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The study focusses on the legal issues surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), which are being investigated and debated about several European Union initiatives to manage and regulate Information and Communication Technologies. The goal is to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of adopting AI technology and the ramifications for the articulations of law and politics in democratic constitutional countries. Thus, the study aims to identify socio-legal concerns and possible solutions to protect individuals’ interests. The exploratory study is based on statutes, rules, and committee reports. The study has used news pieces, reports issued by organisations and legal websites. The study revealed computer security vulnerabilities, unfairness, bias and discrimination, and legal personhood and intellectual property issues. Issues with privacy and data protection, liability for harm, and lack of accountability will all be discussed. The vulnerability framework is utilised in this chapter to strengthen comprehension of key areas of concern and to motivate risk and impact mitigation solutions to safeguard human welfare. Given the importance of AI’s effects on weak individuals and groups as well as their legal rights, this chapter contributes to the discourse, which is essential. The chapter advances the conversation while appreciating the legal work done in AI and the fact that this sector needs constant review and flexibility. As AI technology advances, new legal challenges, vulnerabilities, and implications for data privacy will inevitably arise, necessitating increased monitoring and research.

Introduction: The ethical implications of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) profiling or DNA fingerprinting or forensic genetics in criminal investigations have gained significant attention worldwide. In India, DNA profiling in criminal investigations has increased over the years. However, the ethical considerations of DNA profiling in India have yet to be examined adequately.

Purpose: The study aimed to examine the ethical considerations of DNA profiling in India and compare them with international guidelines. By examining the ethical considerations of DNA profiling in India, this study seeks to contribute to the ongoing discourse on the responsible use of DNA profiling in forensic investigations.

Methodology: The study used a qualitative research design, and data were collected by reviewing relevant literature and laws.

Findings: The findings indicate that the Indian legal framework has gaps in addressing the ethical considerations raised by international guidelines, such as the admissibility of DNA evidence in court, oversight of DNA laboratories, safeguards against discrimination, and privacy and confidentiality protections.

The comparative analysis highlights the need for strengthening the legal framework in India, adopting best practices from international guidelines, and incorporating safeguards to protect against discrimination and ensure the privacy and confidentiality of individuals. By adopting these recommendations, India can ensure that DNA profiling is conducted ethically and responsibly, promoting public trust in the criminal justice system and upholding the rights of all individuals.

The chapter deliberates on research ethics and the unanticipated side effects that technological developments have brought in the past decades. It looks at data protection and privacy through the prism of ethics and focuses on the need for safeguarding the fundamental rights of the research participants in the new digital era. Acknowledging the benefits of data analytics for boosting scientific process, the chapter reflects on the main principles and specific research derogations, introduced by the EU General Data Protection Regulation. Further on, it discusses some of the most pressing ethics concerns, related to the use, reuse, and misuse of data; the distinction between publicly available and open data; ethics challenges in online recruitment of research participants; and the potential bias and representativeness problems of Big Data research. The chapter underscores that all challenges should be properly addressed at the outset of research design. Highlighting the power asymmetries between Big Data studies and individuals’ rights to data protection, human dignity, and respect for private and family life, the chapter argues that anonymization may be reasonable, yet not the ultimate ethics solution. It asserts that while anonymization techniques may protect individual data protection rights, the former may not be sufficient to prevent discrimination and stigmatization of entire groups of populations. Finally, the chapter suggests some approaches for ensuring ethics compliance in the digital era.

This article explores how legal intermediaries facilitate or inhibit social change. We suggest the increasing complexity and ambiguity of legal rules coupled with the shift from government to governance provide legal intermediaries greater opportunities to influence law and social change. Drawing from new institutional sociology, we suggest rule-intermediaries shape legal and social change, with varying degrees of success, in two ways: (1) law is filtered through non-legal logics emanating from various organizational fields and (2) law is professionalized by non-legal professionals. We draw from case studies in the United States and France to show how intermediaries facilitate or inhibit social change.

This chapter analyzes the compliance of some category of Open Data in Politics with EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements. After clarifying the legal basis of this framework, with specific attention to the processing procedures that conform to the legitimate interests pursued by the data controller, including open data licenses or anonymization techniques, that can result in partial application of the GDPR, but there is no generic guarantee, and, as a consequence, an appropriate process of analysis and management of risks is required.

