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Human rights and digital technology : digital tightrope
Perry S., Roda C., Palgrave Macmillan, London, UK, 2017. 203 pp. Type: Book (978-1-137588-04-3)
Date Reviewed: Oct 24 2017

Perry and Roda’s aim for this book is to be a syllabus for a course on human rights and digital technology. The authors cover different sorts of technology dilemmas with respect to human rights. They start with the most extensively described dilemma, “The Great Debate on Wireless Technology.” This chapter starts with an extensive review of regulatory challenges, the contested science, and problems with legislation in the US and Europe. Along the way, readers learn that this discussion is close to the heart of one of the authors, as she participated in a grassroots movement to stop installation near a school in Paris. The dilemma is complex, and very hard for uninformed outsiders to judge as it aims to contest existing scientific results.

The third chapter is on user privacy and digital surveillance. This is examined from three different viewpoints: technological developments, the legal framework, and the upcoming privacy by design field.

A short chapter examines censorship both in Europe as well as in China, providing some context for the developments in both areas.

The fifth chapter, on the Internet of Things (IoT), uses a set of short futuristic stories to expand on the possible impact that IoT may have. These short stories seem to extend far beyond the issue the authors seem to want to deal with, which makes them feel contrived and too far into the future.

Finally, there is a chapter on the academic teaching of human rights and digital technology, with a focus on blended learning. This chapter is a reflection of both authors on the experiences of teaching a course on human rights and digital technology.

In summary, this book is suitable for readers who are comfortable thinking about human rights and who want to know more about how these rights can be valued in technical areas. The book spends most of its text explaining technical context, then the legal context of four different areas, and much less about how moral human rights and values should be balanced.

Reviewer:  Jeroen van der Ham Review #: CR145604 (1712-0792)
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