Human Rights, Democracy and Digital Technology

This course examines the promise and peril of emerging digital technologies in the context of human rights protections and underlying democratic values, and probes into the legal challenges raised by modern technologies in these areas. As a result, the course also draws on the ongoing normative efforts in the EU and worldwide to address those potential threats emerging from the misuse of technology by reviewing different novel legal instruments on the matter.

First, the course will begin with an introduction to the concepts of law, regulation, human rights and emerging digital technologies. This introductory section will elaborate on the rationale for investigating the opportunities and challenges posed by digital technologies to protect human rights and uphold democratic values.

The second section, which is the core of this course, critically examines the effects these technologies and their applications have on specific human rights, such as non-discrimination, the right to privacy and freedom of expression. In this sense, diverse scenarios where human rights face potential constraints due to digital developments in technology and innovation, like the implementation of automated decision-making in the public sector, the (mis)use of online platforms for disinformation and hate speech, state surveillance tools 2.0, and the relationship between digital technologies and crime, including mass atrocities, are going to be developed. Under this context, the regulatory framework will be articulated under the human rights conventions and other related frameworks and instruments (e.g. 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ICCPR, ECHR, Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the declaration on digital rights and principles for everyone in the EU).

The third section examines the relationship between digital technologies and the most serious human rights violations that constitute mass atrocities, including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It is further subdivided into three threads: (1) how the use of autonomous weapons on the battlefield affects human rights and correlates with discussions of accountability; (2) how social media platforms may enable and facilitate the commission of atrocity crimes; and (3) how the application of modern technologies can aid in atrocity crime prevention and facilitate digital investigations through the preservation of digital evidence, both internationally and domestically.

 
The fourth section examines different regulatory tools available or soon to be available to specifically address digital technologies’ potential negative impact on democracy and human rights. This will include groundbreaking legal instruments like the Canadian Directive on Automated Decision-Making, the German Network Enforcement Act or the Chinese Internet Information Service Algorithmic Recommendation Management Provisions. However, the main attention will be on the EU secondary law. As such, new regulatory tools emerging on the topic in the region (i.e., the Artificial Intelligence Act, Digital Services Act, General Data Protection Regulation) are going to be studied.

Finally, the course concludes with a section that focuses on future gazing and problem-finding: exploiting the adjacent possibilities opened up by the course to chart the edge of where digital technologies interact with the law, human rights and democracy. This sets students up to navigate through the myriad of legal responses to the challenges posed by digital technologies already tabled, as well as inviting students to come up with their own interpretation and response towards the legal issues raised (either in the global, regional or national context), as they work towards their final written assessment.