Call For Papers

Cyber Challenges to International Human Rights

December 11-12, 2017, Jerusalem and Haifa

The CyberLaw Program, International Cybersecurity Research Center, Hebrew University and The Cyber, Law and Policy Center Haifa University

‘Unseen actors’ are central to the ‘institutional makeup’ of international courts and tribunals as registries and secretariats, law clerks and legal officers may exert varying levels of influence on the judicial process.

At this conference, legal and political science scholars and members of adjudicatory institutions will consider and discuss the legitimacy of assigning ‘unseen actors’ certain roles in the judicial process as well as the implications thereof for the legitimacy of the dispute settlement mechanism as such.

OVERVIEW: Data flows are central to an increasingly large share of the economy. A wide array of products and business models - from the sharing economy and artificial intelligence to autonomous vehicles and embedded medical devices - rely on personal data. Consequently, privacy regulation leaves a large economic footprint. As with any regulatory enterprise, the key to sound data policy is striking a balance between competing interests and norms that leaves consumers better off.

In recent years, the digital ecosystem has become an arena for hostile cyber activities on the part of states, terror organizations and independent or semi-independent hackers, affecting the interests of individuals, organizations and states. At the same, powerful public and private entities are able to exercise broad powers of surveillance, information collection and manipulation of software and hardware, and can utilize such powers for nefarious ends. This emerging scene, which is under-regulated, creates new threats to civil liberties and human rights.