ESR Barbara Lazarotto presents her research at Conference Legal Technologies and the Bodies

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On March 07-08, 2024, Barbara Lazarotto and her colleague Alessandra Calvi presented their research at the Conference Legal Technologies and the Bodies, a conference that explored the complex relationship between legal systems, technology, and human bodies in this era of rapid technological advancement at SciencesPo Paris. Considering how various modern digital environments, such as surveillance and recommendation algorithms, affect and govern human bodies and behaviors.

Alessandra, who presented the paper co-authored with Barbara named “Breaking Down SyRi: A Feminist Investigation of Automated Discrimination”, an analysis of how the process of datafication and automation of the public sector disproportionally affects women, using the case of SyRi in The Netherlands as a case study.

 

14th Workshop on Socio-Technical Aspects in Security

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LeADS beneficiary University of Luxembourg organizes the 14th Workshop on Socio-Technical Aspects in Security, which will be held as a hybrid event at the University of Vienna in Austria on 12th July 2024. The Workshop intends to stimulate an exchange of ideas on how to design systems that are secure in the world where they interact with users of varying lived experiences and diverse needs. STAST aims at bringing together experts working in various areas of computer security as well as in social and behavioral sciences. A call for papers for this workshop has been published and accepts full papers until 15th March 2024. Deadline for the CfP is 25 March 2024 (AoE)

More information and call for papers are available via this link.

ESR Barbara Lazarotto book review

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ESR Barbara Lazarotto wrote a book review on ‘Digital Oil – Machineries of Knowing’, by Eric Monteiro for the Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies Tecnoscienza.

In her review, Barbara explores Monteir’s delves into the metaphor of “data is the new oil” to analyze the Norwegian offshore oil industry’s digital transformations. He explores how societal and political decisions have shaped the industry’s evolution, emphasizing the interplay between technology, economics, ethics, and politics. Divided into three parts, the book covers the historical context of Norway’s oil industry, the technological developments driving digitalization, and the implications of datafication on society. Through empirical studies, Monteiro examines various phases of commercial oil activities, highlighting the role of multidisciplinary professionals like data managers in handling and interpreting complex datasets. He also addresses the uncertainties inherent in oil exploration and production as a background for stressing the importance of considering technical and ethical factors in data analysis.

Her review can be accessed via this link.

TILLs Workshop in Brussels

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2024, the final year of the LeADS project, kickstarted with an intensive three-day meeting packed with a wide variety of LeADS activities. Organized by the LeADS consortium, the activities took place in Brussels on the campus by LeADS beneficiary VUB.

During this packed three days, three distinct events took place, amongst them the Technology Innovation in Law Laboratories (TILLs) workshop. Partners of the LeADS project, Indra and the Italian Competition Authority AGCM, provided three cases for the ESRs.

Each case involved real-life cases the company and competition authority were confronted with during their work.

The first case concerned an investigation by the Italian competition authority against Apple for alleged abuse of its dominant position in the App Market. ESRs had to identify counterarguments that Apple could provide in response to the investigation and how the AGCM could further solidify their case.

The second case concerned an investigation by the AGCM against Google for an abuse of its dominant position regarding its implementation of the right to data portability. ESRs had to investigate how commitments by Google had to be updated in order to be compliant with the recently published Digital Markets Act (DMA).

In the third case provided by Indra, ESRs were confronted with the challenge of a cyber security company, that was confronted with a cyberattack against voting machines which had been used during elections. ESRs had to analyze which legal obligations the company had to comply with and which technical vulnerabilities had been exploited during this security breach.

During the first day, the ESRs had to analyze and develop their solutions to the given problem. Reflecting the spirit of the LeADS project, each team involved experts in law and technology in order to develop truly interdisciplinary solutions for each case.

During the second day, ESRs presented their solutions to the partners of the LeADS project and discussed to what extent their solution matched the approach by Indra and the AGCM.

The TILLS gave our ESRs the possibility to not only test their knowledge on real-life cases but also to further develop and test their problem-solving, collaboration, time-management and presentation skills.