Although few fully understand the evolving science of blockchain technology, many agree that such technology promises countless crypto innovative applications. However, institutions using blockchain and cryptoassets face issues. Since more institutions are beginning to explore various private, public, and hybrid blockchains and their related cryptoassets, an increased need exists to understand and anticipate implementation problems. Such problems include contractual issues, privacy concerns, tax implications, jurisdictional issues, financial fraud, and data theft. Others involve intellectual property rights, money laundering, accounting and financial reporting, fork management and governance, and compliance and regulatory obligations. This chapter reviews and analyzes the various problems facing institutions in using blockchain and cryptoassets as financial instruments and mediums of exchange. It focuses on these aspects concerning custody, provenance, and reporting. This chapter also discusses the compliance, disclosure, and regulatory reporting of cryptoassets.

Advances in Big Data, artificial Intelligence and data-driven innovation bring enormous benefits for the overall society and for different sectors. By contrast, their misuse can lead to data workflows bypassing the intent of privacy and data protection law, as well as of ethical mandates. It may be referred to as the ‘creep factor’ of Big Data, and needs to be tackled right away, especially considering that we are moving towards the ‘datafication’ of society, where devices to capture, collect, store and process data are becoming ever-cheaper and faster, whilst the computational power is continuously increasing. If using Big Data in truly anonymisable ways, within an ethically sound and societally focussed framework, is capable of acting as an enabler of sustainable development, using Big Data outside such a framework poses a number of threats, potential hurdles and multiple ethical challenges. Some examples are the impact on privacy caused by new surveillance tools and data gathering techniques, including also group privacy, high-tech profiling, automated decision making and discriminatory practices. In our society, everything can be given a score and critical life changing opportunities are increasingly determined by such scoring systems, often obtained through secret predictive algorithms applied to data to determine who has value. It is therefore essential to guarantee the fairness and accurateness of such scoring systems and that the decisions relying upon them are realised in a legal and ethical manner, avoiding the risk of stigmatisation capable of affecting individuals’ opportunities. Likewise, it is necessary to prevent the so-called ‘social cooling’. This represents the long-term negative side effects of the data-driven innovation, in particular of such scoring systems and of the reputation economy. It is reflected in terms, for instance, of self-censorship, risk-aversion and lack of exercise of free speech generated by increasingly intrusive Big Data practices lacking an ethical foundation. Another key ethics dimension pertains to human-data interaction in Internet of Things (IoT) environments, which is increasing the volume of data collected, the speed of the process and the variety of data sources. It is urgent to further investigate aspects like the ‘ownership’ of data and other hurdles, especially considering that the regulatory landscape is developing at a much slower pace than IoT and the evolution of Big Data technologies. These are only some examples of the issues and consequences that Big Data raise, which require adequate measures in response to the ‘data trust deficit’, moving not towards the prohibition of the collection of data but rather towards the identification and prohibition of their misuse and unfair behaviours and treatments, once government and companies have such data. At the same time, the debate should further investigate ‘data altruism’, deepening how the increasing amounts of data in our society can be concretely used for public good and the best implementation modalities.

This chapter explores how data-driven methods such as Artificial Intelligence pose real concerns for individual privacy. The current paradigm of collecting data from those using online applications and services is reinforced by significant potential profits that the private sector stands to realize by delivering a broad range of services to users faster and more conveniently. Terms of use and privacy agreements are a common source of confusion, and are written in a way that dulls their impact and dopes most into automatically accepting a certain level of risk in exchange for convenience and “free” access. Third parties, including the government, gain access to these data in numerous ways. If the erosion of individual protections of privacy and the potential dangers this poses to our autonomy and democratic ideals were not alarming enough, the digital surrogate product of “you” that is created from this paradigm might one day freely share thoughts, buying habits, and your pattern of life with whoever owns these data. We use an ethical framework to assess key factors in these issues and discuss some of the dilemmas posed by Artificial Intelligence methods, the current norm of sharing one's data, and what can be done to remind individuals to value privacy. Will our digital surrogate one day need protections too?