages from 60.000 EncroChat users. They cooperated with Dutch law enforcement authorities and Europol in a Joint Investigation Team (JIT). In the Netherlands, EncroChat data has already been used in over 200 criminal cases. In this blog, we explain how the right to…