Big Data, Human Rights and Human Security - Period 4

The question addressed in this course is how digital technologies and big data are used to make decisions in human rights and security domains, and how these uses require us to rethink the basic tenets of existing legal norms and practices. The course focuses on three human rights and security domains in particular: big data and social and criminal justice; the use of digital technologies in warfare and the fight against terrorism; and the use of technology in border management and migration law. Students will become familiar with the legal framework regulating the collection, use and analysis of big data, and the storage and exchange of personal data through the use of digital technologies. For this purpose, they will be introduced to EU and international laws on privacy and data protection, and these laws will be fleshed out with regard to the three case studies.
Data privacy laws can serve as tools to focus microscopically on the ways in which the use of big data and digital technologies pose challenges to individual rights, and clarify possible remedies for these challenges (for example by de-identifying data, foregrounding the question of consent to the collection, use, or disclosure of the data, or through the concept of purpose limitation). Students will learn how to apply the principles of data protection laws in the three human rights and security domains, and become aware of the particular problems that feature in these particular domains. But through the case studies, the course will also require students to reflect on the more fundamental question as to what extent legal responses to human security threats are undergoing a fundamental shift through the use of modern technologies. Thus, it has been argued that these technologies facilitate a "fundamental jurisprudential shift from our current ex post facto system of penalties and punishments to ex ante preventative measures that are increasingly being adopted across various sectors of society." Whether such a shift to from individual justice to so-called actuarial justice is currently taking place will be discussed through looking at diverse fields such as predictive policing, the use of smart city technology for crowd control and surveillance, the use of big data and algorithmic decision-making for tracking, capturing, killing or blacklisting suspected terrorists, and the use of modern technologies in the implementation of border and immigration policies.

Contact hours listed under a course description may vary due to the combination of lecture-based and independent work required for each course therefore, CEA's recommended credits are based on the ECTS credits assigned by VU Amsterdam. 1 ECTS equals 28 contact hours assigned by VU Amsterdam.