Search results

A deteriorating security situation and an increased need for defence equipment calls for new forms of collaboration between Armed Forces and the defence industry. This paper aims to investigate the ways in which the accelerating demand for increased security of supply of equipment and supplies to the Armed Forces requires adaptability in the procurement process that is governed by laws on public procurement (PP).

This paper is based on a review of current literature as well as empirical data obtained through interviews with representatives from the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration and the Swedish defence industry.

Collaboration with the globalized defence industry requires new approaches, where the PP rules make procurement of a safe supply of defence equipment difficult.

The study's empirical data and findings are based on the Swedish context. In order to draw more general conclusions in a defence context, the study should be expanded to cover more nations.

The findings will enable the defence industry and the procurement authorizations to better understand the requirements of Armed Forces, and how to cooperate under applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

The paper extends the extant body of academic knowledge of the security of supply into the defence sector. It serves as a first step towards articulating a call for new approaches to collaboration in defence supply chains.

The media has even been very critical of some East Asian countries’ use of digital contact-tracing to control Covid-19. For example, South Korea has been criticised for its use of privacy-infringing digital contact-tracing. However, whether their type of digital contact-tracing was unnecessarily harmful to the human rights of Korean citizens is open for debate. The purpose of this paper is to examine this criticism to see if Korea’s digital contact-tracing is ethically justifiable.

This paper will evaluate Korea’s digital contact-tracing through the lens of the four human rights principles to determine if their response is ethically justifiable. These four principles were originally outlined in the European Court of Human Rights, namely, necessary, proportional, scientifically valid and time-bounded (European Court of Human Rights 1950).

The paper will propose that while the use of Korea’s digital contact-tracing was scientifically valid and proportionate (albeit, in need for improvements), it meets the necessity requirement, but is too vague to meet the time-boundedness requirement.

The Covid-19 pandemic has proven to be one of the worst threats to human health and the global economy in the past century. There have been many different strategies to tackle the pandemic, from somewhat laissez-faire approaches, herd immunity, to strict draconian measures. Analysis of the approaches taken in the response to the pandemic is of high scientific value and this paper is one of the first to critically engage with one of these methods – digital contact-tracing in South Korea.

A policy of surveillance which interferes with the fundamental right to a private life requires credible justification and a supportive evidence base. The authority for such interference should be clearly detailed in law, overseen by a transparent process and not left to the vagaries of administrative discretion. If a state surveils those it governs and claims the interference to be in the public interest, then the evidence base on which that claim stands and the operative conception of public interest should be subject to critical examination. Unfortunately, there is an inconsistency in the regulatory burden associated with access to confidential patient information for non-health-related surveillance purposes and access for health-related surveillance or research purposes. This inconsistency represents a systemic weakness to inform or challenge an evidence-based policy of non-health-related surveillance. This inconsistency is unjustified and undermines the qualities recognised to be necessary to maintain a trustworthy confidential public health service. Taking the withdrawn Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between NHS Digital and the Home Office as a worked example, this chapter demonstrates how the capacity of the law to constrain the arbitrary or unwarranted exercise of power through judicial review is not sufficient to level the playing field. The authors recommend ‘levelling up’ in procedural oversight, and adopting independent mechanisms equivalent to those adopted for establishing the operative conceptions of public interest in the context of health research to non-health-related surveillance purposes.

This paper aims at discussing the options available to governments when it comes to the use of technology to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

This is an opinion piece, based on very recent developments (COVID-19), and based on a well-known trade-off between privacy and state surveillance, especially in times of crisis that threaten the survival of a nation.

The main finding is that technology alone will not help, and there are several reasons to doubt that the recently proposed European system to track the contagion in a privacy-preserving way (pan-European privacy preserving proximity tracing [PEPP-PT]) would be a fully effective solution.

This is a short paper, which is very dependent on current developments. It was written in a very short time, so the level of depth in the references to the literature and the caselaw is limited. The main implication is that this paper is very far from the final word in the analysis of the interplay between technology and society, especially in democratic countries.

There is a need to ensure that the temporary measures that will be adopted during the pandemic do not extend to the post-COVID-19 period.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is a very fresh debate; the paper is thus original and proposes one of the first structured comments to the PEPP-PT and DP-3T conceptual designs.

The CoViD-19 pandemic has brought about a panoply of institutional challenges both domestically and in the international arena. Classical constitutional theory thereby underwent a reinvention by the executive for the sake of speedy policy action and to the detriment of institutional control while favouring authoritarian forms of governance. This paper concerns itself with institutional responses to such developments, placing emphasis on the role of the judiciary and people*s in contesting emergency decrees and other executive orders, especially where fundamental rights are infringed upon. The paper aims to explore the difficulties arising with exerting absolute executive powers during the health crisis, the respective role assumed by constitutional courts and the impact of the new governance paradigm on forms of public contestation, also as a means of quasi institutional control.

Indeed, the right to health may be translated into political discourse and become foundational to security and public interest paradigms. This may result in a shrinking public space given the constraints to the freedom of movement. In the name of public safety, the (collective) right to assembly, expression and protest have been submitted to major limitations in that regard.

Ultimately, this re-opens debates on the meaning of absolute rights and contextualities of derogations, as well as the reconcilability of civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights. It also exposes social inequalities, social justice dimensions and vulnerabilities, often exacerbated by the health crisis; migrant rights demonstrably face particularly severe and intersectional forms of violations.

Particular values lie with the interdisciplinary approach embraced in this paper; the authors draw on a variety of social sciences disciplines to shed light on this very current issue. Both theoretical and empirical methods are used and combined here, making sense of the underlying logic of virus governance and its impacts on fundamental rights.

Doxing refers to the intentional public release by a third party of personal data without consent, often with the intent to humiliate, intimidate, harass, or punish the individual concerned. Intuitively, it is tempting to condemn doxing as a crude form of cyber violence that weaponizes personal data. When it is used as a strategy of resistance by the powerless to hold the powerful accountable, however, a more nuanced understanding is called for. This chapter focuses on the doxing phenomenon in Hong Kong, where doxing incidents against police officers and their family members have skyrocketed since 2019 (a 75-fold increase over 2018). It contends that doxing for political purposes is closely related to digital vigilantism, signifying a loss of confidence in the ruling authority and a yearning for an alternative form of justice. The chapter therefore argues that public interest should be recognized as a legal defense in doxing cases when those discharging or entrusted with public duty are the targets. Equally, it is important to confine the categories of personal data disclosed to information necessary to reveal the alleged wrongdoer or wrongdoing. Only in this way can a fair balance be struck between privacy, freedom of expression, and public interest.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chains have become important policy tools to ensure the security and resilience of regional trading blocs of major economies. The US government’s focus on supply chains for selected strategic industries and the EU Commission’s renewed efforts to strengthen its supply chains using ‘sustainability standards’ coincides with the global trend in the shift towards digital and low-carbon economies. Furthermore, the rising tensions between the US and China, with no signs of reconciliation over key issues of contention, have emphasized the need for more credibility and trust in global supply chains. However, such policies also have the potential to serve as new barriers to participation in supply chains by less-developed economies which are not yet prepared to meet the high-level sustainability criteria which aim for higher protection of the environment and labor rights. There also seems to be an apparent shift in paradigm supporting the interventionist role of government that emphasize the need for more discretion for policy objectives that pursue societal and democratic values, not to mention national security interests. The current rules of international trade, however, do not sufficiently address these new issues and need to be realigned in order to meet the new demands. The current ‘rules of the game’ need to be reinforced in order to accommodate the rising need of countries for increased consideration of issues of sustainability and competitiveness.

The aim of the present study is to shed light on the role of legal practitioners, namely, lawyers and notaries, in the fight against money laundering: Are they considered as facilitators or obstacles against money laundering? How does the global and the EU legal framework deal with the legal professionals?

The research follows a deductive approach attempting to respond to questions such as: How do the lawyers’ and notaries’ societies react in front of the anti-money laundering measures that concern them and why? What are the discrepancies between the lawyers’ professional secrecy and the obligations that EU anti-money laundering legislation assigns them?

This study disclosures the response of the European union and international legal and regulatory framework as well as the reflexes of the international and European legal professionals’ associations to this danger. It also demonstrates the reaction of lawyers against European union anti-money laundering legislation, to the point that it limits not only the confidentiality principle but also the position of the European judicial systems to the contradiction between this principle and the lawyers’ obligation to report their suspicions to the authorities.

To fulfil the study goals, it was necessary to overcome some obstacles, like the limitation of existing sources. Indeed, transnational empirical research considering the professionals who facilitate money laundering is narrow. Besides, policymakers and academics only recently expressed more interest in money laundering and its facilitators.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the legal professionals’ role not only in money laundering practices but also in anti-money laundering policies.